Garage Against the Machine

The Lyres
Album: On Fyre
Help You Ann

My first true passion in music was not punk but rather garage rock.  In Saskatoon in the early- to mid-80s, there was only one place for the musically adventurous -- and hipster wannabes -- to hang out: Records on Wheels, a music store specializing in garage rock and run by local legend Ron Spizziri.  As far as I was concerned, Spizziri was garage rock incarnate: a thin, wiry man with nervous mannerisms, a quasi-nerdy exterior and a soul the epitome of cool.  At the time, despite being merely a wannabe hipster wannabe, I aspired to be him.

Spizziri co-hosted a local cable show called, "In the Midnight Hour," in which he would verbally spar with a clean cut dude who was into crappy early 80s bands like Tears for Fears, and who insisted that garage rock was primitive, overly simplistic, and not worth mentioning in the same sentence as The Human League.  Needless to say I hated that little preppy fuck.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time at Records on Wheels as a young man, and it was there, at Spizziri's feet, that I first learned about garage rock.  Three aggressive chords and a cloud of fuzzy distortion was the basic mantra, and it remained popular from its mid-60s origins (The Seeds, Them, The Remains, The Troggs, The Leaves, and, greatest of them all, The Sonics), through the proto-punk of MC5 and The Stooges, and into the 80s.  Where I found myself.

The 1980s saw a revival of the almost crude mid-60s sounds.  The first garage rock album I ever purchased was by The Chesterfield Kings.  Listening to it now, I get the sensation that they first picked up their instruments only months prior to recording the album; oddly enough, it's that sense of urgency and of playing on the edge that makes it work.  Upon hearing them I was hooked.  In succeeding weeks I purchased classics by The Fuzztones, Lime Spiders, and Canada's own Gruesomes.  But The Lyres, a Boston band fronted by Jeff Conolly, was my absolute fave group, and "Help You Ann" my fave song.  This tune epitomizes the 80s garage rock sound -- a driving, propulsive rhythm section, a cheesy organ, aggressive guitars and sweaty vocals.  Here is a clip of the band doing their thing, live.

The 90s were a tough decade for garage rock but it didn't die out altogether, and we have seen another revival of sorts in contemporary music.   Today we see the garage impulse in commercially successful acts as varied as The Black Keys, White Stripes, The Hives, White Denim, 22-20s, and Cage the Elephant.

And that preppy little fuck who used to spar with my man Spizziri?  According to my sources he went on to become a news anchor in Toronto.  Figures.