 |
| Suits. Always the problem, amirite? |
The Hit
1966’s “Talk Talk,” a hard-rock, garage-buzz tune, or, as Rolling Stone put it, “hog-snort guitar distortion, machine-gun drumming and growling paranoid despair, shaved and hardened with geometric precision.” Built around a good driving beat and lyrics of self-and-others loathing, it picked up the “proto-punk” label once punk became a thing.
For what it’s worth, that proved kind of a buzz-kill for me. Because I’ve heard both sounds so many times, it registers less as “punk” than it does mid-60s garage-bleeding-to-psychedelic – i.e., exactly what it is. I also know that the first “garage” tunes came even earlier, and even the band’s founder/Svengali, Sean Bonniwelll, seemed luke-warm on the punk association:
“Although Bonniwell did not regard himself as ‘the grandfather of punk,’ he recognized that others did.”
To knock the clutter off all the above, if you like mid-60s garage, you will like this song. And you will probably get the case for “proto-punk.” Insofar as that word has any meaning. Hold that thought.
The Rest of the Story
I’ve spent a week listening to The Music Machine, and I’ve only understood the whys and hows of their sound since last Saturday, and the “punk” thing doesn’t really come through in their sound. Fortunately, it took more diving than stretching to find a phrasing that makes the punk label work. This sums up the spirit of the project nicely:
“This wouldn't allow me to express myself in terms of arrangements and approaches, although some of the music, you can hear in the latter part of the third album for RCA, you can hear some of my radical influence in the arrangements, especially in the last album.”
Bonniwell strove to find new possibilities in rock and/or popular music (and was the mid-60s the peak blurring of those genres?), whether with the arrangements or on the production side (“The Raggamuffins purchased hardware for a homemade fuzz-tone switch. From the onset Bonniwell ensured the group resonated like no other by instructing his bandmates to lower their instruments from the standard E note to D-flat.”). He was also a relentless perfectionist, (by his own account) driving willing and talented musicians to keep hold of hard rock in a world turning toward softer sounds. (That’s right, Bonniwell thought The Beatles were soft (but also talented, but also soft).) He really wanted to create a new sound – and, to a very real extent he did. His beginnings, however, were in folk.
1966’s “Talk Talk,” a hard-rock, garage-buzz tune, or, as Rolling Stone put it, “hog-snort guitar distortion, machine-gun drumming and growling paranoid despair, shaved and hardened with geometric precision.” Built around a good driving beat and lyrics of self-and-others loathing, it picked up the “proto-punk” label once punk became a thing.
For what it’s worth, that proved kind of a buzz-kill for me. Because I’ve heard both sounds so many times, it registers less as “punk” than it does mid-60s garage-bleeding-to-psychedelic – i.e., exactly what it is. I also know that the first “garage” tunes came even earlier, and even the band’s founder/Svengali, Sean Bonniwelll, seemed luke-warm on the punk association:
“Although Bonniwell did not regard himself as ‘the grandfather of punk,’ he recognized that others did.”
To knock the clutter off all the above, if you like mid-60s garage, you will like this song. And you will probably get the case for “proto-punk.” Insofar as that word has any meaning. Hold that thought.
The Rest of the Story
I’ve spent a week listening to The Music Machine, and I’ve only understood the whys and hows of their sound since last Saturday, and the “punk” thing doesn’t really come through in their sound. Fortunately, it took more diving than stretching to find a phrasing that makes the punk label work. This sums up the spirit of the project nicely:
“This wouldn't allow me to express myself in terms of arrangements and approaches, although some of the music, you can hear in the latter part of the third album for RCA, you can hear some of my radical influence in the arrangements, especially in the last album.”
Bonniwell strove to find new possibilities in rock and/or popular music (and was the mid-60s the peak blurring of those genres?), whether with the arrangements or on the production side (“The Raggamuffins purchased hardware for a homemade fuzz-tone switch. From the onset Bonniwell ensured the group resonated like no other by instructing his bandmates to lower their instruments from the standard E note to D-flat.”). He was also a relentless perfectionist, (by his own account) driving willing and talented musicians to keep hold of hard rock in a world turning toward softer sounds. (That’s right, Bonniwell thought The Beatles were soft (but also talented, but also soft).) He really wanted to create a new sound – and, to a very real extent he did. His beginnings, however, were in folk.
