The garage band is not a recent phenomenon. Though many assume the trend traces its origins to the rock ’n’ roll rebellion of American suburbia during the 1960s, there was in fact deeper precedent for such youthful experimentation with emerging musical trends. Replace the garage with a nineteenth-century carriage house and rock with blackface minstrelsy and one can appreciate the beginnings of a young Stephen Foster’s career in composition. By 1846, the teenage Foster and his friends had formed “The Knights of the Square Table,” a music act that wrote songs they hoped would both attract girls and earn a
