Long a home to jazz and the blues, Chicago was first recognized as a Midwestern Mecca for rock and roll groups in the mid-1960s, when a number of young garage bands, inspired by the “British Invasion” sounds of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, had regional or national hits. These included New Colony Six, who scored locally with “I Confess,” The Buckinghams, whose “Kind of a Drag” went to #1 on the Billboard charts and The Shadows of Knight, who had a Billboard top ten single in the form of the oft-covered “Gloria.”

Garage rock gave way to complex horn arrangements by the end of the decade when bands like Chicago Transit Authority (later just Chicago) and The Flock combined a love of jazz and a knack for sonic experimentation. They were followed by Styx a few years later, whose progressive rock leanings were in much the same spirit. While The Flock gained a devoted following at the time, it was Chicago and Styx who would go on to sell millions of albums in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Power pop” was the buzz word by the mid-to late 1970s when groups like Pezband and Off Broadway once again looked to the British Invasion for inspiration. Both bands took cues from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, but injected a toughness into the formula, paralleling the burgeoning punk/new wave sounds that were happening in New York and London. They were part of a musical landscape that also included neighbors Cheap Trick, who hailed from Rockford, IL, and Shoes, who called Zion, Ill. home.

Chicago punk/new wave first drew national attention in the early 1980s, although groups like Skafish and Tutu and the Pirates were making waves locally in the late 1970s. The first recognized wave of Chicago punk bands included Strike Under, The Effigies, Naked Raygun and Big Black. All four of these bands took the buzz saw guitar sound of The Ramones as a starting point but dug deeper lyrically, often singing about isolation, sexual dysfunction and violent urges. Strike Under was the first of these bands to release an album, 1980’s ''Immediate Action'' EP on the newly minted Wax Trax! Records.

Wax Trax! was an important component of the Chicago music scene in the mid-to-late 1980s, attracting an array of local industrial rock groups. Industrial music, pioneered by England’s Throbbing Gristle in the mid-70s, was known for its aggressive mix of jagged guitar, punishing synthesizer noise, and samples lifted from B-movies, television commercials and political speeches. Wax Trax! was founded by Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher as a record shop in Denver, Colorado, and was moved to Chicago in 1978. The shop sold rare vinyl and hard-to-find imports and eventually morphed into the record label that was home to locals like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and Ministry, who’s 1988 genre-defining release, ''Land of Rape and Honey'', was handled not by Wax Trax!, but by the major label Sire.

1988 also saw the formation of Smashing Pumpkins, arguably the most successful Chicago-based group in music history. The group combined elements of gothic rock and psychedelia as they navigated the independent singles scene, releasing sides on Limited Potential and Sub Pop. They signed to the Virgin Records-backed Caroline and released their debut album, Gish, in 1991. The record’s success helped to boost a number of other Chicago-based “alternative rock” bands into the national spotlight including Liz Phair, Urge Overkill and Veruca Salt. The Pumpkins broke up in 2000, leaving five top-selling albums as a legacy.

The mid-90s also saw the rise of several influential Chicago bands that operated outside of the alternative mainstream. The Jesus Lizard, for example, created aggressive “noise rock” in the vein of post-punk groups like The Birthday Party and The Fall. Tortoise, on the other hand, specialized in instrumental rock that drew from various strains of jazz, classical, world and electronic music. Also of note is Wilco, the experimental country rock outfit led by Jeff Tweedy, formerly of the Belleville, Ill. band Uncle Tupelo. Wilco went on to enjoy greater commercial success than did their underground peers after their label, Warner/Reprise, who had judged 2002’s ''Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'' album unsuitable for release, famously dropped them.

It is the uncompromising attitude of these underground bands - The Jesus Lizard, Tortoise and Wilco - that has inspired the most recent batch of Chicago rock groups. The Ponys, formed in 2001, combine elements of 1960s garage rock with the dark edginess of late 70s post-punk. The all-instrumental outfit Pelican creates epic heavy metal that sidesteps all of the clichés associated with the genre. The M’s, meanwhile, harken back to the “British Invasion” sounds of the 1960s without sounding derivative of any one band in particular.