re: Psych-Out, or Riot On Sunset Strip

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Before he would achieve recognition as the guitarist for Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye wrote reviews and articles for Rolling Stone in its early years and was hired as a freelance talent scout by Elektra Records in 1970. During that period, Elektra president Jac Holzman told Kaye about a record he wanted put out consisting of songs that were either hidden on records or minor hit singles. The result? Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968.

"In a way, it seemed to me that these songs were in a twilight zone," Kaye tells Spinner, "between what was then the AM format -- catchy three-minute singles with a good chorus and a hook -- and the more expansive album-oriented music that developed in the '60s when all these artistic parameters were kind of pushed aside, and a certain sense of possibility came into the music where you could think expansively and imaginatively beyond certain time lengths and song lengths and song constructs. Having lived through it as a teenager, I felt very much connected with it in terms of my own artistic growth and what I could see as the possibilities within music."

With songs selected by Kaye and released in 1972, Nuggets became a classic garage rock album featuring bands that never achieved long-lasting fame.

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"Nuggets seems to have a life of its own," says Kaye, "because what it became is a symbol for a type of energy and musical reinvention that is always a part of our growth as musicians and as an audience -- the spirit within it, the sense of beginning anew that Nuggets represented I think is something that's a constant in music as music moves towards the future. I'm just so thrilled that Nuggets has had a chance to be the birthright of many a band and many a musical fan, and that its fountain of youth is continually returned to."

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This Tyler, TX, group from the mid-'60s is most known for their uncanny imitation of Highway 61-era Dylan, "A Public Execution." Featured on the Nuggets compilation, it is to Dylan what the Knickerbockers' "Lies" is to the Beatles: one of the few rip-offs so utterly accurate that it could easily fool listeners into mistaking it for the original article. Spearheaded by singer/songwriter Ronnie Weiss, the group actually recorded quite a few decent singles between 1965 and 1969 without approaching any sort of national recognition. "Mouse" never got as explicitly Dylanesque again, but there's no doubt that Weiss often recalled a non-atonal Dylan with his nasal delivery, and several of their singles were a much more melodic, pop-oriented extension of Dylan's mid-'60s sound. Recording almost exclusively original material, they were one of the better regional groups of the time, and also waxed some capable Texas punk-psychedelia and good-time pop/rockers. -- Allmusic.com

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what can I say? I spent the early 90s hanging out in Houston at POWER TOOLS, NUMBERS LIZARD LOUNGE, RED SQUARE and PROTEUS

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