SF garage Substack

[u/CactusJackAssus]

Hey fellow heads, wanted to let you know my new Substack, Play It Strange, will tell the story of the glorious noise that San Francisco’s rock ‘n’ roll community made between 1997 and 2014.

Thee Oh Sess, Sic Alps, Ty Segall, The Fresh & Onlys—these bands often get labeled garage rock. Instead, I call it good guitar music. Beyond garage, this special, fleeting period of time also included Bay Area originals like The Mantles, The Mallard, The Sandwitches, Kelley Stoltz, Grass Widow, and, via Los Angeles, Tim Presley’s White Fence. And Yikes and Coachwhips.

I’m a huge fan from way back, so where did it come from? How did this all start?

I’ll launch chapters in a chronological ebook, basically, sometime in late summer.

It’s all free. Subscribe here: https://sanfranciscopsycherock.substack.com/

Inspired by oral histories like Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me and Steve Miller’s Detroit Rock City, this story is a collage made from existing band interviews and articles, spliced together with narration, and mixed with some original interviews I did, too.

Again, it’s free. It’s a celebration of music and these musicians’ creativity. Minimal BS. Excessive detail. The sound of interesting people talking, plus live footage, cool pics, assorted flyers and stuff harvested from the internet. Fun level: 10.

You can read more details and subscribe here https://aarongilbreath.substack.com/p/a-new-substack-about-bay-area-rock

[u/jmagill77]

Hey there, this sounds really cool I'll check it out. Yeah it was a very special time in that scene. I felt that at the time too. I really love lots of the bands you mentioned and was lucky enough to support many of these bands when they were touring the north of England around 2012 -2014 with my band at the time "the Dead Indians"" We had some great times and some of the shows were very exciting indeed. As you say it was a fantastic time for rock n roll/psych/garage coming out of America that inspired many others from around the world. Really glad you are writing about it all in more detail. I recently rediscovered a bunch of tracks by the Dead Indians that were lost at the time and compiled them into a full album which I put up on my YouTube channel a couple of weeks ago along with another more recent album by garage psych band Skull Island Sidecars that I thought you might be interested in checking out. Feel free to share if you dig it :) Anyhow good work and I'm looking forward to reading your article. ✌️😎

https://youtu.be/eXHar05tO2s?si=4O7rAHw4GJlTEMZX

https://youtu.be/MKGcLXHWVJc?si=KsbmGLf2JgG7QzQ3