If one had to point to a single initial salvo that launched the garage rock revival movement in the 1970s and ‘80s, it would have to be the release of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 in 1972. Elektra Records had approached rock critic Lenny Kaye (not yet the guitarist with the Patti Smith Group) with the notion of compiling an album of great, overlooked rock tunes, but what Kaye came up with was something significantly different – an overview of the great, wild era when American bands, goaded by the British Invasion, began honing in on a tougher and more eclectic rock & roll sound, and kids were reawakened to the possibilities of two guitars, bass, and drum…
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 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.
Where previous installments of Nuggets concentrated on singles, Hallucinations is a true excavation of the vaults, picking overlooked album tracks and neglected singles from a cornucopia of WEA-owned labels, including Warner Bros., Cotillion, Jubilee, Valiant, Reprise, and Atco. While the focus is on acts that released a single or forgotten album, there are a handful of recognizable names – the Association, Kim Fowley, the Electric Prunes, the Bonniwell Music Machine, the Tokens, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band – and in the Monkees' "Porpoise Song," there's even a genuine hit.
The latest in MOJO’S much-loved series of riffmungous connoisseur compilations features Hawkwind, Groundhogs, Acid Mothers Temple, The Heads, Fu Manchu, Crushed Butler and more.
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…