With flipcam by phgregoire. The Sonics had an often overlooked but notable influence on subsequent rock music, not just in the Washington area. They are often-cited contenders for the title of "the first punk band, due to their wild and unconventional style. The band also have a clearly marked influence on American punk bands such as The Dead Boys in their brash, immature, masculine style and posturing, and on the nineties grunge bands (who originated in the same area), especially Mudhoney, who adopted some of the darker themes from Sonics music, and a lot of their techniques on over-driving and distorting electric guitars. Their reach stretched beyond the US; influential Manchester post-punk group, The Fall, covered Strychnine during a session for the late John Peel's programme in 1993 and they repeatedly performed the song live around this timeThe Sonics were a member of the wave of Pacific Northwest American garage rock groups in the early and mid-1960s, pioneered by The Kingsmen and The Wailers . Among The Sonics' other contemporaries were The Drastics, The Dynamics, The Regents, and Paul Revere & the Raiders. This movement is credited with founding Seattle's well-known music scene which survives to the present.The Sonics' sound is noticeably rougher, cruder, and more brutal than that of their musical peers. Although they had a fairly standard instrumental line up for the time, The Sonics made their unique sound with wild arrangements, often disturbing lyrics, peppered with screaming and howling, and electric guitars played through amplifiers customized to achieve the harshest tones possible. Although their chief period of success was coincident with the release of Gibson's first fuzzbox, The Sonics' fuzzy sound was their own creation.The songs they played were a mixture of garage rock standards ("Louie, Louie", "Have Love, Will Travel"), early rock and roll ("Jenny, Jenny") and original compositions such as "Strychnine", "Psycho", and "The Witch", all based upon simple chord sequences, played hard and fast. Said Kurt Cobain, of Nirvana in an interview for Canadian CITA radio, discussing drum sounds,"I, I have to admit... The Sonics recorded very, very cheaply on a two track you know, and they just used one microphone over the drums, and they got the most amazing drum sound I've ever heard. Still to this day, it's still my favorite drum sound. It sounds like he's hitting harder than anyone I've ever known." "Oh, dude, you gotta go get the Sonics! First off, you're gonna see exactly where the Hives' 'Veni Vidi Vicious' was directly ripped off from. But you're going to get it at the source. It's basically the dudes that inspired the Stooges. From '64 to about '69, they put out two great records, 'Here Come the Sonics' and 'Sonics Boom'... Recorded on March 23, 2008 using a Flip Video camcorder.

• published: 24 Mar 2008
• views: 5319