Children of 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. They weren't just inspired by this music -- they patterned themselves after it, from the sound to the look of classic garage psych. This might seem like a dodgy proposition, either as music or for the subject of an exhaustive retrospective like this, but the garage and psych revival of the '80s -- which also encompassed such diverse but related movements as power pop, British C-86 indie pop, the paisley underground, punk-blues, cowpunk, and surf rock -- was a surprisingly fertile scene, as this absolutely terrific box set proves. Far from sounding monotonous, Children of Nuggets has a tremendous variety of sounds, styles, and attitudes. As producer Alec Palao states in his introductory liner notes, the idea was to adhere to Lenny Kaye's idea for the original Nuggets LP, which was to "compile together the good tracks from all those albums that only have one good track," not caring whether the featured songs adhered to a strict definition of what was or was not garage or psych. Of course, Palao and his co-producer, Gary Stewart, and their assistants on this project do have a template to follow and not just because there are bands that were tagged at the time as '60s revivalists. They have Kaye's work to guide them; plus they have the work of Greg Shaw, the journalist and record label head who championed this music at first in his fanzine, Who Put the Bomp, and then on his Bomp and Voxx labels. Stewart salutes Shaw at the conclusion of the booklet for Children of Nuggets, and in a way, this set does function as a tribute to the music Shaw helped shepherd during the '80s, since it celebrates all kinds of '60s-inspired guitar pop made in the post-punk years -- music that arguably wouldn't have existed without Shaw's input.

Yet, as the best music should, the music on Children of Nuggets transcends such behind-the-scenes particulars and exists simply as flat-out great music. Sure, there are some bands that faithfully re-create the sounds of the '60s, but most of the groups are inspired by the '60s, picking up their favorite elements -- whether it's dirty, raunchy guitars, jangling 12-strings, sweet harmonies, trippy swirling guitars, or catchy choruses -- and assembling them in a manner that sounds fresh, new, and invigorating. Yes, some of the production sounds a little tied to its time, but no more than the singles from the first two Nuggets boxes. What matters is that this box crackles with energy and is filled with great songs, whether they're hard rock & roll, tongue-in-cheek neo-psychedelia, Beatles and Byrds homages, dreamy, mysterious indie pop, or straight-up power pop. There are a handful of big names here, but only the La's are represented with anything close to their best-known song -- not only that, but "There She Goes" is the only thing here that could be called well known. The other big names are represented by some of their earliest and, in many cases, best songs: there's "(I Thought) You Wanted to Know" and "If and When" by Chris Stamey & the dB's, the Smithereens have "Strangers When We Meet" and "Beauty and Sadness," Primal Scream are captured in their pre-Screamadelica incarnation with "Gentle Tuesday," the Posies show a strong British Invasion bent on "I May Hate You Sometimes," Teenage Fanclub's "Metal Baby" is pulled from their cult classic, Bandwagonesque, while the Bangles show up with their earliest songs, "The Real World" and "Getting out of Hand," which was released under the name the Bangs. A few songs here show up regularly on '80s comps -- the Hoodoo Gurus' "I Want You Back," the Lyres' "Help You Ann," the Spongetones' "She Goes out with Everybody," the Church's "The Unguarded Moment" -- but most of this is devoted to bands that had one or two songs that were staples on college radio and are now forgotten to all but the die-hard underground garage rock fans. Now that they're part of this compulsively listenable set, they help define the canon of underground rock and pop of the post-punk years: surrounded by other bands of a similar mind and vision, these songs sound like forgotten classics. And that's why Children of Nuggets is such a resounding success -- it not only shines a light on the bands that carried the torch for this kind of music in the '80s, this box, like the original double LP, helps rescue worthy bands from the scrap heap of history and, in the process, becomes an essential piece of rock history itself. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

What's Hot from ARTISTdirect

Browse Artists

Videos from Children of Nuggets

All Music Guide Review

Children of Nuggets Track Listing

Children of Nuggets Notes

Credits of Children of Nuggets

News

What's Hot from ARTISTdirect

Interview:Blink 182

Interview: Jim Jones

Interview: Stone Temple Pilots

More Albums

Day26

Forever in a Day

Metric

Fantasies

Silversun Pickups

Swoon

Jill Sobule

California Years

Rihanna

Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes

The Bird and the Bee

Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future

Mariah Carey

The Ballads

ARTISTdirect

RSS News Feed

Newsletter

Free Tools

ARTISTdirect Plus

Search