The compilation that changed the history of rock | Culture

In 1970, Lenny Kaye had not yet taken on the role of Patti Smith’s musical accomplice, the position that would bring him fame and fortune. Lenny was then just another bohemian kid who was barely surviving in lower Manhattan, with minimal income: he received $10 each day when he was called to help out at the Village Oldies record store and worked as a music journalist. He was recruited as a journalist by Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records.

Elektra began as an exquisite folk label, but after its immersion in rock—The Doors!—it was living in times of plenty. Holzman, an imaginative man, told Kaye that too many LPs had only one good song, so wouldn’t it be practical to put them together in a compilation? Excited, Lenny set about giving substance to that intuition. At Village Oldies he had access to the musical waste of the sixties, thousands of second-hand records.

It was an unprecedented effort. There were many reissues of old hits, but they were done without much care, sometimes conceived as simple concessions to important broadcasters, who preferred to collect their favors from record companies in this way (technically, receiving cash –payola— (It was a crime.) In addition, rock was developing a historical consciousness, although that was still an exotic concept for much of the music industry.

Kaye had a free hand, but it was difficult to obtain permission for songs published by tiny and/or missing in action companies. Besides, Elektra had been acquired by the Warner conglomerate and the new masters did not sympathize with “Holzman’s whims”. So Nuggets (“Nuggets”) did not come out until late 1972. It received very positive reviews… and modest sales; Kaye was told “thanks, but there will be no second volume.” They were wrong, as we shall see.

Released as a double LP with 27 tracks, Nuggets It is often considered the cover letter of the “garage sound”. We are faced with a simplification: the subtitle already warned that it contained Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968. Lenny’s ability was to pick up different trends, from folk-rock to blues, passing through the first psychedelia (not the psychedelia hippy from San Francisco, which Kaye, as a good New Yorker, was wary of).

Actually, the thing about garage It is, like so many others, a created term a posteriori by critics to handle the production of the host of groups formed in all corners of the United States after the onslaught of the Beatles. The groups that shone for a few years on the youth circuit and that recorded on small or large labels. Some even achieved success at a regional and even national level: before the imposition of radio formulas, the radio stations – what things – took pride in promoting local talent.

Musically, the label of garage It is mainly applied to the hard wing of that movement, aggressive groups inspired by British invaders such as the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones or the Pretty Things. Obviously, many of the songs selected by Kaye do not fit in there, such as the creations of ambitious producers such as Van Dyke Parks (The Mojo Men) or Gary Usher (Sagittarius). The profile of testosterone-fuelled hicks is also not suited to figures like Todd Rundgren, leader of The Nazz, or Al Kooper, star of The Blues Project.

But the myth of the garage rock prosperous. Nuggets It was an essential ingredient for the combustion of punk rock. It also directly promoted bands from the seventies that claimed that primitivism: Fleshtones, Chesterfield Kings, Lyres and, of course, Ramones. revival hit hard in that Jurassic Park of rock that is Sweden. In turn, it flooded Spain or, at least, areas like Malasaña: in the second half of the 80s it was impossible to visit the clubs in the Madrid neighborhood without suffering an overdose of Farfisa organs, guitars with fuzz and insolent voices.

With all the fuss, it turns out that Nuggets did have offspring, though without any direct involvement from Lenny Kaye. Rhino, Warner’s reissue division, released an expanded version in a four-CD box set; then came Nuggets II and Children of Nuggets and several more. By then, the recovery of the more or less marginal groups of the sixties had become a real industry, with hundreds of compilations available. Sometimes it was done by force, without taking care of the sound or asking permission from the rights holders, as in the case of the series Pebbles. Other collections, such as Back From the Gravethey sought to compensate the surviving musicians. The territory of exploration passed from the Anglo-Saxon countries to practically the five continents. The Spanish equivalent of Nuggets It is titled Something wild: you are warned.