Give me variety! Once in a while, get brave and play "Last Time Around" by the Del-Vetts or something!

So if you want to hear what you've been missing on the dumbed-down "oldies" stations, get this. It's gear, man!


Old Gold   December 6, 2002
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

It may depend on what time period you grew up in to determine whether you will like this compilation or not. I turned on to rock & roll in early '66, just a month or two before I turned 10. The best songs on these 4 CDs are not hard to come by. Songs like "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)", "Dirty Water", "A Question of Temperature", "Talk Talk", "Little Girl", etc. are great rockers. If you have never heard these songs before and like 60's rock you are going to rock out big time. The booklet that goes along with this set is good. It explains why these groups were deep sixed and we ended up having to listen to all the bland, toothless, spurious stuff that came along around 1970. Not that there weren't good sounding rock songs that followed this era, but still, the originality and creativeness of this era was gone. The airwaves are more restrictive now. If you want to hear something different than what you've been hearing the last 10 to 20 years you're just going to have to play it yourself. What "era" influenced all the rehashed, remixed garbage on the radio in the present day? I bought a double album called "Wild Thing" over 20 years ago for about 10 bucks. There are 33 songs on it. 17 of them are on the Nuggets collection with additional songs like "96 Tears", "Wild Thing", "Black is Black", "Gloria", and "Kicks". So if it comes down to the songs on this CD that most people are not familiar with I will say that some do really sound good but some I don't see how you could call garage or punk. And would someone please make a compilation without "Wooly Bully" on it? Nearly every 60's various artists CD has this song on it. What's wrong with "Lil' Red Riding Hood"? If you want to get all the good rockers from the 60's you're going to have to buy more than this and that's if you don't count the Beatles and Stones. There are songs on these CDs I don't ever remember hearing and some I remember vaguely and some of them really do sound good. I can appreciate Bill Inglot's desire to be a purist and "present [these songs] in their single form" and "that means mono", but I for one would rather hear them in stereo. I say if you can make them sound better do it. But like I said, the best songs on these 4 volumes I have on about 2 or 3 different CDs that were not hard to come by. Lots of the songs on here you may never find anywhere else and probably haven't heard of either. I remembered a few that I hadn't heard since back then and liked. I can appreciate now what it was like to be hearing these songs when they first came out. Some of them like "Talk Talk" and "Dirty Water" were rough edged, hard rockers for the time and sounded better to me than all that sweet no. 1 stuff like "Penny Lane", "Happy Together", "Kind of a Drag" and "Somethin' Stupid". But be forewarned: If some of these songs are your old favorites they may not sound as good on this CD as they will on others because they haven't been "stereoized". But to all purists I say, enjoy!


Tina Delgado is alive ALIVE!   November 30, 2004
 6 out of 9 found this review helpful

If you remember The Real Don Steele and the introduction of, "Boss Radio" in Southern California, this collection is a must have.

I've read some of the other 91 reviews here and I'm glad there are music fans everywhere who appreciate this collection.

If you weren't there, it's hard to explain this selection of tracks. If you remember radio in 1965, you probably remember when some DJ in your market upset the program director by playing The Standells, or Count Five right after a lovely Perry Como number.

But if you were in Southern California, at the birth of top 40 radio in Los Angeles (May, 1965) you remember hearing all this great music on the air in one of the hottest combinations of radio programming, real live disc jockeys, and raw musical power ever put on radio. No doubt you pulverized the frayed edges of the speaker cone in your Rambler when "Psychotic Reaction" hit the air (and was inevitably followed by a jinlge!). This is the music that brought AM radio to suburban kids cruising on Van Nuys, or heading home from the Rincon.

Too bad it ain't on vinyl!







The greatest compilation album of all time   March 21, 2005
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This is a testament to the fact that American rock 'n' roll was better than British rock 'n' roll. Obviously, any album with 118 songs is bound to have a little filler, but when viewed as a collective whole, the lesser songs work well along with the best songs on this album. This is further proof they don't make Rock 'n' Roll like they used to (in fact they really don't make Rock 'n' Roll too much anymore). Starting off with "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" (possibly the greatest Psyche rock song ever), up to "Blues Theme", this is a essential collection. The collection actually contains diverse artists (contrary to some beleifs), including the Sonics, 13th Floor Elevators, Captain Beefheart, the Monks, and Kim Fowley. Definatly essential for anyone with even a passing interest in rock 'n' roll, particulary the rock 'n' roll of the 60s. Definatly an important chapter in the music of that time period.