![\"sonics_boom\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sonics_boom.jpg\")
\u201cWe sometimes get questions in interviews,\u201d saxophonist Rob Lind<\/b> says with a chuckle. \u201cWell-meaning questions. People ask, ‘So when did you guys in The Sonics<\/b> decide to invent garage rock?’ We never sat down and scratched our heads and said, ‘Hey! I’ve got an idea: let’s invent garage rock! It’s just the way we played.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the 1960s, The Sonics were part of the rough and hard-edged rock scene of the United States’ Pacific Northwest. Along with The Wailers<\/b> (aka The Fabulous Wailers, most assuredly not to be confused with Bob Marley<\/b>‘s group), The Frantics<\/b> and Paul Revere and the Raiders<\/b><\/a>, The Sonics served up some of the nastiest, most aggressive rock of the era. The Pacific Northwest was, in those days, still somewhat isolated from the rest of the country, so the scene didn’t extend far and wide. Most of the Northwest bands didn’t make the big time; the one that really did (Raiders) succeeded in no small part because they relocated to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n But the music that The Sonics made might not have quite caught on nationally anyway; it was arguably too raw for the masses, presaging punk by a good few years. And long before The Stooges<\/b><\/a> decided to add a saxophone to their lineup (for their landmark Funhouse<\/i> LP), plenty of rough and ready rockers had used sax players to good effect. The Sonics were at the forefront of that movement; the squawking saxophone fit well into their straightforward, hard-charging songs. The titles alone give an idea of the group’s metier: \u201cThe Witch,\u201d \u201cPsycho,\u201d \u201cStrychnine.\u201d These guys weren’t about gentleness and light.<\/p>\n Formed in Tacoma WA in 1960, The Sonics would release three albums during their heyday: Here Are the Sonics<\/i> (1965), Boom<\/i> (1966) and the confusingly-titled Introducing the Sonics<\/i> in 1967 on a (relatively) larger label, Jerden. The group effectively broke up sometime around the release of that third LP, though they did mount a few reunions in the 1970s.<\/p>\n Thanks to renewed interest in garage rock of the 1960s \u2013 most notably in the form of the various Nuggets<\/i> compilations \u2013 keen modern-day listeners discovered The Sonics all over again in the 21st<\/sup> century. A Cavestomp reunion in 2004 reunited most of the original lineup. But more recently, Light in the Attic put together a box set called 50<\/i>, bringing together those first two LPs, a disc of rarities, and other goodies in a lavish package.<\/p>\n Even more tantalizingly, the group re-entered the studio and made a new album that \u2013 quite uncharacteristically for such endeavors \u2013 truly evoked the spirit of what The Sonics did fifty years earlier. This is the Sonics<\/i> really does pick up right about where the group left off in the mid 1960s.<\/p>\n And if all that weren’t enough, The Sonics decided to go on tour. When I spoke to original member Rob Lind in March 2016, he was on board the band’s tour bus, headed from some or another city to some other city. The group had been discovered(!) by Robert Plant<\/b><\/a> \u2013 a 1960s music aficionado if there ever was one; he’s often named Moby Grap<\/a>e<\/b> and Love<\/b><\/a> as some of his favorite acts \u2013 and invited to join his tour as the opening act.<\/p>\n Lind and I spoke in connection with a feature I had planned to write, a piece that would preview the Asheville NC date on their then-upcoming headlining tour. Billed as Little Steven<\/b>‘s Underground Garage Tour, the show would also include younger, like-minded artists on the bill: The Woggles<\/b> and Barrence Whitfield and the Savages<\/b>.<\/p>\n![\"sonics_then\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sonics_then.jpg\")
<\/p>\n