Dec 14

Nuggets Series

NUGGETS SERIES
 
 
Nuggets  is a series of compilation albums by Elektra Records, continued by Rhino Records.  Besides 4 box sets, 12 vinyl-only and 3 single-CD albums were also released during the 1980’s and 2 new single-CDs were released in 2004.  Stylistically, the series is focused primarily on relatively obscure garage and psychedelic rock songs from the 1960’s.  Although most of the music was recorded by American groups, there are a few exceptions, such as The Troggs (English) and The Easybeats (Australian).  Notably, however, the music is not as unrefined or as obscure as the songs that tend to populate volumes of the Back from the Grave or Pebbles series.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
But Nuggets turned out to be just the beginning.  Many other Nuggets compilation albums would follow that concentrated on the better-known American bands of the garage rock era. 
 
Though punk rock had already begun to take off, many critics argue that Pebbles, even more than Nuggets helped launch the raw sounds that kept the movement going into the 1980’s and beyond.  Besides launching a 4-disk Nuggets Box Set covering the original double-LP and other songs of that period, a second Nuggets box set covering lesser known British and continental European music was also released, called Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969; many of these songs originally appeared on the Pebbles albums.  There was also a third box set – Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era – 1976-1995 – highlighting the bands (mostly from the 1980’s) that were inspired by the Nuggets and Pebbles music to develop their own sounds.  Perhaps, in response to the Garage Rock Revival, there might be a Grandchildren of Nuggets box set in the future. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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I have a copy of Tomorrow’s classic self-titled album, Tomorrow, and it is not too hard to find; there are both black-and-white and color versions of the front cover.  “My White Bicycle” also appears on the second Nuggets box set, Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969.  Remarkably, all four discs from Nuggets II came through Katrina more or less unscathed, and I have them all cleaned up and playable.  As I recall, I found most of them still in their original box. 

 

(July 2013)

 

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I certainly can’t compete with the description of Mona – The Carnivorous Circus provided by Dave Thompson for Allmusic, so I won’t even try:  “Mick Farren convened a more-or-less all-star band from the same disreputable circles he’d always moved in.  Carnivorous Circus was cut, the first essential album of the 1970s, and it’s still one of the most unrepentantly nasty, gratuitously ugly records ever made.  Rock history loves to bandy those terms around, then apply them to this week’s most fashionable long-haired gnarly snarlies.  And it’s true, the Pretty Things, MC5, the Pink Fairies, the Broughtons [Edgar Broughton Band], any of the myriad ’60s freakbeat bands captured on sundry Nuggets and Pebbles type collections, they’ve all dipped a toe into those malevolently murky waters.  Some of them have even swum around a little.  Carnivorous Circus goes the whole hog and then some, holding its breath and descending to the seabed.  Now it owns a roadhouse and wrestles giant squid for fun.” 

 
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One of the songs by the Fairies, “Get Yourself Home” was included in the second box set in the Nuggets series, Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969. 

 
(March 2014/1)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021