The Horde — “Press Buttons Firmly”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — March 5, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,135) The Horde — “Press Buttons Firmly”

This late to be discovered “GREAT 60s garage gem” (Mitch Useless, http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-horde-press-buttons-firmly-1966-68.html) comes courtesy of a horde of Duke University students. Truly trance-like courtesy of a continuously repeated guitar and organ figure and the simple admonition “Go away girl, go away, I don’t want you, I don’t need you no more . . . I’m not your toy!”

Streetmouse explains that:

[T]his was not even supposed to be a Horde album, it was supposed to be an Elizabeth Locke album supported by The Horde. Elizabeth was a student at Duke University and it was she who paid for the recording sessions, with any extra session time being given to The Horde for their own use.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-horde/the-horde/

The liner notes of the CD reissue of The Horde’s Press Buttons Firmly tell us that:

Undoubtedly the most exciting mid sixties garage album to be recently discovered in the genre, is that by The Horde from North Carolina. . . . It was recorded more or less accidently in early 1967, released in a micro quantity of only 25 copies . . . . It contains a blend of exciting originals and well chosen, inspired covers, played in a raw, crude and frantic style. . . . These five 19-20 year old students from all over the United States did not only blaze a trail for 60s rock in then conservative North Carolina, they also had a general attitude that finds its origins in the young people’s mindset of the mid-sixties that put them outside of the local mainstream and gained them a sort of regional underground popularity. . . . “one of the sharpest local garage punk albums of the Sixties”.

https://johnkatsmc5.tumblr.com/post/128985977294/the-horde-press-button-firmly-1967-us-ultra-rare

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