As lovers of pop and rock music, we probably all have favourite bands or performers from the Sixties era: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, The Beach Boys etc etc. Wonderful acts all worthy of our attention. There's a problem....and it's not ubiquity. In focusing on these bands (and other iconic names), there's so many great musical acts who we never paid attention to or have completely forgotten about.
Welcome to episode 126 of Love That Album podcast.
In 1972, music writer (and future guitarist for Patti Smith Band) Lenny Kaye created a hugely influential compilation for Elektra Records called Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (to be referred to from here as just Nuggets). It contained 27 forgotten-about pop and short form psychedelic songs. Most of these songs were gems waiting to be rediscovered by music lovers who had become used to other things: Laurel Canyon songwriters, prog, hard rock / proto metal. Many of the songs we have now come to know as "garage rock" were not remembered or appreciated. Lenny Kaye wanted to change that.
Since its original release, there have been a large number of similar compilations, carefully curated from regional one-off hits or great songs that went nowhere. Some comps are even assembled by fans from their extensive 45s collection to share with others. In 1998, Nuggets was expanded to a 4 CD box set containing about 120 songs and a comprehensive book.
For this very special episode, I am joined by Eric Reanimator (host of LTA: The Compilation Edition) to talk about our love of Nuggets. The first half of the show is devoted to our discovery of this music, Lenny Kaye's history, and why this collection is so important to the history of rock and pop. In the second part of the show, we nominate 10 songs from the box set to talk about in detail, their own history and legacy. The beauty of this collection is its diversity. Sure there are songs with fuzzed out guitars that may have been created under the influence of certain substances, but there's glorious harmony laden pop, swaggering blues rock, and wild wig-outs....all from bands you may not know, but may be your next favourite listening experience.
Huge thanks to Eric for joining me on this episode and for all the wonderful episodes he's contributed to LTA over the years.
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