page_title: Garage rock
section_title: Other US Regions
hierarchical_section_title: Garage rock / 1964–1968: Peak years / Regional scenes in the United States and Canada / Other US Regions
caption_attribution_description: Trade ad for Five Americans's single "Sound Of Love".To better adapt it to his respective Wikipedia article, the ad was cropped and cleaned in a graphics editing program. The original can be viewed at the source below.
context_page_description: Garage rock is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional.
  In the US and Canada, surf rock—and later the Beatles and other beat groups of the British Invasion—motivated thousands of young people to form bands between 1963 and 1968. Hundreds of acts produced regional hits, and some had national hits, usually played on AM radio stations. With the advent of psychedelia, a number of garage bands incorporated exotic elements into the genre's primitive stylistic framework. After 1968, as more sophisticated forms of rock music came to dominate the marketplace, garage rock records largely disappeared from national and regional charts, and the movement faded.
context_section_description: In Texas, The 13th Floor Elevators from Austin, featured Roky Erickson on guitar and vocals and are considered one of the prominent bands of the era.  They had a regional hit with "You're Gonna Miss Me" and a string of albums, but the band was hampered by drug busts and related legal problems that hastened their demise.  Richie Unterberger singled out The Zakary Thaks, from Corpus Christi, for their songwriting skills, and they are best known for the frantic and sped-up "Bad Girl."  The Moving Sidewalks, from Houston, featured Billy Gibbons on guitar, later of ZZ Top. The Gentlemen from Dallas cut the fuzz-driven "It's a Cry'n Shame", which in Mike Markesich's Teenbeat Mayhem is ranked as one of the top two garage rock songs of all time, second only to "You're Gonna Miss Me", by the 13th Floor Elevators.  The Outcasts from San Antonio cut two highly regarded songs, "I'm in Pittsburgh and It's Raining", which became a local hit,  and "1523 Blair", that Jason Ankeny described as "Texas psychedelia at its finest".
  The Five Americans were from Durant, Oklahoma, and released a string of singles, such as "Western Union", which became a top 10 US hit in 1967.  From Phoenix, Arizona, the Spiders featured Vincent Furnier, later known as Alice Cooper, and  eventually adopted that name as the group's moniker.  As the Spiders they recorded two singles, most notably "Don't Blow Your Mind", which became a local hit in Phoenix in 1966.  The group ventured to Los Angeles in 1967 in hopes of achieving greater success, however they found it not there, but while in Detroit several years later, re-christened as Alice Cooper.
  From Florida, Orlando's We the People came about as the result of the merger of two previous bands and featured songwriters Tommy Talton and Wane Proctor. They recorded a string of self-composed songs, such as primitive rockers, "You Burn Me Upside Down" and "Mirror of my Mind", as well as the esoteric "In the Past", later covered by the Chocolate Watchband. Evil from Miami, had a hard, sometimes thrashing sound and a reputation for musical mayhem, typified in songs such as "From a Curbstone" and "I'm Movin' On".
caption: The Five Americans in 1967
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