1965.

The roots of the cultural revolution that took place during the back half of the 1960s lie in the front half, but the mid-point of the decade served as the hinge upon which the door(s) of perception swung wide open.

1965 saw Dylan electrifying, The Byrds high flying in their rectangular sunglasses and buckskin fringe, and The Beatles — also high flying — releasing an album filled with a haze of pot smoke in defiance of their teenybopper, moptopper image. The zephyrs of change were blowing.

Skirts began to creep a little higher and hair began to hang a little lower. The generation gap (a phrase which originated around this time) began to widen.

That same year, Diana Vreeland, the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, coined the term “youthquake” to describe the current influence of young people on the arts, fashion, and pop culture of the day, impacting the world in a way which hadn’t been seen before. The sheer number of tweens, teens and twenty-somethings was awesome, and 1965 served as the thin edge of the wedge which would see those over the age of 30 slowly begin to cede control.

A fledgling band from New Jersey called The Skunks immediately picked up on Vreeland’s phrase and decided to try and turn it into a dance craze: do the Youth Quake! Although The Skunks were signed to Mercury and recorded a few songs for the label, only this one single ever saw release before the band disappeared into rock & roll oblivion. Their song may not have sparked a quake, but their generation did.

Two notes: Firstly, the group should not be confused with Milwaukee’s The Skunks, a band who operated around the same time and are slightly more well known in garage rock circles. Secondly, novice producer Dennis Lambert would go on to have quite a career, co-writing hits such as “One Tin Soldier,” “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I Got),” and “We Built This City,” and producing bestselling albums such as Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell and Nightshift by The Commodores.