michaelvee
Ikon Class
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2011
- Location
- Italy, Bologna
recently, for my 60s 45s Archive I had to summon up the term Garage. Here's my attempt. Additions, critics and comments, good or bad, are most welcome:
"The term “Garage" was chosen by aficionados and collectors in order to classify recordings mostly done „on a shoestring“, in cheap studios without any „production“, or in a garage.
Garage music is the story of four friends who did not know to play their guitars and drums but met in a garage and started to play “Wild Thing” and “Gloria”. Soon they would tour the nation and, eventually, land a recording contract or self-finance a recording.
Of those recordings, 100 – 500 were pressed and mostly were given away at concerts or sent to promoters and radio stations.
More than a few of those were finally picked up by major labels that would promote the group for several years issuing 7inchs and LPs (these recordings are NOT in the archive).
But most of the self-financed and one shot records got “shelved" and sank without any success, most got lost, many were dumped and a few were even used as shooting targets by unsatisfied artists. Sometimes only 1 sole copy survived (the archive’s scope is precisely to save those recordings from oblivion!)
Garage bands mostly copied both American RnR material and the UK-Beat book, but also excelled in self penned originals.
In a wider sense, the term “Garage” (at least in this archive’s collection) includes groups who were superstars in their far away homelands (India, Philippines, Peru…) but unknown anywhere else.
Furthermore, the same term includes rare recordings by famous artists done in a “Garage” style.
The typical audio quality of a Garage record is extremely low fi, includes hiss, pops and scratches resulting in a “poor”, stripped to the bone sound where some instruments got nearly completely soaked up in the mix and need a close listen (and imagination!) to be heard.
(on the other hand, this bad audio experience is not different to the listening in the 60s when 7inchers were played 100 times on the same cheap player or via audio cassette, go figure!)
The criteria of the archive’s collection are both objective (rarity) and subjective (“nice version / song”); if both these criteria are fulfilled, the tune makes it in, even if the audio quality is poor.
"The term “Garage" was chosen by aficionados and collectors in order to classify recordings mostly done „on a shoestring“, in cheap studios without any „production“, or in a garage.
Garage music is the story of four friends who did not know to play their guitars and drums but met in a garage and started to play “Wild Thing” and “Gloria”. Soon they would tour the nation and, eventually, land a recording contract or self-finance a recording.
Of those recordings, 100 – 500 were pressed and mostly were given away at concerts or sent to promoters and radio stations.
More than a few of those were finally picked up by major labels that would promote the group for several years issuing 7inchs and LPs (these recordings are NOT in the archive).
But most of the self-financed and one shot records got “shelved" and sank without any success, most got lost, many were dumped and a few were even used as shooting targets by unsatisfied artists. Sometimes only 1 sole copy survived (the archive’s scope is precisely to save those recordings from oblivion!)
Garage bands mostly copied both American RnR material and the UK-Beat book, but also excelled in self penned originals.
In a wider sense, the term “Garage” (at least in this archive’s collection) includes groups who were superstars in their far away homelands (India, Philippines, Peru…) but unknown anywhere else.
Furthermore, the same term includes rare recordings by famous artists done in a “Garage” style.
The typical audio quality of a Garage record is extremely low fi, includes hiss, pops and scratches resulting in a “poor”, stripped to the bone sound where some instruments got nearly completely soaked up in the mix and need a close listen (and imagination!) to be heard.
(on the other hand, this bad audio experience is not different to the listening in the 60s when 7inchers were played 100 times on the same cheap player or via audio cassette, go figure!)
The criteria of the archive’s collection are both objective (rarity) and subjective (“nice version / song”); if both these criteria are fulfilled, the tune makes it in, even if the audio quality is poor.
