Various Artists – Pushin’ Too Hard

Various Artists – Pushin’ Too Hard

Strawberry Records

3CD/DL

Released 19 January 2024

Subtitled “American Garage Punk 1964-1967”, this 3CD features the likes of The Seeds, Love and The Standells alongside less-known names such as The Mad Hatters, Sterling Damon and Ken & The Fourth Dimension. Ian Canty writes…

I can almost pinpoint the very moment I became a fan of Garage Punk. I’m in the HMV shop in town during the early 1980s and I’m perusing the vinyl LP Pebbles Volume 9. It is more expensive than the average album and I hadn’t heard of any of the bands. To be honest I was a little unsure about the whole thing at this moment, with my original enthusiasm being dulled by having to hand over the cash. The whole “Year Zero” thing had thankfully receded, but even so I didn’t want to buy something all hyped up as genuine Punk and end up with what sounded like a slightly more feisty Herman’s Hermits. Even so, I had read a fair bit in the music press about these weird 1960s bands that were Punk in attitude years before the Pistols and The Ramones and as a consequence was intrigued by the whole thing.

But was I intrigued enough to follow it through? I took the leap of faith and purchased. As as a result of this act and after listening to The Bold’s Gonna Get Some and It’s All Meat’s Feel It in particular, it was revealed to be the correct choice. Many, many collections followed over the years and the latest in a long line is Pushin’ Too Hard, a new 3CD set that has the familiar US names rubbing shoulders with the more obscure.

Garage gained its name through the practice of American kids setting up their gear to practice in the space that usually housed the Oldsmobile. This practice gained traction through the changing styles of Rock & Roll, Frat Rock and Surf and these type of outfits often spiced up their live performances with matching outfits and outlandish gimmicks to mark them out from the humdrum. Things started to get substantially rougher and rowdier towards the middle of the 1960s, with the advent of The Beatles, The Yardbirds and The Stones. It was as though the US bands were trying to one up the British Invasion stars that inspired them and the upshot was often a gloriously snotty blast of fire.

Pushin’ Too Hard starts in 1964 and there is still a bit of Surf/Frat spirit detectable in Justine by The Rangers and Sam Sham And The Pharoahs hit 45 Wooly Bully. I Want Candy was famously covered by Bow Wow Wow in the 1980s, but the originators The Strangeloves contained future Blondie producer Richard Gotteher and The Barbarians’ Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl took straight society’s narrow-minded criticisms of the younger generation and spat them back in their faces.

Liar, Liar by The Castaways featured on Nuggets, the 1972 compilation that kicked the whole Garage thing back into view, as did The Seeds’ pummelling keyboard attack of a tune Pushin’ Too Hard. We get an unedited mix here though. Moving onto bands that featured on Nuggets rather than the songs contained on it, Boston Uni-based outfit The Remains offer the sweeping Why Do I Cry and The Leaves from LA give us Too Many People, a weird-out Blues thang.

The proud loser vibe of I Ain’t No Miracle Worker by The Brogues is as Punk as it gets and the mighty Standells make the first of a couple of appearances on this set with Dirty Water’s intense flipside Rari. We then get The Spades’ version of You’re Gonna Miss Me, which shows Roky Erickson’s sparkling talents on the rise and while the superbly testy R&B of So What by The Lyrics might not actually be that rare, it is a true gem.

Washington D.C. was the home of The Mad Hatters and their number I Need Love has plenty of Garage organ balancing out a harmonica-led Blues sound. Little Sally Tease by Don & The Goodtimes comes complete with a whole load of sneering attitude and The Coastliners’ fast-moving Alright reveals itself as a snappy delight. I Fought The Law is probably best remembered in the UK by the thundering 1979 remake by The Clash, but The Bobby Fuller Four’s original comes with energy to spare. Sadly, their ill-fated leader would die less than a year later under shady circumstances.

You Treat Me Bad by The Jujus is a bewitching Punk/Folk mix, with a rare but valuable female perspective being put over by The Girls’ My Baby. A crazed Louise by The Raymarks takes things in a decidedly more rough direction and I Want My Woman by The Emperor’s is The Stones tightened up to the max. In contrast, Paul Revere & The Raiders had been Frat Rock mainstays, but somehow managed to transition to each prevailing trend over the years. A subtly Rockin’ Just Like Me is their contribution here.

UK interlopers Liverpool Five, actually Londoners, had moved to the US in the mid-60s and that secures their place on this set with an edgy version of Heart. A different version of The Seeds’ B side to Pushin’ Too Hard Out Of The Question, which is barely less hectically paced than its flip, ends this first disc. It is one that veers towards the Pop side of Garage Punk, but great listening nonetheless with barely any out and out lemons.

Disc two of Pushin’ Too Hard comes out fighting with big guns The Thirteenth Floor Elevators and Love. Roky’s crew are represented by one of their more R&B efforts Tried To Hide and although Little Red Book is fine, Love’s most Punk moment was surely 7 & 7 Is. The Electric Prunes were propelled to stardom on the back of two Mantz/Tucker tunes, but here we catch them before that with their debut 45 Ain’t It Hard. This mid-paced growl was a starting point for them to go onto assuring their place in Punk’s pantheon though their later work and in particular the incredible Stockholm 67 live set.

Diddy Wah Diddy is certainly tough blues, but I’m not sure I would quite term Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band as Garage Punk. The insistent sound of Chicago’s Dirty Wurds’ Mellow Down Easy does cut it though, with I’m in Pittsburgh (And It’s Raining), a John Peel fave by The Outcasts, showing some tough-nut class. The Knickerbockers’ “Beatles pushed to the ninth degree” is well in effect on One Track Mind and the wailing Flash And Crash by Rocky & The Riddlers is a real highlight.

Both The Dimensions’ Knock You Flat and The Unusuals’ I’m Walking, Babe are bathed in red-hot Punk fire and scene leaders The Shadows Of The Knight are not represented here by their famous reworking of Gloria as one might expect, but the rather more circumspect Dark Side. Sterling Damon aka Melvin Gilmore is featured with an eerie mixture of melody and menace called Rejected, with Judgement Day by The Esquires harking right back to Garage’s roots in Horror Movie scares.

The Sonics are naturals for this kind of collection and along with Link Wray & The Raymen they were at the heart of Garage’s development. You Got Your Head On Backwards by the former stomps ably and Hidden Charm has Link in top form on guitar as always and as a hollering vocalist too. She’s Got You by The Zakary Thaks is hyperactively-riffed 1966 Garage Punk heaven and The Blue Beats supply us with Garagey Pop not Ska on a jangly jumper called Extra Girl.

A few more very Pop numbers follow, which while good perhaps lack the bite associated with the Garage Punk genre. The Executioners’ “Stepping Stone” beater I Want The Rain (Edit) is possibly the pick of these, being nicely rough despite a clean-cut sounding vocal. She’s So Satisfyin’ by The Apparitions is begun by a Proto-Glam intro, before they pile along headfirst into a really catchy tune and a smart If You Try by Miami band The Hustlers has snarling fuzz skilfully applied to melodic nous. Disc two resolves itself pleasingly with The Sparkles’ late in the day Garage Punk Fuzzer No Friend of Mine and Velvet Illusions with their speeding and spooky theme song.

Barracuda by The Standells begins the final section of Pushin’ Too Hard. We’re in 1967 by now and although Garage Punk was being challenged by the Psychedelic craze, it maintained its position as the sound of young America. Barracuda, a tune that Mick Jones and Tony James used in auditions for their pre-Clash/Generation X band, shows The Standells’ sheer mastery of Garage. We The People’s crunchy You Burn Me Up And Down follows on well. The same Ann Arbor that housed The Stooges was also home to Scott Morgan’s Rationals, who show up here with a sparky Kinks cover in I Need You, with The Other Half’s Mr Pharmacist being well known over here thanks to The Fall’s version.

The Choir may be seen by some as a footnote in the career of The Raspberries, but their It’s Cold Outside shows the huge potential was there from the get-go. The Fire Escape’s Love Special Delivery is more hurtling Mod Pop than anything else, but the rude version of Girl (You Captivate Me) by ? & The Mysterians will always be a classic. I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time by The Third Bardo shows how much had changed since 1964 – trippy Psychedelia meeting Garage grit to produce a marvellously manic result.

See If I Care by Ken & The Fourth Dimension is shot through with Punk menace and after a few more Pop efforts that don’t appear to quite fit Pushin’ Too Hard’s mission statement, Texans The Headstones and their intense thumper Bad Day Blues strike just the right note. Unlike many of the lesser-known bands present here, The Sparkles racked up a relatively prolific six singles in the 1960s, with their contribution here Hipsville 29 B.C (I Need Help) sporting a good mixture of supercharged R&B and full-on strangeness.

Joe Meek’s space Surf sound lurks somewhere in the background of a racing Love Times Eight by The Jackals, but then we enter another phase where this disc again rather loses its way by including straight Pop and Psychedelia. The Buddhas’ riffy Lost Innocence is more like it, a kind of ratty Proto-Power Pop and Bubblegum specialists Ohio Express try something spicier by posting a fair version of The Standells’ excellent Try It.

A dramatic For What You Lack by The Liberty Bell manages to satisfyingly vary the formula whilst still staying true to 60s Punk essentials and the lowkey pulse of Come Back by The Jades is creditably full of Garage raunch. Talk To Me by The Checkmates is explosive enough, with this disc ending with a very busy Mini Shimmy by Georgy & The Velvet Illusions and what is a great Garage Punk name in The Bedlam Four, who yield an echo-laden R&B fizzer in the form of No One Left To Love.

In the wake of Nuggets, Peebles etc, the last 40 years has seen so many Garage Punk compilations that bringing together a definitive document of the sound is practically impossible. Pushin’ Too Hard doesn’t come that close to being a collection to rival any of the early comps, but is a good primer for anyone only acquainted with Garage Punk’s big names. The first disc is ace and the second is pretty good, but the third does increasingly struggle to keep to the theme. Even though what is included is not unpleasant, it doesn’t feel it belongs with what was set out beforehand. However Pushin’ Too Hard does supply more than enough down and dirty thrills to justify it as an impressive enough collection of 1960s US Garage band havoc.

Chase up a copy of Various Artists – Pushin’ Too Hard here