Various Artists – Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (1965-1968)
Here we go, look at this! Argh, this record opens a whole wormhole to fall into. Every track! It’s an essential record, a great compilation. It was that Lenny Kaye geezer, Patti Smith’s guitarist, who put it all together. This copy came out in 1972, but I think it may have been released before then with a different cover. You know it of course; all the garage stuff like ‘Psychotic Reaction’ from The Count Five, the Elevators, the Litter, all that. This is the first time punk is mentioned in print on the back, too; here we go: “the name that has been unofficially coined for them, punk rock.”

We all had tapes of this. Norman at Eric’s would play ‘Dirty Water’ or something else on the album. So we knew of this record and as soon as it came out again we were all buying it. It went alongside punk rock for us, it really did. In Eric’s they’d play sixties stuff all the time, like the Velvets. Or lots of dub. And weird punk: bands that were labelled as punk but weren’t. You know, Wire. Wire started off as punk but they were beyond that. When 154 and Chairs Missing came out they were more like progressive rock. To me, progressive rock doesn’t have to mean 15 time signatures in one song or intricate guitar bits that only an octopus can play. Progressive means progressing, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

All that kind of music was well known in town. Bands like Love were massive in Liverpool before they were big anywhere else. And Beefheart played Liverpool early doors, too. Did you know Beefheart did an art exhibition in Liverpool, in the Bluecoat Chambers? I went to it. He’d painted these pictures of the Adelphi Hotel. They were still kinda wet, he was using emulsion paint, these black and white things. Brian from the Bluecoat told me he’d been up the night before, doing them!