Nuggets, Pebbles, and other Broken Down Rock

Sky Saxon of the Seeds.

The music on my iPod can be generally split into two categories. The first and most obvious is “music I like”, which is what comprises most of the music on most people’s iPods—stuff we like, find catchy, enjoy listening to, or have good memories of.  

The other category of music on my iPod is “music I have collected”.  As must be clear by now, I’ve got a thing about discovering new, interesting, and bizarre music.  I usually start by typing in the name of a band I know and seeing what other things I can find; alternatively, I’ll often just search about what information I can find on a particular musical genre and see where it takes me.  Once I find new stuff I try to listen to it (on iTunes or MySpace or YouTube or the band web page or wherever I can find it) then I usually try to acquire it (by legal means if at all possible).  

If you asked me why I’m driven to do this, I’m not sure what I’d tell you.  I think I’m just one of those people who is a collector, and who enjoys finding and collecting new things.  For some reason it gives me great satisfaction when I return from one of my musical hunter and gatherer missions with a bunch of new songs.  There’s a feeling of satisfaction in being a musical archivist, and documenting ignored or bypassed musical scenes, of storing up historically important music for future generations.  But obviously another goal is to find music that will move into the first category, i.e., will eventually become music I actually like for its musical aspects rather than/more than for its historical importance or even just its incredible obscurity. 

I’m obviously not the only person who feels like this, and there are a number of terrific blogs and web sites out there doing similar things, often focusing on a specific genre (like New Wave of British Heavy Metal or 70’s powerpop or just music of the 80’s).  One thing I hope to do is start sharing these web sites and blogs here so people who are specifically interested in those genres will have an even more focused resource to utilize should they be so inclined. 

But the desire to catalog and archive music is not new.  It is because of the efforts of musicologists like John Lomax that much of the folk music of America is now known.  In the early 70’s a similar effort was undertaken to preserve the names and sounds and legacies of a number of so-called “garage bands” of the 60’s.  Many of these bands arose after the success of, and often in imitation of, the first wave of British Invasion bands (Beatles, Stones, etc.).  Sonically most of these bands often combined English invasion/Merseybeat melodies with R&B and psychedelia.  There were probably thousands of such bands, most of which never moved beyond playing local sock hops and the occasional bar gig, but a lucky few recorded a single or two and achieved some measure of regional and occasionally national renown.  Lenny Kaye, later famous as the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group (and in many ways an unsung hero of the early NY punk scene), helped compile an album called Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, which represents the first such effort to recognize these DIY punk pioneers (indeed, Lenny Kaye’s liner notes contain the first documented use of the term “punk rock” to describe the efforts of these bands).  This magnificent collection introduced many more people to the brilliance of bands like the Standells (though now anyone who attends a Red Sox game knows their hit “Dirty Water”), the Count Five, the Seeds and the Electric Prunes.  LA’s respected underground record label Rhino Records eventually took over this series and released many more compilations.

Anyone interested in these compilations or the bands and songs they contain can find a wealth of information on them online.  Many of the songs are outstanding examples of 60’s garage rock, while others are, in the words of a friend of mine, “deservedly obscure”.   Some stick out for another reason more in line with my archivist mentality, and that is that they represent some of the first recorded output of artists who eventually went on to become famous.  In a previous post on Lemmy of Motorhead I already mentioned his first major band, the Rockin’ Vickers, who played amped-up rock and R&B covers but unfortunately never recorded any original material.  Still, their rumbling cover of the Who’s “Its Alright” gives an indication of where Lemmy would take the bass sound for Motorhead (though he actually played guitar and not bass for the Vickers), and their jangly cover of “Dandy” by the Kinks is an enjoyable if primitive document of the English equivalent to the American garage rock movement.

John’s Children were another band who achieved repute for an ex-member:  Marc Bolan, who would go on to worldwide fame as the leader of the glam outfit T. Rex.  Their single “Desdemona” is a grandiose blast of rumbling, bottom heavy blues rock that also has clear sonic antecedents to punk a well, and builds to a dramatic spoken word climax that got the single banned by the BBC.  “But She’s Mine”, recorded after Bolan left John’s Children to form Tyrannosaurus Rex with Steve Peregrin Took in 1967 is a mod/R&B rave-up reminiscent of the Who’s “Can’t Explain” but with heavy wah pedal and lots of high hat.

Following Bolan’s departure, vocalist Andy Ellison and drummer Chris Townson formed the glam supergroup Jet with Sparks bassist Martin Gordon and Nice/Roxy Music guitarist Davy O’List.  “My River” (written by O’List) starts with a lilting piano line then builds into a big cheerful glam song that sounds like Ziggy era Bowie or early Sparks.  "Cover Girl", written when Gordon was a member of Sparks, is more of a straight-ahead rocker but also has a goofy Mael brothers refrain that makes it sound like classic Sparks.

Following the breakup of Jet in 1976, Ellison and Gordon formed the Radio Stars, who’s music bridged the glam and punk eras in England.  Their first single, “Nervous Wreck”, is a call-and-answer glam-pop-R&B song, but by the time of their second album punk had landed and their newer songs, “Radio Stars”, “No Russians in Russia”, and “Dirty Pictures” have a harder, rougher edge and sound like the early English punk they are. 

Across the pond in New York City, while John’s Children was blasting out songs like “Desdemona”, several groups were creating a totally different sonic landscape, one that pulled from the thriving Greenwich Village folk, blues and avante-garde classical scenes.   Most people are familiar with the seminal protopunk of the Velvet Underground, who achieved the greatest fame/notoriety, but other bands were also exploring this richly bizarre musical landscape.  One of the most unusual was the Godz, who released four albums of extremely bizarre, disjointed and atonal music that veered alarmingly between out-of-tune folk/blues and droning proto-industrial music.  “Permanent Green Light” is an example of the latter, a droning, repetitive song that evokes “Sister Ray” by the Velvets.  Very very bizarre stuff.  Amazingly, all four Godz albums are available in iTunes; listen to any one of them and it makes the Velvets sound like the Beatles!

The Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders mined a similar sonic vein.  Emerging from the folk, blues, and poetry scenes in the Village in the early 60’s, the Fugs made sloppy roots music with outrageous lyrics which promoted sexuality and drug use and opposed the Vietnam war.  “Slum Goddess”, off the “New Rose” compilation, is an excellent example of their strange, folky vibe.  The Holy Modal Rounders had a similar sound and appeal; “Bird Song” even appeared on the “Easy Rider” soundtrack and is probably their best known song.  Both bands were exploring similar territory to their west coast counterparts, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (R.I.P.).

Speaking of the left coast, other weird musical shit was going down in the City of Angels.  In addition to Zappa and Beefheart, other off-kilter musical geniuses were making strange music way out west.  Merrill Fankhauser moved to the Central Coast in his teens and quickly started playing with a number of surf instrumental bands.  His first band, Merrill and the Xiles, had a minor hit “Tomorrow’s Girl”, which has a winsome early psychedelic vibe complete with twangy guitar and go-go organ.  His next band, the incredibly named Fapardokly, recorded music that sounds like it comes from unmade Gidget and Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies; it is catchy and breezy in an innocent mid-60’s kind of way.  Fankhauser then formed Mu, which released a critically acclaimed self-titled album of introspective, hippie-ish music in 1971 and a couple albums thereafter, neither of which is currently digitally available, though “Nobody Wants To Shine” is available on YouTube.  The exhaustively comprehensive compilation series “Pebbles”, which even more extensively cataloged the 60’s garage rock scene, contained some of Fankhauser’s work.

Meanwhile, also in LA during the mid-60’s, Sky Saxon was forming his band the Seeds; their single “Pushin’ Too Hard” became a top 40 hit and was featured on the first “Nuggets” compilation.  Saxon, like Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Roky Erickson of the 13^th Floor Elevators, and Skip Spence of the Jefferson Airplane/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Moby Grape, became another drug casualty in the 70’s and even joined a health food cult for some time, but he also continued to make music, collaborating with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins late in life before his sudden death in 2009.  Spence himself was an incredibly well-respected West Coast multi-instrumentalist (he played drums on the first Airplane album and guitar for QMS and the Grape), made a legendary album, "Oar", before being involuntarily incarcerated for drug and alcohol abuse; a cover/tribute album features Beck doing an incredible, amped-up version of "Halo of Gold".