The Wild Honey Orchestra - Tribute to the Nuggets Album, Alex Theatre, Glendale, CA, 5-19-2023

I'm particularly happy to be posting this album. Most every year, a big, loose collection of professional musicians in the Los Angeles area come together to put on a benefit concert that celebrates a favorite musical act or album. In 2023, this group, the Wild Honey Orchestra, did it again. This time, they targeted the 1972 album "Nuggets." 

"Nuggets" was a collection of garage rock from the mid-1960s. It was a hugely influential collection, especially since it helped inspire the punk rock movement a few years later. It also led to an entire cottage industry of similar releases, often with similar names like "Pebbles," mining obscure garage rock gems from that era.

The last Wild Honey Orchestra concert I could find with worthy sound quality was the one from 2019, celebrating the music of the band Lovin' Spoonful. Then a year was skipped due to the Covid pandemic. The 2022 concert celebrated the band Big Star. Then came this one in 2023. Then 2024 was skipped for some reason. Most recently (as I write this in January 2026), there was a 2025 concert celebrating singer-songwriter Warren Zevon.

The only place I've found any of these concert with worthy sound quality was from the Wild Honey Orchestra's YouTube page. But it seemed they stopped posting their concerts after 2020, so I had resigned myself to not finding any more. But I took another look at that page a few days ago, after not going there for a year or two, and I found a video of most of this Nuggets concert, with excellent sound quality. All the songs were there, but lots of the banter between songs was missing. So I converted it to audio format and chopped it into mp3s.

That was good, but I wanted to do something about the missing banter. The emcee for the concert was Lenny Kaye. He was the person who compiled the album back in 1972, and wrote the liner notes. He later played lead guitar for Patti Smith in the 1970s, and then again from the mid-1990s until the current day. For this concert, he gave brief spoken introductions to each of the songs. But about half of them were missing from the video I found. I wanted to do something about that. 

Luckily, I discovered an audience bootleg of the same concert. The sound quality was far worse, but at least it was complete, which meant it had all the missing intros. If I had wanted to take some music from this boot, that would have been a problem. But sound quality didn't matter so much just for talking between songs. Even there, there were sound issues. So I ran all the banter I took from this boot through the Adobe voice enhancer program. That made a drastic difference. Now, I think in most cases, one can't tell which talking tracks were from the original video and which were from the audience boot. Oh, and I also boosted the lead vocals relative to the instruments on the songs that needed that, which was most of them. 

The Wild Honey Orchestra was the backing band for the entire concert, with members coming and going from the stage depending on the musical instruments needed for each song. Furthermore, each song typically had a different lead vocalist, though some sang two or three songs. 

The vocalists generally fell into two categories. The first was musicians who actually played on the original recordings over 50 years ago, or were otherwise from that era. That's pretty remarkable, considering how many years had passed. The others were somewhat younger musicians who just really liked this kind of music. Overall, there weren't that many "big names." Probably the most famous musician was Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, who sang two songs. For one of them, she was joined by musical comedian Weird Al Yankovic, but he only played accordion and didn't sing. All in all though, it was a pretty old crowd on stage, and I'll bet in the audience as well.

I still can't find worthy audio from the Big Star and Warren Zevon tribute concerts. Let's hope those emerge someday. But in the meantime, at least there's this.  

If you like listening to garage rock, you really should listen to this. True, most of the performers were in their sixties and seventies, but I swear you can't tell by listening. These "old geezers" still knew how to rock! 

This album is two hours and 26 minutes long. 

Before I post the set list, I made this list of the original musical acts for each song, as well as the years the songs were released. Some track numbers are skipped, due to those being talk tracks. The vast majority of the songs on the 1972 "Nuggets" album were performed, but not all of them. Plus, some songs not on that album (but similar in spirit) were played. For instance, "96 Tears," "7 and 7 Is," and "Crazy like a Fox."

02 Oh Yeah - Shadows of Knight (1966)
05 Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl - Barbarians (1965)
07 A Little Bit of Soul - Music Explosion (1967) 
09 Don't Look Back - Remains (1966)
12 96 Tears - Question Mark & the Mysterians (1966)
14 Liar, Liar - Castaways (1965) 
16 [Just Like] Romeo and Juliet - Reflections (1964) 
18 Sugar and Spice - Cryan' Shames (1966)
20 Lies - Knickerbockers (1965)
22 Dirty Water - Standells (1966)
24 Little Girl - Syndicate of Sound (1966)
26 Talk, Talk - Music Machine (1966)
28 Crazy like a Fox - Link Cromwell (1966)
30 Pushin' Too Hard - (Seeds 1966)
32 It's-a-Happening - Magic Mushrooms (1966)
35 You're Gonna Miss Me - 13th Floor Elevators (1966)
37 Baby Please Don't Go - Amboy Dukes (1968)
39 Sit Down, I Think I Love You - Mojo Men (1967)
41 Run, Run, Run - Third Rail (1967)
43 My World Fell Down - Sagittarius (1967)
45 An Invitation to Cry - Magicians (1965) 
47 I Want Candy - Strangeloves (1965)
49 I Had Too Much to Dream [Last Night] - Electric Prunes (1966)
51 No Time like the Right Time - Blues Project (1967) 
53 Hey Joe - Leaves (1966) 
55 Let's Talk about Girls - Chocolate Watchband (1967) 
57 Psychotic Reaction - Count Five (1966) 
59 Open My Eyes - Nazz (1968) 
61 7 and 7 Is - Love (1966)
63 Tobacco Road - Blues Magoos (1966)
65 Farmer John - Premiers (1964)
67 Gloria - Them (1965) 

Here's the usual song list: 

01 talk (Lenny Kaye)
02 Oh Yeah (Mike Stax)
03 talk (Lenny Kaye)
04 talk (Cindy Lee Barryhill)
05 Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl (Cindy Lee Barryhill)
06 talk (Lenny Kaye)
07 A Little Bit of Soul (Paley Brothers)
08 talk (Billy Vera)
09 Don't Look Back (Billy Vera)
10 talk (Lenny Kaye)
11 talk (All Day Sucker)
12 96 Tears (All Day Sucker)
13 talk (Lenny Kaye)
14 Liar, Liar (Nick Guzman)
15 talk (Lenny Kaye)
16 [Just Like] Romeo and Juliet (Ron Dante)
17 talk (Lenny Kaye)
18 Sugar and Spice (Andrew Sandoval & Chris Price)
19 talk (Lenny Kaye)
20 Lies (Peter Case)
21 talk (Lenny Kaye)
22 Dirty Water (Peter Zaremba)
23 talk (Peter Zaremba)
24 Little Girl (Peter Zaremba)
25 talk (Peter Zaremba)
26 Talk, Talk (Peter Zaremba)
27 talk (Lenny Kaye)
28 Crazy like a Fox (Lenny Kaye)
29 talk (Lenny Kaye)
30 Pushin' Too Hard (Lenny Kaye & Paul Kopf with Daryl Hooper)
31 talk (Lenny Kaye)
32 It's-a-Happening (Paul Kopt)
33 talk (Lenny Kaye)
34 talk (Carla Olson, Kathy Valentine & Pearl Bentley)
35 You're Gonna Miss Me (Carla Olson, Kathy Valentine & Pearl Bentley)
36 talk (Lenny Kaye)
37 Baby Please Don't Go (Mike Peters with Wayne Kramer)
38 talk (Lenny Kaye)
39 Sit Down, I Think I Love You (Susanna Hoffs & Owen Elliot with Weird Al Yankovic)
40 talk (Lenny Kaye)
41 Run, Run, Run (Tom Kenny)
42 talk (Lenny Kaye)
43 My World Fell Down (Evie Sands)
44 talk (Evie Sands)
45 An Invitation to Cry (Evie Sands)
46 talk (Lenny Kaye)
47 I Want Candy (Susanna Hoffs)
48 talk (Lenny Kaye)
49 I Had Too Much to Dream [Last Night] (James Lowe)
50 talk (Lenny Kaye)
51 No Time like the Right Time (Cameron Dye)
52 talk (Lenny Kaye)
53 Hey Joe (Jim Pons & John Beck)
54 talk (Lenny Kaye)
55 Let's Talk about Girls (David Aguilar)
56 talk (Lenny Kaye)
57 Psychotic Reaction (Kenn Eliner)
58 talk (Lenny Kaye)
59 Open My Eyes (Three O'Clock)
60 talk (Lenny Kaye)
61 7 and 7 Is (Johnny Echols with John Easdale)
62 talk (Lenny Kaye)
63 Tobacco Road (Tara Austin & Rob Laufer with Kathy Valentine)
64 talk (Lenny Kaye)
65 Farmer John (Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey & Lenny Kaye)
66 talk (Lenny Kaye)
67 Gloria (Lenny Kaye & Everyone)
68 talk (Lenny Kaye)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZjhTUbAN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7LzIelePtiW6Dx7/file

The cover image is taken from a promotional poster for this exact concert. However, I had to make a lot of changes to get all the key parts of that rectangular poster into a square shape. The art in the middle section is the original "Nuggets" cover (which was also the main part of the poster). The list of musical acts at the bottom is not completely acccurate, since there were some no-shows (like Van Dyke Parks) and some surprise guests (like Susanna Hoffs). But I figured it was close enough to get the gist.

Evie Sands - The Best of Evie Sands (1965-1974)

For the most part, I've been posting stray tracks collections from well known artists. However, there's another bunch of albums I could post, which are best of collections from lesser known artists. Some artists have been underappreciated, and often have never had a decent official best of album (if they even had one at all). If there's interest, I could post more albums of this type.

Here's a good example. As far as I know, there never have been any sort of best of representing Evie Sands whatsoever. And that's a real shame, because in a better world, Sands should have been a big star. Looking at the album cover here, it's plain to see that she was gorgeous, and she had a great voice, plus charisma. But making it big in the music business requires some amount of luck, and she never got a lucky break.

You can read about her career in Wikipedia here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evie_Sands

But the gist of it is that she recorded many songs that should have been hit singles for her, but weren't for one reason or another. Mostly, her record companies were too small or incompetent. For four different songs, she did the earliest version, but other artists had the hit with it. For instance, she was the very first to record and release "Angel of the Morning," but her record company was going out of business at the time. Later that same year, 1967, another little known singer, Marrliee Rush had a top ten hit single with it, and it has since gone on to be covered by dozens of artists and has been a hit over and over again.

On top of everything else, Sands was a talented guitarist and even evolved into a pretty good songwriter. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of most of her 1970s work, because she fell a victim to the trends of the times, such as disco in the late 1970s. She retired from recording music after that for a long time.

However, she resumed her career in 1999 with the release of the album "Women in Prison." I have this album and I like it a lot. She's gone on to put out more good music since then, unfortunately still in obscurity. She continues to tour and record to this day.

I haven't included any of the music from her latter career, since that's a different kettle of fish, done in a somewhat different style. Her earlier material was done for a variety of different labels, so it's highly unlikely any company will ever gather all the rights together for a good best of album. But here's my version. It's 49 minutes long, and arranged in rough chronological order.

01 I Can't Let Go (Evie Sands)
02 You've Got Me Uptight (Evie Sands)
03 Take Me for a Little While (Evie Sands)
04 Run Home to Your Mama (Evie Sands)
05 Picture Me Gone (Evie Sands)
06 Angel of the Morning (Evie Sands)
07 Billy Sunshine (Evie Sands)
08 But You Know I Love You (Evie Sands)
09 Any Way that You Want Me (Evie Sands)
10 Close Your Eyes, Cross Your Fingers (Evie Sands)
11 It's This I Am (Evie Sands)
12 I'll Hold Out My Hand (Evie Sands)
13 Tell Me How to Feel [Live] (Evie Sands)
14 A Woman's Work Is Never Done (Evie Sands)
15 I Love Makin' Love to You (Evie Sands)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/73wupMDX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/8xWguAEry4MyF90/file

Sands is so obscure today that I had a hard time finding a decent color photo of her from her younger years. The cover art comes from her 1974 album "Estate of Mind." I cropped it and tweaked with the coloring to make it less reddish.