GQ MAGAZINE - May 2001
By Josh Rottenberg

In high school, two friends and I started a joke punk band called Post Nasal Death. In suburban Connecticut, this sort of thing could fend off crushing ennui for months. PND was gleefully incompetent, and thatwas pretty much the point. In some way, we thought we were creating avant-garde pop art, and by the standards of Connecticut15-Year-olds circa 1987-the year Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet dominated the charts-who's to say?

If you'd told us you could trace our bratty; unpolished PND back to the 1960s
garage-rock movement, we probably would have said, "Eat me, Pops." We'd never heard of the Sonics or the Remains and couldn't imagine that rock music predating Led Zeppelin could genuinely rock.

Now, like many a member of the mopey generation denoted by an X, I'm afflicted with nostalgia for a time before I was born. I listen to garage-rock misfits of the mid-'6os, such as the Leaves and the Music Machine-America's anarchic counterstrike to the British Invasion-and I'm awed by the sound of youth. Between '65 and '68, every young spot with a guitar and a bag of weed formed a band, and it hardly mattered if you knew how to play or if-like the Barbarians' drummer-you had a hook for your left hand-bang out a song that was Beatlesy, Stonesy or flat-out weird enough and you might hear it on the radio that day. It's hard to believe rock was ever so goddamn fun, or so up for grabs. Any-way, how would you give Carson Daly a soul shake on TRL, if you've got a hook for a hand?

For years, the only way to revisit grassroots protopunk was through sporadic greatest hits compilations. But since 1989, Sundazed Music - a '60s reissue label out of the Catskills - has been resurrecting endangered species like garage rock, surf and other mutant strains. Sundazed packs releases with lavish liner notes and bonus tracks, treating neglected bands like the Beau Brummels and Paul Revere & the Raiders with reverence usually reserved for rock deities. "Most of our catalog wouldn't be deemed worthwhile for a major label," says lounder Bob Irwin. "That's fine. Theres so much great music, I'll never hit the end in my lifetime."

In 1971, the year I was born, as the garage era faded, Lester Bangs lamented he was "drowning in the kitschvats of Elton John and James Taylor." I suspect if he were still alive, floundering alongside us in the kitschvats of today, he'd seeSundazed and take comfort in knowing that all his righteous ranting hadn't been in vain.