Standing Over By The Record Machine: Nuggets and the march of the fuzz beasts

Rhino’s 50th anniversary box set affirmatively reminds us that sometimes, all you need is fuzz. And maybe a Farfisa organ.

I was once face-to-face with Giorgio Gomelsky –  the man who discovered and managed some obscure band you never heard of called The Yardbirds, as well as some no-hopers lost to the sands of time called The Rolling Stones – in my New York days, 1999-2004. I’d just regaled him with the tale of how his former charges inspired a band from Corpus Christi, Texas called The Zakary Thaks to have custom-built for them the first fuzz pedals the Coastal Bend had seen. Gomelsky was delighted, naturally.

“I tell you, Tim,” he enthused, in his thick Czechoslovakian accent. “The Yardbirds played everywhere in the U.S. in 1965. And when we came back six months later, every local band was The Yardbirds!” 

He wasn’t wrong. That’s as precise a two-sentence definition of The American Garage Rock Experience as has ever been uttered. And first generation rock journalist and future Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye provided the first comprehensive audio evidence of this truism when he assembled, at Elektra Records President Jac Holzman’s behest, garage’s Rosetta Stone, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968. Released in 1972, it was reissued by Sire Records in 1976 as ‘70s punk asserted itself, then expanded into a 4xCD box set by Rhino Records in 1998, which honestly has all the ‘60s garage you’ll ever need. Nuggets became punk’s backbone, the springboard for several revivals over the decades, and even defined Rhino Records’ remit in comprehensively archiving recorded music’s past.

In the past year, Rhino and Kaye assembled a 50th anniversary vinyl Nuggets box set , not only lovingly repressing/reproducing the original 2xLP Elektra album, but also incarnating Kaye’s planned second Nuggets volume, a further two LPs. There’s also a bonus disc, titled Also Dug-Its (because, as Lenny always signs autographs, “It’s a Nugget if you dug it!”) featuring 15 further tracks which should have been on a Nuggets LP. And to get quite Dennis Thompson about it, it’s about fucking time!  

“What is more American than the garage band?” Lester Bangs proposed in one of the sacred texts of garagedom, his essay “Protopunk: The Garage Bands” for the 1980 2nd edition of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. “Call up a bunch of your buddies, get some six-packs or some weed, plus a guitar or two, a bass or drum kit and you’ve got instant fantasies about instant stardom.” Which was the primal thrust of every garage band from The Sonics to the Ramones, to be honest. Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy Ramone all saw A Hard Day’s Night at the local moviehouse, and thought hyperfast chainsaw pop songs about sniffing glue and teenage lobotomies were gonna get them on American Bandstand, fer sher. How’d they know Middle America was gonna look at them and go, “EWWWW!”? And thus leaving them to us miscreants….

“Of course, at certain times and places, fantasy and reality have intersected, and that is part of what rock is all about,” Bangs continued. “Given that the greatest garage bands could barely play, we may assume not only that virtuosity has nothing to do with the form, but also that the utopian dream of everyman an artist can come true right here, in our suburban land of opportunity – the ultimate proof that rock ‘n’ roll is the most democratic and all-American of art forms.”

St. Lester would’ve known better than anyone. He essentially codified The Garage Aesthetic in virtually all he wrote, even before he penned “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung” for Creem’s June 1, 1971 issue. This includes providing its original genre designation, “punk rock,” in “Of Pop, Pies and Fun,” his massive three-part review of The Stooges’ Fun House album. Dave Marsh tried to claim credit for coining the phrase, in his “Looney Tunes” column for the May 1971 issue of Creem, referring to a ? & The Mysterians gig as “a landmark exposition of punk rock.” Nice try, Dave: “Of Pop, Pies and Fun: Part One” ran in Creem’s November 1970 issue, months before. Lester coined it – not you, not Legs McNeil, not anyone trying to take credit since. A few weeks later, Manhattan’s original electro-shock therapists Suicide described themselves as “Punk Music” on a flyer, likely making them the first band to self-describe themselves thusly. They ultimately linked the term to the here-and-now musical maelstrom of the mid-to-late ‘70s.

The original “96 Tears” finally makes the grade on Nuggets, Vol. 2. It should have been on Vol. 1. Aside from Count Five’s unimpeachable Yardbirds Xerox “Psychotic Reaction” (which did make Nuggets, Vol. 1’s track listing), there’s no better definition of The Garage Whatsis, at least the part more reliant on wheezing Farfisa organ than “Psychotic Reaction”’s clattering 10-ton-bee fuzztone-isms. Why? Seems Elektra West Coast business VP Mickey Kapp couldn’t secure “96 Tears”’s licensing. But yes, there’s plenty of fuzz-busting present, including The Litter’s own approximation of The Yardbirds run through a meatgrinder “Action Woman,” The Balloon Farm’s ultramysterious fuzz-n-theremin drenched wailer “A Question Of Temperature,” and The Music Machine’s two-chords-and-one-black-leather-glove raver “Talk Talk.”

Otherwise, much like Nuggets I, the second volume’s four sides are pockmarked with some solid-but-rather-Quixotic song choices. For every fuzzbox explosion on the first album, such as The Chocolate Watchband’s ultraraunchy “Let’s Talk About Girls,” you get some headscratching harpsichord-driven thing like The Mojo Men’s “Sit Down I Think I Love You,” or The Third Rail’s “Run, Run, Run.” Good records, yes. But are they garage?! Same thing with The Lovin’ Spoonful’s wonderful “Do You Believe In Magic,” which opens Nuggets II, or the American Beatle-isms of The Beau Brummels’ “Laugh Laugh.” Both are killer ‘60s pop records, ones I never turn off when they come on oldies radio. But both are about as garage/punk/whatever-your-chosen-signifier as a Bible and a bowl of Maypo.

Mind you, Lenny’s idea of garage is likely more Catholic than yours or mine. And that’s fine. It’s just good to have the original Nuggets beautifully remastered by Bill Inglot, who admits in the accompanying booklet that the original album fueled his mania for this work, and with all those killers such as The Electric Prunes’ immortal “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night,” The Standells’ “Dirty Water,” or The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard.” These are truly punk’s building blocks, as is much of Nuggets II, and to hear Inglot’s LOUD, loving care relished on these original masters is a truly beautiful sonic experience. And yes, it’s fantastic hearing the likes of “96 Tears,” The Lollipop Shoppe’s “You Must Be A Witch,” and The Music Explosion’s “A Little Bit Of Soul” finally properly assuming their place as Nuggets. Same with Texas’ own Moving Sidewalks (featuring old Substack pal Billy Gibbons) and their raw “99th Floor,” or The Third Bardo’s “Five Years Ahead Of My Time” on Also Dug-Its, which feels more like a single disc Nuggets III than an afterthought. Especially welcome are new-at-least-to-me excavations such as The Evil’s heavy intensification of The Small Faces’ “Whatcha Gonna About It,” which sounds as if it could crush Cream in two seconds flat. All in all, the Nuggets box is a welcome addition to any proper raunch rock record collection, a potent reminder that carbon monoxide and germanium transistor distortion are some of the best flavors to stock in your rock ‘n’ roll spice rack. And that there was, indeed, a time when every local band in America was The Yardbirds.

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