Customer Reviews

Nuggets: Psychedelic 60's

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Nuggets: A Classic Collection From the Psychedelic Sixties has quite a few killer classics on it and if you like psychedelic music from the awesome `60s this CD is made just for you! The sound is excellent and the artwork is very nicely done. There is a good diversity of artists on this disc, too.

The CD starts with The Standells doing their awesome hit entitled "Dirty water." "Dirty Water" has a catchy melody and you won't forget this tune anytime soon if you haven't heard it already! "Dirty Water" just doesn't start the album; it's also a highlight of this CD. Great! The guitar work is excellent as The Standells sing and play this one up right! The Count Five also do their "Psychotic Reaction;" this classic golden nugget shines bright with some great percussion and guitar work--how about that musical interlude jam session? Even if it is comparatively brief, the interlude is still excellent rock music. The Easybeats also do a fantastic hit, "Friday On My Mind." "Friday On My Mind" has great harmonizing and it's always been one of my favorite hits from back in the day.

The Five Americans do "I See The Light" with lots of positive energy; and the electric guitar is perfect for this tune! Listen also for The Syndicate Of Sound doing their hit "Little Girl." "Little Girl" is instantly recognizable for us people who like their `60s rock. It has a fine psychedelic rock flavor to it and The Syndicate Of Sound never misses a beat, either! "Little Girl" is another major highlight of this album. The Monkees follow with "Pleasant Valley Sunday;" this tune sounds really fine and it fits in well with the other tracks on this CD.

"Laugh, Laugh" by The Beau Brummels has a great melody that I always enjoyed; and when I hear this song I cannot help but smile. Sure, the lyrics may not be the happiest; but it's a great song and it's very well arranged. "Laugh, Laugh" really has a great flavor to it and the harmonica is used very well. There's also The Troggs doing their huge hit called "Wild Thing;" they handle the complicated tempo and key changes like pros!

The Monkees do "Valleri" with all their might--and just one listen proves it! "Valleri" is an underappreciated number if you ask me. I really like the catchy melody of "Valleri" and if you like this type of music you're going to love this tune. "Just A Little" shows The Beau Brummels back again with another hit of theirs; "Just A Little" is very beautiful and this rock ballad impresses me.

The Seeds sing and play "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" with heart and soul; and the CD ends nicely with The Amboy Dukes performing "Journey To The Center Of The Mind." This psychedelic rock tune makes the perfect ending for this album--and there's great harmonizing, too!

Overall, Nuggets: A Classic Collection From the Psychedelic Sixties has a lot to like on it! I highly recommend this album for people who like psychedelic rock from the `60s and people who enjoy music from The British Invasion will enjoy this album, too.

If you believe rock and roll should be fun to listen to, rather than an obligation or a chore, you owe it to yourself to listen to this CD.

Rhino Records has a lot of different single CDs and boxed sets that carry the "Nuggets" title. Way back in the early 1970s, the "Nuggets" anthology was intended to collect songs recorded by the great mid-1960s American garage bands. This collection casts the net a bit wider, including songs by British Invasion protopunks like the Troggs, the underrated Aussie band the Easybeats, and the Monkees. All these songs were recorded by bands that simply didn't have very long recording lives, and the lion's share are one-hit wonders.

This is also one of the greatest rock and roll CDs of all time.

Bands like the Standells, the Count Five and the Chocolate Watchband may have tried their best to imitate the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, but ended up with a uniquely teenaged American identity of their own. Listening to this CD will take you back to a time before magazines like Rolling Stone existed, when no one in his right mind expected a rock star to have a serious opinion about politics, and when music was FUN rather than pretentious. All the songs here are short and performed passionately, no matter how primitive the musicians' abilities by today's standards. "Lies," for example, is probably the best Beatles knockoff ever recorded because the Knickerbockers were clearly having the times of their lives pretending to be the Fab Four (even if they couldn't follow up with anything even remotely as good). In a sense, this is punk rock before its time, but these are punks that didn't want to change the world. They only wanted to play rock and roll music. And, luckily, there were enough small, local labels out there that this music could not only be recorded but be local hits.

If you're tired of the bloated, formulaic, plodding music that passes for mainstream rock today, "Nuggets" provides the perfect antidote. There are several other volumes available, including boxed sets, but most of the cream of the crop are collected right here.

A life changing blast of mad 60s American pop - loony tunes, bad hair, terrible shirts, dodgy guitar breaks, snotty-as-hell vocals and attitude to spare.

This collection epitomises the exuberance, vitality and blind energy of rock 'n' roll. Remember the first time you heard THAT band (whoever it was - it doesn't really matter because everybody had one group that made the hairs on the back of their neck stand up). Well, hearing this was just like that. As with most compilations some of it's just dreadful but this is a small price to pay when balanced against contributions from The Sparkles (No Friend of Mine - one of the classic proto-punk stompers), The Litter (Action Woman - heavy metal ten years too soon) and The Sonics (Strychnine - too intense for words).

I'm not kidding when I say this, but I had just about given up on the dross that's being foisted on us in the guise of pop music, but this has woken me up again. Nearly every song in this collection is by a band who maybe only released two or three singles and then vanished, and the fact that all this music is now thirty five years old and yet still blows the socks off almost anything that's currently out there tells its own story. The other point of note is the sheer variety of ideas in these songs. Imagine a time when you could play whatever you wanted to, because nobody had made up the rules yet. Imagine a time when fourtracking probably meant taking up all the lanes on a freeway at once. Imagine a time when two minute songs were actually recorded in two minutes. Well, if you can't imagine buy this record and take a trip. UK customers should be able to get hold of the UK box set, or alternatively buy all the volumes and make a night of it.

Living in the U.K.,Sixties American music was represented by what we heard on the BBC and Radio Luxembourg-occasionally the pirate radio stations skimmed the talent of American bands. How good it was to hear this CD. "Lies" would have slotted into any of the Beatles earlier albums. "Psychotic Reaction" was first-rate.(Is this the same number that the Yardbirds recorded?) Anyway, both versions are extremely good. "Open my Eyes" and "Journey to the Centre of the Mind", captured the essence of the psychadelic Sixties. The Easybeats have two great tracks: "Friday on my Mind and "Heaven and Hell". Although Australian, their music see-saws between the best of American and British. "Wild Thing". Everyone knows the quality of this hit. As for the Monkees...Superb! "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Valeri":days of my youth. Saturday,late afternoon, watching the television, lemonade and sandwiches and of course the Monkees...ah, what a Daydream Believer!

One hit wonders? Sure (for the most part). Great music? You bet!

I have always been drawn to the music of the 1960s, particularly the late-1960s, and the three "Nuggets" CDs really whetted my appetite for more of the same.

While The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, and others ruled the charts with hit after hit, the groups featured here were majority one-hit wonders, "garage bands," call it whatever you want, but it's those one-hit wonders that people love and fondly associate with this time period (I know I do with stuff from the 1990s, so I can relate to the nostalgic feelings from "dinosaurs" here).

As one listens to the tracks, you can feel the youthful energy of the times, the protest against all the so-called norms, and of young people wanting to find their own way in life as opposed to having it predetermined for them. Other songs are about drugs (oh me, oh my!) and so what? That doesn't make them any less enjoyable.

I listen to this CD from start to finish everytime and enjoy every song, but "Open My Eyes" by The Nazz and "Journey to the Center of the Mind" by The Amboy Dukes are two great tunes that keep me jamming. I find that the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate some tunes I didn't pay enough attention to the first six hundred times around.

It's wise to buy all three "Nuggets" CDs as opposed to buying just the compilation. You'd be cheating yourself out of some great music if you did. - Donna Di Giacomo

Psychadelic? I don't think I'd call most of the tunes on this album psychdelic, save perhaps the great Nazz "Open My Eyes" and the Dukes' "Journey to the Center of Your Mind.". But almost every tune here brings back great memories of my childhood, listening to amazing the new music that was coming in the wake of the great British invasion bands.

When we think of 60s music, we tend to think of the real monsters of that time, like The Beatles, Cream, Hendrix, the Doors, and so forth, but most of what we listened to was more like what you'd find on this album- great pop tunes recoded by bands with just one or two hits. Listening to this collection will bring back great memories for the over 50 crowd, and show the kids today just how much the current wave of pop owes to those who were performing back when grampa and grandma were tooling around in a VW Microbus.

For us dinosaurs old enough to remember the period this is for the most part a realistic look at some of the "minor" bands of the mid to late 60's who were largely "one hit wonders" but put out some damn good rock. There are in fact some real nuggets here - the Australian band The Easybeats "Friday On My Mind" alone is worth acquiring this compilation - and the only thing that keeps this from 5 stars is the somewhat out of place appearance of the Monkees - who really don't belong here - but at least it is two of their most artistic cuts. I find myself listening to this one quite often.

Update: Rejoice! The original Nuggets album is back as part of a box set! It does exactly what I wanted: It leaves the original album intact as the first CD, then expands on the theme with THREE MORE (count 'em) CDs of great stuff. For anyone that remembers BFD Records' "Pebbles" series of cheaply-made vinyl albums that was obviously inspired by "Nuggets," some of those classics are in the box set too, like the great "Going All The Way" by the Squires. Forget this little album and check out the box set instead!!

You don't have to believe that any of the songs on this well-chosen collection is "a pop classic easily surpassing anything by the Beatles" (as the feverish CD notes by Greg Shaw state) to enjoy the energy and, at times, quirkiness of the music. The comparison to the Beatles is apt because many of the groups here were touted as either "the next Beatles" (The Easybeats) or "the American answer to the Beatles" (The Beau Brummels, The Monkees). The rest of the groups were "the next Rolling Stones" or "the American answer to The Rolling Stones." The rush to get through the door that those two bands blew open resulted in music that was by turns imitative of, suggestive of, or hinting-at-while-trying-something-a-bit-different-than what the forerunners did. It hardly mattered that the forerunners had moved on to more adventurous music. This CD captures the optimism of young musicians who saw that some guitars and a drum set, when enthusiastically applied backing tight (and not-so-tight) harmonies, might just conquer the world, or at least that month's Billboard charts. When listening to the sometimes raw and awkward expressions of these groups (the proto-slick Monkees excepted) it helps to have been too young to vote when this music was first released, but is apparently not a requirement. Cue up this CD and don't sit back to enjoy it -- get up and move.

i brought this album from barnes and nobles just to see what it sounded like, since im a big fan of the 60s. i love this album! the original versions of the garage rock classics. i especially like the songs I see the light and why pick on me, which i never even heard of before i got the album. another great rhino compilation!