Banging Tunes in Da Garage.

Happy New Year to everyone, be safe, healthy and happy in 2023.

Jim Adams

Today the first day of 2023 Jim Adams, our host for Song Lyric Sunday has asked us to us the prompt : January 1, 2023 – Garage Rock.

I immediately thought of : UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house, but also incorporates elements from dance-pop, R&B, and jungle. It is defined by percussive, shuffled rhythms with syncopated hi-hats, cymbals, and snares, and may include either 4/4 house kick patterns or more irregular “2-step” rhythms. Garage tracks also commonly feature ‘chopped up’ and time-stretched or pitch-shifted vocal samples complementing the underlying rhythmic structure at a tempo usually around 130 BPM.UK garage. Info from Wiki.

So I spoke to my eldest son this morning, I asked him for what he thought was a defining Garage track and he came up with 187 Lockdown UK Garage. This was his scene so even though I also remember plenty of tracks, some which still hold up today as good as they ever were. I figured why rack my brain when I have an expert on hand. I have search high and low for the lyrics and sorry it was a big fail.

187 Lockdown was a British speed garage act, comprising Danny Harrison and Julian Jonah. The duo produced one album, with four singles released from it, and remixed many songs towards the end of the 1990s.

The duo also recorded under a number of other aliases, such as Gant, Ground Control, Nu-Birth and M Factor. Of these, M Factor was the most commercially successful, notching up a UK top 20 hit with the vocal version of “Mother”.

After M Factor, Harrison went on become part of remix outfit Moto Blanco. Jonah still continues to work as a producer. Information Wiki.

Then there is American Garage which is from a completely different era.

Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or ’60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional. Information Wikipedia .

Pushin’ Too Hard“, originally titled “You’re Pushing Too Hard“, is a song by American rock group The Seeds, written by vocalist Sky Saxon and produced by Saxon with Marcus Tybalt. It was released as a single in 1965, re-issued the following year, and peaked at number 36 on the Hot 100 in February 1967 and number 44 in Canada in March.

The song became the signature tune for the group and a template for their musical style – so much so that Creem magazine later wrote, not disapprovingly, that “the Seeds, of course, managed to work ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ into every song they ever did.” It was included on the influential Nuggets compilation in the 1970s, and earned a reputation as a protopunkgarage rock classic. The song is featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s exhibit showcasing “The 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll”. The Seeds performed “Pushin’ Too Hard” during a 1968 episode of the television sitcom The Mothers-in-Law. Saxon revisited the song on his 2008 solo album The King of Garage Rock. Read more here.

Which do I prefer….that for me to know and you to wonder!