"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.
Thanks. This is cool!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
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