Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (1972)

Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era is a compilation album of American psychedelic and garage rock singles that were released during the mid-to-late 1960s. The album was created by Lenny Kaye, and produced under the supervision of Elektra Records founder, Jac Holzman. Kaye was a writer and clerk at the Village Oldies record shop in New York and later become the lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group.

The project was initially conceived as a series of roughly eight LP installments focusing on different US regions, but Elektra convinced Kaye that one double album would be more commercially viable. It was released on LP by Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the earliest known 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, in 1998 as a 4 CD box set, and in 2023 as a 5 LP box set.

Background

Kaye was unsure whether Elektra Records would put out the album, so he threw his favorite songs together and made them fit into a concept. Elektra hired lawyer Michael Kapp to track down the original artists and secure licensing. Speaking in 2017, Kaye reflected "I would've made it more 'garage rock' as opposed to these kind of weirder things, like Sagittarius or even the Blues Project. A lot of it falls outside the parameters of what we've come to define as garage rock."

Though there were plans for a second Nuggets volume, Elektra did not choose the option. According to Kaye, he supplied the label with a list of potential songs, but they were not able to obtain licensing for most and the project was cancelled.

Legacy

Jon Savage, in his history of the UK punk rock scene, England's Dreaming, cites Nuggets as a major influence on punk bands and includes it in his essential punk discography, alongside Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power and the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat. Eric R. Danton of Paste Magazine wrote: "Nuggets is an essential document that helped define a musical era while serving as a primary influence for so much of the punk and garage rock that followed."

Many other compilation albums took their cue from Nuggets, including the Pebbles, Rubble and Back From the Grave series. Nuggets spawned an entire cottage industry of small record labels dedicated to unearthing and releasing obscure but worthy garage and psychedelic rock music from the 1960s.

In 1998 Rhino brought the original LP to CD, reproducing the original song sequence and liner notes. However, rather than releasing a single-disc release of the original LP, Rhino put the original disc in a box set with three other discs, an extra 91 songs in total that were not on the original LP. Contrary to popular belief, many of the songs were American Top 40 hits: more than a third of the original Nuggets would fall into that category, while Rhino's expanded set featured such smash hits as "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock (No. 1), "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen (No. 2), "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (No. 2), "Little Bit o' Soul" by the Music Explosion (No. 2), and "Time Won't Let Me" by the Outsiders (No. 5).

"Louie, Louie", "Laugh, Laugh", "Farmer John", "Psycho", "The Witch", and the Gestures' "Run, Run, Run" fall outside the set's stated time frame of 1965–1968; "Louie, Louie" having been released in 1963 and the rest in 1964.

In Europe in 2006 Rhino released a remastered version of the album featuring the original 1972 tracklist on a single compact disc in a miniaturized replica of the original gatefold sleeve. However, unlike the original album the tracks were presented using their mono mixes. In 2012 the album was again remastered, this time directly from the same tapes as the original 1972 release, featuring mono and stereo mixes. Available in double LP and digital formats, this version included updated release notes from Kaye and Jac Holzman. In 2023, Rhino Records issued a 50th anniversary Nuggets LP box set that included the original double album, plus a Nuggets, Volume 2 compiled by Kaye for the re-release and featuring songs from his unissued 1973 Nuggets follow-up. The set also includes a single disc titled Also Dug-Its: Artyfacts from the Original Nuggets, also compiled by Kaye and described as a collection of songs considered for the original 1972 Nuggets anthology.

It was voted number 479 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). In 2003, the album was ranked number 196 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. It was later ranked down at 405 on the 2020 edition.

1998 CD box set

Disc one

The same 27 tracks appear in the same order as the original double album.

Disc two

The Music Machine: "Talk Talk" (Sean Bonniwell) (1966, No. 15) (Original Sound)

The Del-Vetts: "Last Time Around" (Dennis Dahlquist) (1966, Uncharted) (Dunwich)