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…

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…

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…

On Moscow, the Keith Emerson Band includes ace session guitarist, vocalist, and composer Marc Bonilla (who's toured before with Toy Matinee), bassist Travis Davis, and drummer Tony Pia, who, while currently a member of the Doobie Brothers, has also played with Edgar Winter and Brain Setzer. The program features numerous Emerson, Lake & Palmer nuggets (including a 35-plus-minute "Tarkus"), some brief Emerson originals (film cues from his soundtrack work), a pair of Bonilla pieces, and two co-writes between Bonilla and Emerson. Filmed August, 2008, at Central House of Cinema, Russia…

Most people think of the legendary Ronnie James Dio as one of heavy metal's sage elder statesmen, but when his newly minted namesake band performed at the 1983 Castle Donington Monsters of Rock Festival, fresh off the release of its soon-to-be seminal debut album, Holy Diver, the group behaved like a bunch of hungry young upstarts with everything to prove…

“The werewolf’s coming,” Paul Simon cautions at the start of his 13th solo outing, Stranger To Stranger. That’s a menacing lyric coming from a guy who, at 74, undoubtably has a first-class window seat on the pop music gravy train. He helped ease fans through the tumult of the ’60s alongside Art Garfunkel…