What does the term "garage rock" conjure up for you? Perhaps it's the wave of young upstarts in the 1960s who comprise the genre's original incarnation. The Wailers, The Pretty Things, and countless other groups of rebellious youngsters making primitive, minimally-produced noise in American suburbia. These bands became a-dime-a-dozen, and would sparkle and fade -- or not sparkle at all -- before dying out. If they were lucky, they racked up a small fanbase. And if their fans were lucky, the bands would leave one or two bootleg recordings before "creative differences" or sheer apathy led to their hasty demise.

Fast-forward 40 years: as the breakUps -- Ted Townshend, Dan McNabb, Carrie Ferguson and Greg Shook -- are attempting to recreate the '60s garage rock mien: amateurish, low-tech, and shortlived. About six months ago, drummer Greg, who is into indie rock, and keyboardist Carrie, who is more of an alt-country type, joined forces with guitarist Dan and bassist Ted, whose shared love of gritty '60s rock brought them together a few years back. The gang of four started rehearsing together and working on covers of the obscure songs beloved by Dan and Ted. Soon the breakUps landed a couple gigs at the Galaxy Hut in Arlington, and tried out some original material as well.

These guys are refreshingly unambitious: they have no plans to release a record or any other merchandise, under the assumption that nobody would buy it anyway. If this sounds defeatist, think of it as realism: the breakUps know that they will probably never be popular outside of their circle of friends, and they don't want to pony up the cash to print 200 t-shirts that will likely end up growing mold in their basement closets.

Unlike other contemporary garage rock revivalists like The Vines and The Strokes, the breakUps can't even pretend to be disaffected youth. As an audience member, there is a cognitive disconnect in watching 30-something rockers howling in the assumed voice of teenage America. Still, the breakUps probably wouldn't bat an eye at being called "past their prime." Having a band name that foreordains their own disollution is a clever way to preempt any criticism from snarky bloggers. And, lest we forget, the breakUps aren't out to win fans.

When we caught them in the Black Cat's Red Room a few weeks ago, the band played a short, energetic set, made up mostly of covers. There was a surprisingly good turnout for a Tuesday night. The audience of about 30 people bopped their heads and tapped their feet in surprised appreciation, as if to say, "Wow, you guys actually don't suck!" The breakUps delivered jaunty, tightly-wound covers of The Haunted's "1-2-5," The Twilighters' "Nothing Can Bring Me Down," and "I Said Move" by the Aztex, to name a few. The best song of the night was "Five Years Ahead of My Time." The breakUps put an interesting twist on The Third Bardo's set of simple chords by making good use of Ferguson's keyboard skills. The worst part about the show was the Red Room's poor sound quality, which made it hard to hear the vocals of McNabb and Townshend. As one audience member observed, the breakUps seem to be caught in garage rock purgatory, somewhere between the raw attitude of The Cramps and the more subdued instrumental dexterity of The Mooney Suzuki.

The bottom line: the breakUps don't suck. But they'll be the first to tell you that you can take 'em or leave 'em. They're hedging their bets that you won't be seeing them on the Black Cat's main stage anytime soon, but so long as they have an outlet to express their unfettered love of gritty '60s punk attitude, they don't seem to mind.

Visit them at: www.myspace.com/breakupsdc

Questions for the breakUps

How long have you guys been together?

Dan McNabb: Ted and I started playing together about two years ago, under the guise of, anything that we're gonna do is just another band that we're gonna end up putting time and energy and money into, and we're all gonna hate each other. So we started a band.

Ted Townshend: Dan put an ad in the City Paper, and I answered back with code words. Psych-pop morse code. And Dan understood the code.

Dan: I had my strawberry alarm clock decoder ring.

Ted: So we were playing for a while, and then I was gonna quit the band. I got an offer to go play music with Shania Twain.

Dan: The sad thing is, you think he's kidding, but it's true.

Ted: But it didn't work out, so Dan and I started playing together again. We put an ad for a drummer in the City Paper, and Greg answered it. I think the catchword for Greg was that we mentioned the Buzzcocks. And then we brought on Carrie. At the time we were actually auditioning singers. Laughs, Not that we're bad, per se, but you know...

So are you guys still thinking of getting another singer?

Dan: Maybe if Marvin Gaye wanted to come back. But I like singing more than I like dealing with a fifth band member.

'Cause you might just end up hating them.

Dan: There's no "might" about it, really.

Ted: We had people coming in to audition that could sing, but it was more like a Dave Matthews type thing. They didn't really have any rock'n'roll attitude, it was real pretty. So we just did the singing by default.

Your name is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you failed as a band if you actually get popular?

Dan: No, whether 200 people come [to see us] or 2 people come, it doesn’t matter. It’s all gonna end badly. It’s just gonna be another band.

Ted: Dan’s a bit more fatalistic than I am. I think bands break up, hence the name. But it’s not gonna necessarily end badly. A breakup is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be a bad breakup.

Dan: Greg’s probably gonna move to Europe to study or something. Carrie will probably move or join the Pentacostal church. Or take a paying gig. Or Wilco is gonna call. She already said that if any band has the name “Soul” in it, she’d join with them.

Like Collective Soul?

Dan: Anything. Soulmonkey, Soul Hat, Soul2Soul…

Why did you guys bother coming up with such a cool logo if you’re not going to use it on any merchandise?

Dan: Because we’re graphic designers who have too much time at work.

Ted: I just design my little ass off all day long. I do corporate rebranding and marketing outreach.

Dan: I do webdesign. I make it a point to do as much music-related stuff as possible at work and as little work as possible.

What about the rest of you guys?

Greg: I’m a student. I do art and museum studies at Georgetown.

Carrie: I’m a copyright examiner at the Library of Congress.

Dan: She’s our “in” in the government, basically. When we want to re-record another band’s work, she can slip it past every body.

What bands do you guys cover?

Dan: Obscure, teenage, American rock bands that were together for like two records and then broke up because they all got drafted. American garage bands in the ‘60s were totally living for the moment. Because they knew that at 17 or 18 years old they were gonna get drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. They had to live day to day and do everything to the extreme, so they joined bands and took drugs and went crazy. There are records out that we have that people don’t even know who the members of the bands were. But the song is more famous than anyone who was ever in the band.

Ted: Tonight we did a Pretty Things cover. We did a Wailers cover. Not the reggae Wailers, the Wailers from Seattle. They were battling the Sonics for garage supremacy in the mid-60s. We also covered the Nervous Eaters.

What are some local bands that you guys like?

Ted: I like the Hall Monitors a lot.

Carrie: I play with a guy named Sean McArdle, he’s really good. And there's a new band called the Bang that’s very good.

What are the pros and cons of D.C.’s music scene?

Ted: I can think of just pros, basically. Lots of good rock clubs to play at in D.C. You don’t have to be a bar band, unless you want to make money of course. You don’t have to play a lot of really popular covers. And I like the punk rock roots of D.C.

Dan: My brother has been a professional musician his whole life. He plays guitar, he’s in a band, same kind of music. He’s lived in Austin for 20 years. To be in a band in Austin, it’s like everyone’s in a band in Austin and there are a million guitar players. Here, it’s a smaller scene. So here, the pros are obviously, if you put a band together, you play three shows, and you know it’s going to end in misery and you still get interviewed by the local paper.

When's your next gig?

Ted: We’ve been playing out a lot lately, so we’re gonna take a bit of time off in December.

Dan: By choice!