Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Far Out Collection, August 28, 2001
This review is from: Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond (Audio CD)
I don't get where some of the last few critics are coming from. Yes, sadly some of the members of the bands featured on this album ossified into prog-rockers come the '70's -- just like some some punk generation musicians ossified into lounge singers, fake rockabillies, world-music twerps or pop acts. So what? It doesn't take an iota of energy away from the music they and their cohorts played when they were young. The great songs here are too many to list, but include the incredibly catchy and riffy "Sorry" by the Easybeats; a maximum R'n'B "I'll Keep Holding On" by the well-named Action; the incredibly produced and jubilantly trippy "My White Bicycle" by Tomorrow; the aggressive "Making Time" by the Creation; the too-wonderful-for-words "My Friend Jack" by the Smoke (just check out that opening guitar!); "How is the Air Up There?" by the La De Da's, who out-Stone the Stones; and "Social End Product" by the Bluestars - proto-punk if I've ever heard it. And these are just the English-speaking groups: "Your Body Not Your Soul", "I'm Just a Mops", "Break it All" and "Get Down from the Tree" are performed by groups from the Netherlands, Japan, Ecuador and Spain, if I'm not mistaken - not countries generally known for rock - until now, maybe. Most of the songs on here remind me of punk - generally, everything is fast, loud, furious and clearly made by kids looking for rules to break, and you can just about picture these bands sweating out their songs in garages. Its great, essential music - I got it two months ago, and I'm still absorbing it, like a great book or complex movie. Its not a perfect collection - for example, I don't like a good chunk of disk 2 - and the pricetag is high, no doubt. Nevertheless, you're not going to find most of this stuff anywhere else, and this colletion is worth the price because there are a lot of new sounds to enjoy here, even if the music is more than thirty years old. Highly, highly recommended.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great success from Rhino, September 7, 2001
This review is from: Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond (Audio CD)
Once again, as they did with the first Nuggets Box and the first Doo Wop Box, the good folks at Rhino Records have produced a collection that is simply the finest of its type. In every way -- sound quality, liner notes, packaging, song selection, and sheer volume -- this box, like those others, shows evidence of great care and leaves most other similar collections in the dust. The selection here is more wide-ranging than on the first Nuggets box, both geographically and in terms of style. The first box had a lot of fairly-well known songs; here we get just a handful of favorites and classics ("My White Bicycle", "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", "Friday on My Mind", "Pictures of Matchstick Men") along with a lot of great recordings that even dedicated listeners may not be familiar with. (I've been listening to music of this ilk for years, and I had heard less than half of these songs.) I was particularly delighted with the inclusion of "Reflections of Charles Brown" (a song I had been wanting to hear for years -- and also, incidentally, proof that not everything here is fast and loud); "No Presents for Me" (a personal favorite); and Love Sculpture's "In the Land of the Few" (an excellent song, a true lost gem, here presented in an extended version from the one I'd heard before -- what a treat!). Plus, I've made lots of new favorites, and gained a greater appreciation of some songs I knew before after hearing them in this context and with this quality. Folks expecting this to sound like the first Nuggets box set might be a bit disappointed: while some of the non-British groups do have an American-garage-band-type sound (like the La De Das from New Zealand and Los Chijuas from Mexico), and we do get some of the hard-edged British R&B that helped inspire American garage bands ("I Can Only Give You Everything", "Rosalyn"), a lot of the songs here show more evidence of self-conscious craft and studio experimentation. This collection mostly leaves out Merseybeat (unless it comes from Uruguay -- Go Shakers!!), the more "twee" side of British psychedelia, and the tamer side of British R&B, in favor of edgier freakbeat and more experimental, psychedelic stuff, along with straight-ahead British pop-rock (the Mockingbirds' excellent "You Stole My Love") and lots of great examples of the rock scenes from outside the U.S. and U.K. (my favorites include the aforementioned Shakers, Japan's Mops, Holland's Q65, and "You Can Be My Baby" by Denmark's Red Squares). I must single out the liner notes for particular praise -- they are absolutely excellent. Alec Palao's introductory essay is insightful and incisive, Mike Stax's track-by-track notes are full of great info, and the whole booklet makes for great reading. Of course a few of my personal favorites didn't make the cut, like Rupert's People's "Dream in My Mind", the Curiosity Shoppe's "Baby I Need You", "Things She Says" by the In Crowd, and "Grey" by the Hush -- and I wish they had included the Mockingbirds' anti-conformity anthem "One By One" instead of the lesser "How to Find a Lover". There are about six misses here, in my opinion (for instance, I'm sorry, but I just don't like John's Children much). That's a couple more than the first Nuggets box had, I think -- but that still leaves over 100 excellent choices. Overall, I think any fan of '60s British rock, or anyone interested in non-U.S., non-U.K. '60s rock who picks this up will consider it money very well spent. I'm hoping for at least one more Nuggets box (please?). If the folks at Rhino are concerned about "scraping the bottom of the barrel", perhaps they could make it half U.S. and half the rest of the world, to spread around the (very minimal) risk. (One more note, to '60s anthology compilers: I have maybe 18 collections along the lines of this one, and "Circles" by Les Fleur De Lys is on no less than six of them. Yes, it's good, and it definitely belongs here -- but now, enough, already!)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Essential listening, although not every track is a winner, June 30, 2001
This review is from: Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond (Audio CD)
This second compilation box of rare garage/freakbeat/psych from the 60s is certainly worth the price. I had heard 28 of the 109 tracks on here before I bought it, and had been looking for most of the other bands for quite some time now. Thank you, Rhino, for making these obscure groups and songs available, as you did for the first set. An important missing piece of rock history is being filled by "Nuggets II", for one gets to see that rock music extended as far as Iceland and Peru, where groups tried their best to mimic The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Yardbirds--and didn't do too bad a job, either. The majority of the set, however, is taken up by the glorious UK acts, where one can see R&B raveups turn into mod-influenced freakbeat and then flower into psychedelia all within a three-to-four year timespan. The sound quality and extensive liner notes are top-notch, as usual. However, in spite of being a huge fan of this music, about a quarter of the songs have a certain mediocre/generic/Spinal Tap-ish quality to them (the same thing slightly marred the first Nuggets box), which can't be helped in such an overview of ultra-obscure acts: some will be surprisingly great, while others probably deserved their fate. Also, hearing the set all in one lump (as I did) will cause some listener fatigue, as the songs do tend to run into each other in spite of the compiler's best attempts at diversity (you will find no ballads on here, for one--it's all full-blast "beat music from hell" from start to finish). The classic tracks include "Making Time", "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" (the lyric *does* unlock life's mysteries, I swear!), "My Friend Jack", "A Midsummer Night's Scene", "Midnight To Six Man", "Mud In Your Eye", "Save Your Soul", "My White Bicycle", "Listen To The Sky", "Children Of The Sun", "Crawdaddy Simone", "Here Come The Nice", and "I Must Be Mad". So, in spite of the quibbles--which, again, almost can't be helped in a set whose purpose is partly archival--"Nuggets II" contains essential listening on some of the coolest genres of the mid-to-late 60s, by bands the casual listener (and even the avid collector) will probably have never heard. What more can you ask for? Well, maybe a "Nuggets III"...
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
