Back to trivia even sooner than I expected…  while ferretting around in the odd corners of Spotify tonight I learned something interesting.  OK, maybe not interesting in the general definition, but I was interested.I was listening to an album called Friday at the Hideout: Boss Detroit Garage 1964-67 which is unsurprisingly a compilation of tracks from the Detroit underground garage scene in the mid-60s.  The American garage bands of the mid-60s are widely held to be a major influence on the later punk rock scene, especially the American punk scene.  The influence is seem most obviously in the Ramones.

Anyway, one of the bands on there was called Pleasure Seekers, featuring a 14-year old (in 1964) female bass player called Suzi Quatro. Like most males of my sort of age I remember Suzi Quatro as the tiny, leather-clad singer, dwarfed by her bass guitar on Top of the Pops, playing Chinn & Chapman songs.  Being of the right age and in the target audience for glam rock at the time I quite liked such songs as 48 Crash and Devil Gate Drive, although I imagine it was probably not seen as ‘proper’ music by the critics at the time, and certainly not when punk came along.

I had no idea she had a past as part of an ultra-credible, grass-roots scene that came to influence the whole punk scene.  How ironic that her popularity waned as the very scene she helped to inspire grew and led youngsters to look down on the sort of manufactured pop that she was then seen to be performing.

I still think Devil Gate Drive is great by the way, but now I am really taken with What a Way to Die by Pleasure Seekers.  Have a listen on Spotify and see for yourself.  A shame they only have two tracks available in the library, but better than nothing.

And on top of that she had a regular part in Happy Days and had an Audi named after her 🙂