Nuggets Video Artyfacts
A half century out of the garage and on to the screen
As the original king of compilations approaches its 50th anniversary, we look back on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968. Not a complete history, not a debate on when we started using the term “garage” as it applies to music that was created in American suburban garages where the acoustics were horrible but the electric outlets were plentiful.
As iconic as many of these titles are, videos of them are pretty rare. There are many of the homemade kind, where a vinyl record of the original tunes, or Nuggets itself, is seen revolving forever on YouTube.
Yet the videos are few, for good reasons. Most of the songs were recorded on shoestring studio budgets, and the idea of accompanying videos was a very new concept in the mid 60s. The Beatles made history (there is that phrase again!) by sending Dick Clark videos of “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” in the spring of 1967.
What exactly qualifies for the first music video is a great debate that goes back to 1894 and a song called “The Little Lost Child.” Don’t laugh, it sold 2 million copies of sheet music. Disney’s Fantasia (1940) is in the conversation, along with Tony Bennett’s “Stranger in Paradise” (1953) and Ricky Nelson’s show closers on his parent’s sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966).
Seeds for another Retrofit for sure. The point here is that most of the original Nuggets collections had no videos. But no hallucination: some did! Some had real record contracts and if they didn’t leave a future MTV tricked out video in the rock and roll time capsule, there might be something from rare TV appearances, local or national.
Nuggets is a double album close to many hearts of rock and roll still beating. Deep is the funk or bad mood that cannot be lifted when hearing the churning drive of “Pushin’ Too Hard.” Dry are the tear ducts that do not respond to the tragedy and personal triumph of “Moulty.” Minimal are the souls incapable of a “Psychotic Reaction.”
The original was a genius project first issued in 1972 by rock journalist and record store owner (lethal combination) Lenny Kaye. The Wiki take:
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era is a compilation of American psychedelic and garage rock singles released in the mid-to-late 1960s. It was assembled by Lenny Kaye, who at the time was a writer and clerk at the Village Oldies record shop in New York. He would later become the lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. Kaye worked on Nuggets under the supervision of Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records. Kaye initially conceived the project as a series of approximately eight individual LP installments, each focusing on US geographical regions, but Elektra convinced him that one 2-disc LP would be a more commercially viable format. The resulting double album was. Released on LP Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the first uses of the term “punk rock.” It was reissued with a new cover design by Sire Records in 1976. In the 1980s Rhino Records issued Nuggets in a series of fifteen installments, and in 1998 as a 4-cd box set.
Enough backstory. Time to hit the online video vaults to pan for gold. Gold Nuggets!
From surf rock to psychedelic to art rock, LA’s Electric Prunes eventually had two dozen different member, a couple of major hits, and an adventurous mojo that resounds throughout their career. The hits hold up, concept albums like the Gregorian acid trip Mass in F Minor set them apart. Too much to dream.
Ten out of ten people believe this band was from Bean Town, but contrary to this huge hit, Boston was not their home. The Standells formed in Los Angeles by original members Larry Tamblyn and Tony Valentino in 1962.
Jersey boys who sounded more like Beatles than Four Seasons. The band started by brothers Beau and John Charles added saxophone player and vocalist Buddy Randell from The Royal Teens and it was magic. A total of thirteen musicians made up the band over time. Trivia: Drummer Jimmy Walker left in 1968 to replace Bill Medley in The Righteous Brothers.
Minor cheat. The blatant Dylan imitation from Mouse, aka Mouse and the Traps, reunite at SXSW in 2010 to perform “A Public Execution.”
Rock bands doing cameos on early sitcoms offer studio quality video in hopeless situations. Here are The Seeds as The Warts on the first season finale of (speaking of hopeless) The Mothers-In-Law (1967-69), Episode 30, “How Not to Manage a Rock Group.” Doing the boogaloo is Deborah Walley who was a big screen Gidget. Rare footage of the band with late singer Sky Saxon.
Here’s The Barbarians from Cape Cod in The T.A.M.I Show (1964) doing “Hey Little Bird” which is not on the collection. But this is worth it to see Moulty himself, drummer Victor Moulton, who turned a personal tragedy into a garage rock classic with no video to accompany it.
Minnesota’s Castaways were one hit wonders, but this one hit got to #12 on Billboard and was featured in movies including Animal House, Good Morning, Vietnam, and It’s a Bikini World.
Austin’s psychedelic pioneers from the 13th Floor, featuring leader Roky Erickson and electric jug player Tommy Hall, with their debut single in 1966. The first band to call their music “psychedelic rock.”
Count Five hasn’t really begun to figure out how to lip sync with this really strange American Bandstand performance. But “”Psychotic Reaction” is some classic raw high voltage psyche rock.
LA’s The Leaves recorded this a few months before Jimi Hendrix recorded his slow bluesy version in 1966. The song was first registered for copyright in 1962 by Billy Roberts who got composing credits. The Leaves were college boys from the valley, when they formed their band at Cal State Northridge. They first appeared on stage in a school gym in 1965 opening for Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band.
The Blues Magoos get an intro from Jack Benny, so best guess is it is from a variety show called Hollywood Palace. Corrections welcome!
The opening song from the first Watchband album No Way Out, released just after the Summer of Love in September, 1967. File under protopunk garage, Los Altos, California.
The Mojo Men came from San Francisco, adopted the Laurel Canyon sound, covered a Steve Stills Buffalo Springfield song, and got to #36 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967.
The Third Rail were Arthur Resnick, his wife Kris Resnick, and Joey Levine. They had bigger hits in different places. Arthur co-wrote “Under the Boardwalk “ for The Drifters and “Good Lovin’” for The Young Rascals. With Joey, they gave us the worldwide smash “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” by The Ohio Express.
Nazz hailed from Philadelphia and starred Todd Rundgren and Carl Van Osten, who went on to a stellar career creating Mickey and Goofy comics, among others, for Disney. Jazz played their first concert in 1967, opening for The Doors.
Not even a garage band, The Premieres (brothers John and Lawrence Perez, and their neighbors Frank Zuniga and George Delgado) practiced in the Perez backyard in San Gabriel, California. As they got better they opened for the likes of Chris Montez and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. “Farmer John” went to #19 on the national charts in the summer of ‘64.
