Where do you find garage rock? part 1

As I have mentioned in previous posts, part of my qualifications for doing this blog, such as they are, is that I have been a blues dj since 1982. When I started doing the show, it was really tough to find blues on the radio at all. It was a genre that had pretty much been written off by commercial radio (actually, it pretty much still is). B.B. King made some TV appearances every so often, but beyond that, It was only college radio that provided any kind of regular outlet for the blues.

It stayed that way for quite a while. Years later, cable and satellite companies usually included at least one blues station with their packages. But for those people who wanted to listen to the music whenever they were in that blue mood, it would of course be the internet that made that possible.  Music downloading, legal and otherwise, became very easy. And now, there's probably no less than 15 quadrillion internet radio stations to choose from. Another of my musical interests beyond garage rock is African music. There's only about 7 quadrillion of them.

Garage rock is a bit different. Most of the pay TV packages, except for one, don't have garage rock and it's still for a lot of people a pretty obscure sub-genre. I actually don't mind that, but that's a subject for another post. My suspicion is that, if you've found this blog (and at this point not many of you have), you know where to find garage rock. But, as I learned from my writer-for-hire gigs, never assume anything. So here are my suggestions.

Before we go any further, I do have an entire post on one of the very best places to find garage rock -- Psychedelic Jukebox.com. I encourage you to read the post and check this terrific internet radio station out.

Here is the USA, probably the best place to go is Little Steven's Underground Garage. That pretty much has been my inspiration for this blog.

For those of you who don't know, Little Steven (Van Zandt, born Steven Lento) is the longtime guitar player for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. He's no slouch on his own, having various bands, including Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, who had a hit in the US with "Forever." Of late, he's probably better known as an actor, playing the reptilian hitman Silvio Dante on the HBO series "The Sopranos." He currently stars in the highly-entertaining Netflix series "Lilyhammer," playing Frankie Tagliano, a mobster who goes into hiding into Norway, bringing his wiseguy ways with him. Rather than a bad guy, Tagliano is more of a good guy who doesn't mind breaking a rule or two.

More to the point, he has spent more than a decade hosting "Little Steven's Underground Garage," a syndicated radio show (http://undergroundgarage.com). LSUG is also a radio channel on Sirius-XM satellite radio, a 24-hour version of the radio show and at least stateside, the place to hear garage rock. The Sirius station is also part of most packages offered by Dish Network in the U.S. I recently had to cancel my Dish account and I still am having withdrawals not having LSUG.

If you're a purist, this might not be for you. Van Zandt and his djs combine garage rock with r&b and soul music from the 50s-70s, a lot of classic rock and a lot of music that might not exactly be garage but still kicks butt. I've heard great songs from the Bee Gees, Herman's Hermits, Freddie and the Dreamers and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, all acts I had dismissed for most of my life.

Of most interest is "The Coolest Song in the World," which has turned me on to more great bands than I ever imagined existed, ranging from King Khan and the Shrines, the Rubinoos, The Chesterfield Kings, the Satelliters and other bands far too numerous for me to recall here. You can listen to the syndicated show here: http://undergroundgarage.com.

In another post, you can read all about Kevin Anthony's incredible internet radio station Psychedelic Jukebox, in my opinion the hands-down best place to hear garage rock and freakbeat, bar none.

In my next post I'll talk about more places to hear garage rock. I can write about it and try to explain it to you, but the best way to understand what I'm talking about is just to listen.