Garagerocktopia is one year old

This weeks post will be fairly brief. It will mostly be, if we might, to wish ourselves a “Happy Birthday.”

We started Garagerocktopia just barely more than a year ago to celebrate garage rock, proto-punk, power-pop and related music forms, such as freakbeat, pub rock and mod. And why those kinds of music?

Part of it was just what we grew up with. We were too young, really, to remember very much of the Beatles or the British Invasion in general, though as a really little kid I myself can remember hearing “Magical Mystery Tour” on the radio. I can also remember in the vague recesses of my memory, hearing the Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard” come from a neighbor’s radio.

Perhaps, because of that, my ideas of what rock and roll should sound like were formed fairly early. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying it all has to sound that way. I would never suggest that.

But a common theme on this blog is that rock, at least in the mainstream, just doesn’t sound that much fun anymore. Obviously, there’s the business angle – artists are under enormous pressure to come right out of the gates with hits, and so the kind of artistic risk taking that was fairly common from the ‘50s clean through to the ‘90s isn’t there anymore.

We’ve also talked about the utter fragmentation of the audience, that the on-demand world of music these days ensures there’ll never be another Beatles, or Elvis, or Michael Jackson type act that everbody goes wild about.

But more than anything, rock just doesn’t sound fun. Maybe it’s the all-digital production on everything. Or any number of factors we’ve never even considered. But for whatever reason, we know it’s true and we know we’re not alone in thinking this. And that’s why we started this blog.

We knew that there were a lot of people out there who still dug rock and roll that sounded like rock and roll. And the response has been positive. Our initial goal was to have more than 500 people check us out every month, and we have surpassed that.

We’re most grateful to all of the artists whom have taken the time to talk with us. We’re amazed at some of the people who have taken the time to trade emails and phone calls. And it’s just really cool to be able to chat with people whose music we’ve long enjoyed – such as the Pretty Things and the Count Five, as well as great newer bands like Soraia and the Cherry Drops.

The whole idea was to create sort of an online gathering place for people who like the above mentioned kinds of music. We also wanted to present a blog that brings the disparate camps together. The coolest thing we could do is get an older garage rock fans – someone who actually remembers the first wave back in the ‘60s – and turn them on to bands like the Dogs or the Maharajahs, or vice versa get younger fans into some of the bands that started it all, like the Barbarians.

We think maybe to some small degree we have done that, but there’s always room to grow and to do things better. And that is what we’ll look forward to as Garagerocktopia enters its second year.

To those of you who have taken the time to read our features, many thanks to you, too.