Nuggets: The Best Garage Rock Anthem

Either I Can Only Give You Everything by the Rainy Days out of Michigan, 'cause I worked with bass player, John Einowski, for many years.



or Little Girl by the Syndicate of Sound, cause drummer John Duckworth was a senior at San Jose's James Lick High School in '63, when I was a freshman.

 

So good!

 

1. The Third Bardo - I'm Five Years Ahead of My Time
2. Paul Revere and the Raiders - Just Like Me
3. Chocolate Watchband - Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)
4. Max Frost & the Troopers - Shape of Things to Come
5. Seeds - Pushin' Too Hard
6. The Amboy Dukes - Baby, Please Don't Go

 

Yep, you're right. There are "only" three songs of the Shadows of Knight on the box: "Oh, Yeah", "I'm Gonna Make You Mine" and "Bad Little Woman".

 

I actually think the second Nuggets box was even better. Anyway, one of my favorites from the first one.

 

It is certainly an interesting box. I was expecting and hoping for it to be lesser known psychedelic tracks with layered harmonies and not garage rock.

 

"Bad Girl" by Zakary Thaks is just about my favorite song of all time.

The guys who voted in Teen Beat Mayhem picked "You're Gonna Miss Me" as the greatest garage 45.

 

Apologies. I actually wasn't aware that the first nuggets set was strictly US. I'll stand by my answer though.

 

I love the "Nuggets" box. The "Nuggets II" box as well. If you point a gun to my head, I would probably say that "You're Gonna Miss Me" by The 13th Floor Elevators is the best song on the "Nuggets" box, but I could probably say the same thing about at least 40 other tracks.
That said, "Louie Louie" really is, as other have pointed out, the true national anthem of the American garage rock scene.

 

Hey Joe by The Leaves is my favorite garage song

 

I actually don't believe that that was one of Lenny Kaye's original criteria in the early 1970s when he compiled the first, and original 2 record set, for Elektra. It was probably more of, that no one, not even Lenny, were even aware that the unnamed, at the time genre, even existed outside of the US.
I don't think that that idea, became more commonly accepted, until fans in other countries started compiling mix tapes and trading them with other 'garage' collectors.

'MopTop Mike' Merkesich, in his fine book, 'Teen Beat Mayhem', goes into the history, just a bit, of the hard-core 'garage' collectors, re-discovering lost, and obscure bands/records/songs, via tape trading in the late 70s, early 80s. I believe it was around then when outsiders started to become aware that 'garage rock', was not strictly a US only phenomena.

 

Has Lenny, or anyone else for that matter, actually acknowledged that non US bands were excluded from the original 1972 Elektra set, intentionally?

I'm not doubting you. I'm just curious.

I know that was the case for the Rhino 4 CD set. Only US were to be included. But that Rhino set was 25 years in the making, after the original vinyl set.

 

Syndicate of Sound - Little Girl


Maybe not the best garage band song ever (in light of some of the other stunning examples already listed ) , but it certainly is one of the all-time best defiant break up songs .

Love it !

 

It was hearing the Dead Boys version of 'Little Girl' on WNEW-FM, in 1977, knowing full well it was not the original, but having no idea of how to go about tracking down the original version, at the time, that started me on this 35 year, 'garage/punk' obsession.

I didn't become aware of the Elektra vinyl set, which included the Syndicate Of Sound original, until about 3 years later.

And tangentially lead me to also embrace the 1977 version of 'punk rock', as well!

 

The original liners' opening sentence starts out "This is the story of a transition period in American rock and roll" - Lenny Kaye then lays out how music evolved from AM Top 40/30/20 programming, to FM programming which allowed a wider variety of musical styles to hit the airwaves in the U.S. Kaye also mentioned the influence British Invasion artists had on U.S. bands, and how the U.S. bands reacted. There's not a definitive statement proclaiming "only U.S. acts are included in this 2 lp set," but that's how it ended up being compiled. The spin-off lps that Nuggets triggered (Pebbles/Boulders/Back From the Grave) picked up on the U.S. angle and stuck with it.

That said, there's a mountain of great garage styled music from around the world. Canada had a tremendous number of great garage/punk stompers released (look up Wyld Canada and see what you unearth). The Brits had their own take (freakbeat, anyone?), and psychedelia in the UK had a flavor all its own. I'd be inclined to stick with the U.S. in this thread, and another thread to pick up with the Nuggets II box and its worldwide focus.

 

Get ready for their 01-Aug, 2013 appearance at the Santa Clara County Fair!

http://www.syndicateofsoundband.com/calendar/

 

That's just how it was compiled in '72; the 27 tracks chosen represented pop/psych/garage (which really hadn't been given that name just yet) that American groups put out. Awareness of similar scenes around the world (kids with cheap guitars getting together and banging out tunes that fit managed to fit into the garage mold) wasn't there. A planned second volume of Nuggets (rumored to end up appearing on the first few Pebbles lps from Greg Shaw) never appeared, but folks who liked the punkier songs began unearthing all manner of 45s from local scenes that sold in piddling amounts in the bands' area they played in, rarely making the radio and generating much in the way of sales. Since Elektra didn't make a follow up album, enterprising collectors began piecing together their own albums with U.S. bands having that garage/punk sound.

It's hard enough for me to keep up with all the cool 45s that were released in the U.S. via comps (legit/quasi-legit/downright no way on earth anyone bothered with legal niceties). My interest lies with mainly U.S. and Canadian bands, but I don't turn my nose up when cool tracks from The Pretty Things or Los Mockers cross my path. I have to draw a line somewhere (the $$$ are limited), so I guess I'm a bit on the provincial side of things when it comes to garage/punk tunes.

 

Ok yes, I have read that 'mission statement', before. IMHO that statement does not justify the conclusion that the original Nuggets was consciously, intentionally devoted to solely US only groups, at the exclusion of all others.
Just because the ultimate end results, just 'happened to produce' a compilation that featured US only records/groups, does not by itself prove, that non US gruops were excluded, beforehand.

It may have been because, how many 'garage rock' records heard IN THE US, during the 60s were from bands outside the US? Excluding of course the aforementioned 'British Invasion'' groups?

My hypothesis, that it was only because there wasn't an awareness on the part of Lenny, or anyone else INside the US, that this type of music existed outside the US.

Just one case in point: One of the 3 stand alone Rhino Nuggets CDs, that preceded the 4 CD box included Aussie's The Easybeats.



EDIT: I don't know why half of this is italics and half isn't.

 

I couldn't find it, but I was going to post a YouTube clip of Peterik and the Shames singing an acoustic "Vehicle" in a Border's store. Gone like the bookstore, I guess.

As for The Ides, I wish that this would've made the "Nuggets" box. It's a classic regional hit from that time, written by a 15 year-old Peterik:

 

Yes, I think the rights to 96 Tears would not be available at the time the Nuggets box came out, as they were held by Allen Klein. Klein was also holding the rights to Dee Dee Sharp and the Orlons, not to mention the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, and none of those were available until Klein relented. According to Jodorowsky, this was because Klein felt he was nearing death. I doubt Rhino could have persuaded Klein to allow the track, but it still remains a big omission, that, for me, stops it being truly definitive.

 

Article by Julian Cope Tales From the Drug Attic - this was my first introduction to this stuff.

 

It's a shame 96 Tears wasn't included, but the Cameo/Parkway material wasn't in play at that point. The cd that ABKCO finally put out is well worth finding - burn your own Nuggets cd and boot one of the poppier efforts.

 

Yeah, I have made my own CD. But it's just not the same. The official Nuggets box contains what the world thinks of as Nuggets. I wouldn't even want them to reissue it. It's one of the best box sets ever. Very nearly perfect. Just not quite as I would have done it!

 

Nuggets had an interesting effect - while there was pop, psych and garage music on the Original Artyfacts set, what folks think of today as garage band music was arguably the big winner in the "hey, this stuff is really great, what else is there like it?" department. There's so much local scene music that's been unearthed that it's generated 100s of reissues (legit and the not so much, but oh-so-cool underground comps). Part of the fun is that there's always more being discovered - some acetates of Sir Winston and the Commons doing a couple original, unreleased tunes showed up on Ebay a few years ago. A collector in Australia ended up purchasing them, and they finally saw the light of day on a Norton set of acetate material. Making your own variation of Nuggets/Pebbles/Boulders/Psychedelic Disaster Whirl/Wyld Canada has been made easy with cdrs and a little effort. Labels like Sundazed and Ace have kept the Nuggets spirit alive with their single artist and V/A albums.

 

I have burned myself 2 cd versions of U.S. Nuggets, U.K. Nuggets, Latin American Nuggets, and one disc versions from Australia, New Zealand and Scandanavia. I have also burned a 2 cd set of Japanese G.S. tracks that I like.