Yep, just right.
For me it's that some playstyle get's picked up by bands that are either looking for a starting sound OR a good image to pick and trend with it. So they pick up what of Garagepunk is on right now and that is the bands that make it big.
I had the lost comment thing to, .... so here goes again: I get the old blank stare story too when I mention bands other then those appearing on the pop/iTunes Storefront radar. Mention the White Stripes (don't get angry folks, it's merely an example for widespread success for a band that most Nickelback/mainstream rockfans still feel is "crap and too badly mixed") and people light up. Mention the FUZZZZTONES + antics and history and no one knows a damn thing. PLUS you get the weirdo face.
Good with me :) but a band like the FUZZTONES who hardly compromise, WOULD deserve all the big crowd consumer cash (NOT corporation cash, mind you) they can get thrown at with. Same goes for mayor WS inspirations FLAT DUO JETS and Royal Trux. Off the radar, but I would love to see DEX and Family get all the right attention they deserve.
That would not take away from the White Stripes success, but help teach the dull noggins consumer out there some RNR history.
The thing is that bands like WS / BL get all the cred from the public for rewiving a genre, when "all" they did is make it popular with great records and even better marketing. + They are young and good looking.
If anyone, the old bands that served as their inspiration, deserve the attention just like the young bands do. I'm not saying this because "I'm pissed at the music industry" or something, but because some few people get stuff mixed up here and anger post their asses off - its good to make the differnce between sell out yells and close looks at the trend that Garage sounds and bands now are. It makes some of the wrong people money, while the good folks slaving out for years get back to their dayjobs to rack up the money to cut LPs once every five years - that is all.
Again, to those who make this a hate fest: I guess it's important to make the diversion between low-fi (considering production not tone) Garagepunk bands and ones that made it big with their sound (fill in name), not out of snob reasons, but fairness. This community alone is "JUST" a couple of thousand people - compare that to record sales of a LARGE band, that is nothing. In small press that is EVERYTHING. It's obvious why it's good to support seemingly small bands for years, that serve as "inspiration" for the HOT bands out there to start their engines with big money.
Look at the A-bones or Eric Davidson, they shed light on so many great bands again and again.
They mostly only have their raw love for RNR to keep them going, not the Diva-esque sound curator derpession of people-gone-stars, that anxiously need to dig for new sounds to give their slick albums the paint of some REAL DIRT.
Michelle Magnero said:
Just spent 15 minutes writing my post and it got deleted, so I don't know how this one will turn out but I will try...Ok, so first of all I think a couple of the bands are slightly popular/ trendy, but not the genre. Most of the people I know either do not like it or don't know who the bands are. When I think about why it is that a couple/handful of the bands have managed to cross over into the mainstream my two favorite examples to use are White Stripes and Black Lips, both of whom have been discussed elsewhere on this board. If you think about each of these bands and how/why they got popular (and also take into consideration that we are talking about two different time periods here- WS in 2000/ early 2000's and BL in the later part of the decade) one thing that becomes obvious to me is that they both became successful because of some kind of branding or selling of a concept, none of which, if you really think about it, has anything to do with the music they are playing. (Some of you on here may be able to think of things such as the equipment they use or build, etc., that connects the image to the sound, but remember that you already have a background knowledge about this that the general public does not, thus they probably won't consider it.) So with BL, think about how back before they were on Vice the garage community seemed a little stand-offish against them (even when they were on ITR). Well partly I think the reason for this may have been because they were so young and looked a little hipster-ish. (And also the fact that they have admitted in their interviews that in the old days they didn't even really know how to play and just relied on shock value at their shows.)So once they landed on Vice the kids went, oh, they look edgy or whatever, let's listen to this. With WS, ten years ago: WS was a buzz band, people thought it was cute. They thought all those bands from Sweden were cute. THEY WERE NOT. (Sorry Swedish GRH members.) Someone brought up the example of Oblivians and I think it is a great one, so I will use it again: These kids that like BL are not going to look at old Oblivians LPs and go, they look cool, I think I will listen to this- because they don't know the TIME PERIOD or the GENRE. And they don't care about it. Two more quick things then I will shut up- 1. The Mummies: for whatever reason for quite a long time it has seemed to me that if someone only knew one garage band, it was the Mummies. Usually these people were hipsters. If I think about another band a lot of people know, you have Man or Astroman. They are so big that people who like this band and do not like primarily garage refuse to acknowledge that they are a garage rock band. My suspicion is that it is because they don't know enough about the genre to know that MoA plays a sub-genre of garage. 2. Blaine: No we are not cool, for me what liking garage means is that people think you are weird and that your music sucks/ all sounds the same :)
