October 2022 marks the 50th anniversary  of the release of the landmark Nuggets comp on Electra records put together by Lenny Kaye. This was the first look back at the classic garage rock era which spanned roughly from 1964 to 1968. The original album was sub-titled “Original Artifacts from the First Psychedelic Era.” This was not  the long meandering jams emanating from San Francisco but rather more concise singles created to be heard on AM radio by regional garage bands from the USA.

The comp has been highly influential and indeed “Psychedelic Punkitude” still lives on.

I could not find the original Electra copy of the album upon release as it was not available in Canada but I did get the Sire Records re-release in 1976.

The audio above is actually taken from a Rhino Records CD Nuggets spin off from 1986. They expanded the concept to include content like the Australian group the Easybeats and the non garage based Monkees, I played the CD via my AM stereo transmitter to capture what things may have sounded like if AM stereo existed when the tracks were  originally played on the radio,

Some of the songs on the original comp did not have any true stereo mixes at the time and in a way the garage aesthetic  does not necessarily fit with  wide stereo. The songs I have taken from the Rhino comp however are  in stereo  ( except for the Seeds track ) and the the effect can best be heard on the last song, Journey to the Center of the Mind by the Amboy Dukes.

Below is a review which appeared in the December 1972 issue of Cream magazine written by Ben Edmunds and which I have kept in my 1976 Nuggets re-issue since the 70’s. I have also added at the bottom a two part article on garage rock published in Cream in June and July of 1979 by Robot A Hull.  Lenny Kaye’s “garage” was a bit more inclusive than Mr. Hull’s but the two visions were related.  Click and then enlarge on the image for a better view and read.