If you’re not familiar with the Nuggets albums in any of their many incarnations, you should check them out. The original album was compiled by guitarist/author/historian Lenny Kaye in 1972 (a few years before he would become Patti Smith’s guitar player). For that original album, Kaye collected classics of mid-1960s garage rock, often performed by short-lived bands who may have only had a single hit. Occasionally, a particular member of one of those ‘60s bands would achieve acclaim later in his career, but for the most part, these songs are lo-fi obscurities. And they are absolutely fabulous.
The Nuggets series eventually spanned 12 volumes, almost all of which are hard to find these days. But they are out there, floating around online and in your uncle’s basement. Even harder to find are many of the original albums on which these modest hits first appeared. That’s unfortunate because several of those albums are absolute gems of early rock & roll. Weird, wonderful, high-energy collections that gave the fledgling art form its early pulse.
Today, we’re going to take a look at five such albums from largely forgotten bands of the mid-‘60s. Call them garage. Call them psychedelic or proto-punk. It doesn’t matter what you call them. If you’re a rock & roll fan, you just need to hear them.
Five fantastic garage rock albums from the 1960s
Psychotic Reaction – Count Five
Mouse Michalski and Roy Chaney were high school friends who formed their band in 1964 and hit it big with their single “Psychotic Reaction” in 1965. It led to their one and only original album, named for their hit, the following year. While a lot of mid-‘60s American garage bands were doing their best to filter the Beatles into their own sounds, Count Five was bluesier, sounding more like the Yardbirds and the Stones.
On that first album, they also throw in a couple of Who covers – a surprisingly tame version of “My Generation,” and a better, sprightly version of “Out in the Street,” with more of a psychedelic edge than Pete and Roger gave it.
“Psychotic Reaction” is the show stopper – a bouncy workout that goes perfectly off the rails by the time you hit the first chorus. But there are plenty of other minor miracles throughout. “Double-Decker Bus” kicks things off. It is almost a carbon copy of “Psychotic Reaction,” with Sean Byrne’s vocal offset by Kenn Ellner’s wailing harmonica. Ellner’s tuneless tenor takes the lead on some of the hippier numbers and his technical difficulties actually add to the authenticity of the tracks. That voice fits perfectly on psychedelic ditties like “The Morning After” and the paranoid glory of “They’re Gonna Get You Someday.”
Those bizarre tracks add color and dimension to the 26 minutes of music on Psychotic Reaction. But the centerpiece of Count Five’s sound can be found in the blues rock numbers sung by Byrne, like “The World,” and the truly great “Pretty Big Mouth,” one more song that is as good if not better than the song Count Five was most known for.
Hey Joe – The Leaves
Yes – the title song “Hey Joe” is the same one Jimi Hendrix would make famous a few years later. There is some controversy over who wrote it, but the Leaves, a short-lived garage band from Northridge was definitely the first to score a minor hit with it. Though they lack Hendrix’s full sound, the Leaves give it a high-octane version, filled with screeching guitars and fuzz.
The success of “Hey Joe” led to a debut album that has a lot of other strong songs to offer. The opening “Dr. Stone” seems thematically inspired by the Beatles' “Dr. Robert” released the same year, though the Leaves' paean to pharmaceuticals is a more traditional blues stomper than the Beatles' psychedelic gem. That lo-fi blues rock is what the Leaves do best.
When they slow it down and get sentimental, they turn fairly run-of-the-mill. But when they crank it up, just a little bit, they shine. On songs like “Tobacco Road,” “Words” and “Too Many People,” with John Beck throwing in some strong harmonica flourishes, you get the best of the Leaves. You even get the bouncy novelty of “War of Distortion,” a little carnival tune that revels in its …. you guessed it …. distortion.
The Leaves had some modest success appearing on television and releasing a second album before founder and guitarist Jim Pons left to join the Turtles. That effectively ended the Leaves, though they did reunite occasionally over the years. Pons went on to have a fascinating career, joining up with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention before quitting music and going to work for several NFL football teams. He is credited with designing the logo used by the New York Jets in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Lies – The Fabulous Knickerbockers
Though they would come to be known as the Knickerbockers, in 1966 when they released their best album, they were indeed Fabulous. “Lies” was the hit, and it was about as close as any early American garage band came to replicating the early Beatles. “Just One Girl” also does a nice Beatles imitation. But the Knickerbockers could do passable versions of lots of other successful ‘60s pop acts.
“I Can Do It Better” combines the harmonies of vocal groups like the Four Seasons while still maintaining a harder rock edge. “Can’t You See I’m Trying” could be the Byrds if the Byrds dropped a horn into the mix. They get their most psychedelic on “I Believe in Her,” a languid ballad that works far better than it should. Then there is the pure jazz of “Harlem Nocturne” featuring Buddy Randell’s sax.
The Knickerbockers – whether fabulous or not – recorded lots of covers, trying to ride the coattails of modern hits by the Beatles and the Kinks. (They even did a Rodgers and Hammerstein standard on their debut album – “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is admittedly one of the strangest decisions the band ever made.) Those tracks generally sounded like a decent college act. When they did their own slightly weirder eclectic material, they produced some really solid early rock & roll.
Easter Everywhere – 13th Floor Elevators
From Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Screw You We’re From Texas": “But when it comes to music my friend, I believe these words are as true as St. John the Revelator’s – Our Mr. Vaughan was the best there ever was and no band was cooler than the 13th Floor Elevators.”
They appeared in Austin in 1965, and they had mostly run their course by 1969, but the 13th Floor Elevators have been inspiring bands right up until today. If they didn’t invent psychedelic rock, they were its most important early impulse. Easter Everywhere was their second album. The first was The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators – the first known use of “psychedelic” in reference to rock & roll.
13th Floor Elevators were fronted by the formidable Roky Erickson, who sang and played lead guitar. He did both at a level far above many of the lo-fi garage acts on this list. He may have been the equal of many other great blues guitarists had personal problems not derailed his career.
But what gave the Elevators a sound unlike any other band for many decades was the electric jug playing of primary songwriter Tommy Hall. Hall was not a trained musician – in fact, he ran as far away from music as you can get in later years. But he creates sounds on that jug that are indescribable. There is a tremulous throbbing that you might think is a synthesizer. Only there were no workable synths back in the mid-‘60s. That’s Hall’s jug.
Hall also wrote trippy, exploratory lyrics that far surpassed typical mid-‘60s rock. They could be pretentious, but with such cool music backing them up, they never became overwhelming. Songs like “Slip Inside This House” and “Slide Machine” land at the nexus of King Crimson and the Grateful Dead. Then there is their unique take on Dylan – the weirdly cacophonous version of “(It’s All Over Now) Baby Blue.”
Erikson would struggle with mental health issues for most of his life, most likely exacerbated by his heavy drug use. Hall quit music and took a deep dive into Scientology. But when they were together in the mid-‘60s, they produced one of the greatest psychedelic rock albums of all time. For a few years there, no band was cooler.
Nazz – Nazz
Nazz completed two albums before frontman Todd Rundgren and co-founder Carson Van Osten left the band. Actually, they were in the process of leaving before the sophomore effort, Nazz Nazz, came out. They weren’t around to capitalize on the success of their lead single “Open My Eyes.” Rundgren proved he could write plenty of pop hooks – “See What You Can Be” and “When I Get My Plane” could be Beach Boys songs. But Rundgren always had a restlessness that led to experiments.
Sometimes they worked – “Wildwood Blues” and “Lemming Song” are solid blues shriekers. Other times they didn’t. “If That’s the Way You Feel” is the Beach Boys on acid. But Rundgren hit a lot more than he missed. And it’s fascinating to hear the best-known song on Nazz in an early, half-baked version. “Hello It’s Me” would become one of the Runt’s biggest solo hits in its sped-up poppier version. On Nazz, it is languid and borders on dreary. But it remains a great song waiting to be discovered.
Rundgren, who was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, went on to have a fascinating, varied career as a performer (as a soloist and with his band Utopia), songwriter, and producer. A few years after Nazz broke up, he produced the seminal protopunk album New York Dolls and would go on to produce for acts as varied as Hall & Oates, Meat Loaf, and Bad Religion during his career.