DON'T LOOK BACK (or, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF YOUR MINDS

 

In typical rock snob fashion that’s really not even what I’m talking about, it’s just an excuse to lead into bragging about another purchase where I can proudly and defiantly count myself among the few movers, shakers, geeky record review readers, cultural investigators, rock and roll thrill seekers, and probably (just gotta be) a high percentage of the PopKrazy choir, who actually plunked the original (and greatest of all) compilations off the shelves sometime in 1972, that being Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets (brilliantly subtitled Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968, neatly expanded on and rereleased by the wunderkinds at Rhino).

 

All of this directly stemming from having just listened through the latest Rhino/Nuggets volume, entitled Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968. I could howl and shriek for hours about the beautiful assemblages of fledging folk-rock, psychedelic-pop, and primeval garage sounds that flow throughout the collection, and take time to delineate the interconnections or the outré linkages of the golden gods of the mid-sixties Sunset Strip (the anthology covers just over 100 songs from the expected--the Byrds, Love, the Standells, the unexpected--Boyce and Hart, Captain Beefheart, Iron Butterfly, and the uh-huhs—Sagittarius, Kim Fowley, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy).

 

Yet, listening to the weird and wooly cornucopia of songs, all somehow intended by the attendant writers and players to be radio friendly, what really hit me once again was what a wonderfully fruitful time period that was for fledging songwriters, maniacal producers, page-boy wearing musicians, and anybody else who just wanted their OWN GODDAMN TWO MINUTES-PLUS OF AIRTIME. Regional hits were valid (sometime the same song would hit the charts in different regions by different bands in different versions!), wacky, often idiotic band names and looks were tolerated, genres were being mutated and violated because of virulent mix of ego, drugs, and the simple urge to be seen and heard by somebody other than the neighborhood buds hulking down in the corner of the garage, basement, or the budding club, blissfully sniffing glue or ravenously sucking down a warm Narragansett beer stolen from somebuddy’s granddaddy.

 

Hits happened because listeners liked ‘em, danced and sung along to ‘em on some tinny car radio or even tinnier hand held transistor radio, some digging the flower power messages, some grooving directly to the unearthly guitar sounds, some hearing the overt sexual rants and pleas as directly connected to their own base and wanton desires, some digging the Beatle or Dylan influences that were hanging in the air polluting everything, and, some, believe-it-or-not, clinging to every three chord rave-up that didn’t have anything to do with Bobby D or those alien mop-tops.

 

Bands came and dropped like dead flies, the most unlikely hits occurred right besides the predictable ones, while all the while mondos became beatniks who became hippies who became rockers who became mockers; with nearly each and every permutation sending forth at least one representative band to invade our collective eardrums, and in some sublime cases, actually forge a catchphrase, a caveman drumbeat, a curly and wavy wah-wahed guitar line, or a transcendent and perfectly simplistic sing-along chorus that would forever haunt yer minds.

 

Let's face it: Any of the five Nuggets box sets will easily bring you right back to an irreplaceable time period, one that mucho circumstance, an overload of happenstance, a dizzying and ever burgeoning culture and a music industry in constant flux somehow alchemized. Sure, it’s ovaaah, nothing can (and probably should not) bring it back, yet it can be lovingly recalled or spiritedly re-imagined. It was fucking lovely.