The 1960s may not have been the greatest decade in rock & roll history but it’s hard to argue that any decade was more exciting. It was all new. Every kid who plugged in an electric guitar or flipped on a Farsifa organ had an entire horizon stretched out before him. The possibilities were endless.
The musicianship may not have been as good as it would become, but the raw energy was as palpable as music could be. In a sense, every rock & roll band right up to today has been trying to tap back into that original vibe. There’s a reason why so many new bands cite bands from rock’s infancy as inspirations. They were the pioneers.
That seminal place in rock & roll was not lost on listeners at the time. Lenny Kaye, who would produce and play guitar for Patti Smith throughout the 1970s, was just one of countless kids growing up in the ‘60s and hearing all that new music. In 1972, the 25-year-old Kaye launched the Nuggets album series for Elektra Records. His goal was to gather gems from the American garage rock movement that flourished in the mid-1960s and helped lay the foundation for psychedelic and punk rock that would give a shot in the arm to rock & roll in subsequent decades.
13 rock albums from the 1960s that should have never been forgotten
The original Nuggets release contained 27 songs, mostly from bands who were scarcely remembered less than ten years later. The concept proved so successful that it spawned more than a dozen follow-ups, passed around from label to label, and eventually spread far beyond the shores of the USA. You can now buy Rhino’s 12-volume collection which contains 168 songs. And that’s just American songs. You can find similar concepts showcasing early rock & roll from other countries as well.
Many of the artists included in the Nuggets collection have been deemed one-hit wonders. In some cases, it may have truly been a case of catching lightning in a bottle. The band may have only had one great idea. But in most cases, it was simply a numbers game. It was hard to penetrate the pop music market in the mid-‘60s.
A band might develop a local following, but if they were to break out on a wider scale, they needed to get radio airplay. If they wanted to get on the radio, they needed the backing of a major label. And if they wanted to sign with a major label, they needed to sound like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, or Bob Dylan.
It would grow somewhat easier over time, though the basic parameters remain the same to this day. Still, the investment for a band was not that steep. They could pick up some cheap instruments, practice a little bit, and just start playing. Some of them even pushed hard enough to release an album or two.
Today, we’re looking at those bands. Consider this a kind of Nuggets, but focusing on entire albums instead of assorted singles. Some of these bands lasted a long time but many were finished – at least in the incarnation we are discussing – by 1970. Still, their influence was vast. It is hard to know just how many kids like Lenny Kaye may have heard one of these bands at some hometown gig and decided they wanted to give rock & roll a try.
We’re picking thirteen forgotten gems today. The number is a little bigger than what I usually shoot for because I decided this should be a truly international list. And since most of these bands earned their stripes playing in their hometowns (actual or adopted), I’m dividing this into regions. We’ll begin with four bands who launched from outside the USA, and then take three bands from the east, central, and western parts of the States to round out our list.
We’ll begins about far away as you can get from the USA…