Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 (Rhino)
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The new Rhino box set Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 packages the first-ever CD issue of the original Nuggets with three more discs that serve as its long-promised sequels. Together they draw a darn-near complete map of the origins of what Kaye, in the original liner notes, called “punk rock.” At the time the term had nothing to do with mohawks or safety pins or even Patti Smith (for whom Kaye would later play guitar); it was merely a phrase being tossed around by writers like Lester Bangs and Greg Shaw to describe the boys next door who tried their best to be the Beatles or the Kinks and failed beautifully.
At the time Elektra Records had already put out the MC5’s debut and the first two Stooges albums, all of which would eventually be considered seminal punk. Their success gave label founder and chief Jac Holzman the idea for a historical rock collection featuring some of the underdogs of 60s American rock, and he recruited Kaye to assemble it. Curiously, nothing on the set would come from Elektra’s own vaults (which held one of the most incendiary tracks on the new Rhino set, Love’s “7 and 7 Is,” produced in 1966 by Holzman himself). Instead Kaye raided his personal collection of 45s. Quite possibly he was the only person on earth familiar with all 27 recordings, and yet all but five of them had actually flashed on the Billboard Hot 100 or Bubbling Under singles charts.
For all its brilliance, the original Nuggets also contained a few duds. The Amboy Dukes’ “Baby Please Don’t Go” can’t hold a candle to the version covered by Them (which paired a bratty Van Morrison with hired gun Jimmy Page). Likewise with the Blues Magoos’ “Tobacco Road,” which lacks the protometal clang (Page again) of the Nashville Teens’ treatment. The Rhino box corrects these minor errors with the inclusion of the biggest hits the Dukes and the Magoos achieved–“Journey to the Center of the Mind,” one of the few cuts presented here in stereo, and “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet,” respectively.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): album covers; publicity stills of Strangeloves and Barbarians.
