‘Pushin’ Too Hard: American Garage Punk’ Picks Up Where ‘Nuggets’ Left Off: Review
by Jeff Burger
A new three-CD anthology from the U.K.’s Cherry Red Records, Pushin’ Too Hard: American Garage Punk 1964–1967, mines the same fertile territory as Lenny Kaye’s classic Nuggets collection, which first appeared in 1972 as a two-LP set and was expanded in 1998 to a four-CD box. If you love this musical sub-genre, you probably already own that anthology, so you’ll be glad to know that this 94-track set, released in January 2024, repeats only about two dozen numbers from the 118-song Nuggets box (though zero redundancy would have been even better).
At any rate, the lion’s share of this is thrilling garage rock, loaded with fuzz guitar, caffeinated percussion, generously employed organ and harmonica, and assertive vocals punctuated by whoops and hollers. It evidences the kind of raw energy that groups such as the Ramones, the Stooges, Television and the Sex Pistols sought to recapture in the late 1970s and beyond.
The program includes a few big hits, among them Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ Tex-Mex smash, “Wooly Bully”; Paul Revere and the Raiders’ gritty “Just Like Me”; the Strangeloves’ Bo Diddley–influenced “I Want Candy”; the Bobby Fuller Four’s cover of the Crickets’ “I Fought the Law”; the Beau Brummels’ Beatles-influenced “Just a Little”; and the Castaways’ organ-spiced “Liar, Liar.” Another Top 40 hit here is the anthology’s title cut, the Seeds’ propulsive “Pushin’ Too Hard,” which appears in an unedited recording that runs half a minute longer than the hit single.
The emphasis, though, is on deep cuts—including a few not previously on CD—that even some serious collectors might not know. Eschewing the Electric Prunes’ two hits (both of which show up in Nuggets), for example, this set features their commercially unsuccessful but noteworthy first single, “Ain’t It Hard.” Similarly, the Newbeats, who are known for a #2 hit called “Bread and Butter,” are represented by the punchier “Top Secret,” which didn’t sell well; and Question Mark and the Mysterians, whose name will be forever linked with their chart-topping “96 Tears,” deliver “Girl (You Captivate Me),” an innovative but rarely heard album track. Instead of the 13th Floor Elevators’ most famous record, Roky Erickson’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” this set offers “Tried to Hide,” its little-known flip side, plus an equally obscure version of “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the Spades, Erickson’s pre-Elevators group.
Related: Our review of the Nuggets 50th Anniversary concert in L.A.
Among the many other highlights of the collection, which comes with an information-packed and well-illustrated 44-page booklet: “It’s Cold Outside” (which is closer to power pop than garage punk) by the Choir, an Ohio group that included three future members of the Raspberries; “My Little Red Book,” the Burt Bacharach/Hal David number that opened Love’s essential eponymous debut LP; and the Squires’ high-octane “Going All the Way.” None of these made much of a dent in the charts, a fact that probably deserves to be listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
The collection is available to order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
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