No great rock ’n’ roll movement ever had a name until the special stuff was pretty much over. It’s part of what makes a rock scene so exciting — that feeling of being that certain something weird and new and awesome (and potentially taboo, perhaps with sex) is coming together, but nobody’s quite sure what it is yet, so let’s not ruin it, OK?

All over the Bay area, musicians are looking backward, and finding exciting, trippy, new (to them) influences and sounds to filter through their own contemporary perspectives. Fuzzed-out drone. Swampy reverb. Surfy guitar riffs. Old-school tones, so ugly they’re gorgeous.

At first glance, Jensen Serf Company’s sludgy-yet-sinewy rock ’n’ roll doesn’t sound much like The Happiness Machine’s alternately hypnotic and darkly poppy fare, which doesn’t sound a whole lot like RedFeather’s acid-tinged psych-folk. What these groups and others share in common is the incorporation and reinvention of elements of rock’s most organic, primal, ambitious and edgy fare from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. They’re not reverential retronauts by any means; each of these acts puts an excitingly original twist on what came before, to create something both familiar and fresh.

It doesn’t matter if these players found inspiration in Roky Erickson, The Sonics, Link Wray and Nuggets compilations, or got it from the more modern bands these forebears informed, like the Pixies, Man or Astroman?, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and others. What matters is the way they pushed aside everything that doesn’t interest them about whatever’s trendy in indie right now, found something else that moved them, and used it to create something their own. Something loud and dirty and fun. And in doing so, they’re carving out their own niche in local rock ‘n’ roll, while becoming part of a beloved and culty rock ‘n’ roll bloodline at the same time.

So let’s just leave it at that for now, and not ruin it just yet by giving it a name, OK?

Key bands: Archaic Interest, The Happiness Machine, Jensen Serf Company, Luxury Mane, RedFeather
Venues: New World, Fubar, Local 662, Venture Compound, Crowbar