Nuggets

As its title makes clear, Children of Nuggets is the first Nuggets release to stretch beyond the '60s heyday of garage rock and psychedelic music. Instead of once again returning to that seemingly bottomless well – which has not only brought the original 1972 double LP, Nuggets, but such imitators as the Pebbles and Rubble series, plus Rhino's expanded four-disc 1998 box set and its 2001 sequel, which focused on singles from the U.K. and around the world – the four-disc box Children of Nuggets is devoted to bands from the '70s, '80s, and '90s (but primarily the '80s) that were inspired by the original Nuggets LP, along with other trashy, intoxicating rock and guitar pop from the '60s…

The four-disc set Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals 1959-1966 plays like the flip side to Rhino's classic surf music box set Cowabunga!, and for good reason: that set's co-producer, James Austin, helmed this project, and his passion and encyclopedic knowledge of surf music from its greats to its most obscure acts is a big part of what makes this collection such a thrill. Where Cowabunga! concentrated on surf's stars, Surf-Age Nuggets digs deep; for every song by Dick Dale, there are many more by lesser-known but just as devoted acts such as the Ramrods, the Telstars, the Mosriters, and the Elite U.F.O. (!).

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is Boogie Children, Volume 7 of our popular Heavy Nuggets series. Hypnotic rifferama in the key of Young/Young, starring Canned Heat, ZZ Top, Little Feat, John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside, Howlin Rain, Endless Boogie and more!

This wonderful four-disc, 105-track box of postwar Afro-American gospel releases from the 1940s and 1950s was compiled by record collector and gospel historian Opal Louis Nations, and it perfectly captures what was surely a golden age for black gospel. Gospel as we now know it emerged in the South in the early '30s, an outgrowth of the right to assemble and the advent of gospel songwriters like Thomas A. Dorsey (who had sung previously in the secular arena as Georgia Tom), who brought the blues to church, tossed in some ragtime piano rhythms, and almost single-handedly created the genre to the point that his compositions were simply known as "Dorseys.

Nuggets, Lenny Kaye's original 1972 compilation of garage and psych, loomed large in the record collectors consciousness, canonizing a portion of rock that was originally laughed off while setting the standard for reissues. Rhino's 1998 box set of the same name expanded the scope of that record, replicating most of the original while gloriously spilling forth over three additional discs – and, in doing so, it spurred a minor revolution, becoming one of the most talked-about reissues of the last half of the '90s…