The shockingly resilient compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 was released over 50 years ago, so the record’s producer, Lenny Kaye, organized a golden jubilee celebration of the music. City Winery in NYC played host on July 28th (an additional show took place on the 29th) and was packed with aging hipsters and a younger generation of fans who loved the songs and the large list of musicians playing them on this sweltering July night on the Hudson River.
The Jubilee house band featured Kaye, Tony Shanahan, Jack Petruzzelli, Glen Burtnik, and Dennis Diken with R.E.M’s Peter Buck helping out on many songs throughout the two-hour-plus set of Nuggets. Most of these special guest-laden tributes build to the show’s highlight, however, Friday delivered the climax right at the beginning as Patti Smith joined the band to sing The Electric Prunes “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”. Smith delivered a poem mid-song with her flair for the dramatic and enchanting, while post song she read a passage from William Burroughs Queer about Burrough’s immense regret for shooting his wife down in Mexico. The band then started the perfectly placed “Hey Joe” as Smith sang the song with an overly macho cadence, while Shanahan’s bass boomed out wonderfully.
After Smith’s dramatic opening, the show fell into a pattern of guests arriving to sing a Nugget or two from any of the compilations. Almost all of the tunes were great with some of the early winners being Tom Clark singing and playing autoharp on The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe In Magic”, Mary Lee Kortes pumping up a dramatic rendition of Cat Stevens’ “First Cut Is The Deepest” and Richard Lloyd adding his unique guitar playing and vocals to The Vagrants version of “Respect” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” complete with tempo changes, screeching guitar and harmonica.
Julianne Hatfield sang a stripped-down, haunting version of The West Coast Experimental Pop Band’s “I Won’t Hurt You”, Marshall Crenshaw joined on guitar and vocals for two psychedelic-based freakouts, The Third Bardo’s “I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time” and The Magic Mushrooms’ “It’s-a-Happening” while Ivan Julian added some gritty post-punk vibes on The Seeds “Pushin’ To Hard” and The Music Machine’s“Talk Talk”.
The core band was locked in and threw down a few tunes with no guests that were dynamite as well. Their pounding takes on The Turtles’ “Outside Chance”, Kaye’s own “Crazy Like A Fox”, “Wooly Bully”, “Open My Eyes”, and Love’s “7 and 7 Is” were all great to hear in the Winery. As the night wrapped up, Bob Mould joined to close out the long set of tunes that went swimmingly from a technical perspective. Mould and crew pumped extra energy into The Castaways “Liar Liar” and The Litter’s “Action Woman” which were both powerhouses, driving the band to soaring heights as they finished this joyful celebration of Nuggets.
The encore featured all of the musicians on stage singing the cornerstone of garage rock “Gloria” which was dedicated to the ailing Jesse Malin who the show was helping to raise funds for. On the first night of their Golden Jubilee Celebration, Kaye and company delivered the Nuggets and everyone in attendance clearly dug it.