LIVE: Summer of Nuggets at City Winery, NYC (7/10/14)

The Nuggets compilation, assembled by Lenny Kaye and released on Elektra Records in 1972, has become shorthand for a certain brand of tough and snotty garage rock, made by kids who almost scraped the big time before falling off the face of the earth. Which makes, at first blush, the Summer of Nuggets series at City Winery so unlikely. How well can a bunch of middle-aged music-lifers plowing through a bunch of 50-year-old rock songs in a swanky, clean (!) restaurant ($17 hamburger, herbed fingerling frites not included) invoke the spirit of the original Punk Rock?

Pretty damn well, as it turns out. Of course, it helps that the series’ house band, Symphony for the Devils, includes Kaye and his Patti Smith band cohorts Jay Dee Daugherty and Tony Shanahan, along with Jack Petruzzelli and Glen Burtnik. Thursday night’s concert, the middle entry in a trilogy of shows celebrating the compilation’s “40 (+2) anniversary” (why not?), felt like a gig by the ideal ‘60s frat party band, where everyone could actually play their instruments and no one got in a fight. (Those looking for an amateur component lucked out with the appearance of the Nuggettes, a pair of go-go dancers who compensated for the narrowness of their repertoire with the shortness of their skirts.)

Only eight of the 25 songs performed Thursday night appeared on the original 27-track Nuggets, including The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” and The Blues Project’s “No Time Like the Right Time.” The bulk of the rest were drawn from Rhino’s expanded Nuggets and Nuggets II box sets, with a couple other “artyfacts” from the First Psychedelic Era thrown in for good measure. About half the performances featured guest vocalists, among them the Bongos’ Richard Barone, with quintessential Nuggets “Lies” and “I Want Candy”; Shilpa Ray, whose “Strychnine” and “You’re Gonna Miss Me” seemed chosen to highlight her screaming skills; and Mike Doughty, delving into the British psych side of things with covers of The Poets and Timon. The arrangements were tight but not overly polished, rarely straying much from the original recordings – partly, one assumes, to keep the band and the guest singers on the same page, but also because who wants to futz with greatness, especially in a (pseudo-)genre where simplicity and directness are the whole point?

A recurring theme of the evening, however, seemed devoted to reminding the audience that the original Nuggets is more multidimensional than is typically given credit for. “It’s about garage rock, but it’s not – it’s about great songs,” Kaye commented. Edward Rogers introduced his version of  The Searchers’ “Sugar and Spice” (as covered by The Cryan Shames on Nuggets) as “a pop song, not a garage song,” while Jenni Muldaur’s sweet-and-sultry take on The Nightcrawlers’ “The Little Black Egg” gave lie to the stereotype that this music is best suited to testosterone-addled adolescents. (Mike Fornatale, current lead singer for The Left Banke, prefaced “Walk Away Renee” with a ferocious wail, before clarifying: “I’ve got one of the only songs that doesn’t have one of those in it.”)

Nevertheless, the rawest and most intense moments ended up among the evening’s highlights. An unexpectedly blistering take on The Human Beinz’ “Nobody But Me,” featuring Andy York on vocals and guitar, set loose on a wave of feedback that made the original seem timid in comparison. Greg Di Gusa’s reading of The Standells’ “Dirty Water,” accompanied by his preening postures and laconic tambourine shakes, channeled the sleaze-camp charisma of Sky Saxon or Question Mark. But the champion for the most “garagic” moment of the night occurred when the band, unsatisfied with their first go at Love’s “My Little Red Book,” scrapped it about a minute in before starting fresh. (“This group deserves to get it right,” Kaye added.)

The night closed with an extended jam on “Gloria,” Kaye’s nomination as the “national anthem of garage rock,” despite not ever actually appearing on a Nuggets comp. Unlike the other songs in the evening, this take on “Gloria” didn’t hew too closely to either of the iconic garage rock versions by Them and Shadows of Knight – if anything, it was most reminiscent of Patti Smith’s interpretation on Horses, where the song is used as a frame on which to hang an elemental narrative. Over the middle break, Kaye recounted the story of the first time he ever performed in public, singing “Gloria” to a girl in the audience he knew from school, who had never noticed him before that moment. This performance encapsulated the spirit of the Summer of Nuggets series: a celebration of how a simple collection of quick and dirty three-chord wonders, records that otherwise might have been forgotten, nevertheless had the power to change lives. To quote the zen-like aphorism which Kaye used to open and close the show: “It’s a Nugget if you dug it.”

*****

(songs with a * featured on the original Nuggets)

01) “Talk Talk” (The Music Machine)
02) “No Time Like the Right Time” (The Blues Project)*
03) “She’s About a Mover” (Sir Douglas Quintet)
04) “I Need You” (The Kinks/The Rationals)
05) “Lies” (The Knickerbockers)* – w/ Richard Barone
06) “I Want Candy” (The Strangeloves) – w/ Richard Barone
07) “Strychnine” (The Sonics) – w/ Shilpa Ray
08) “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (13th Floor Elevators)* – w/ Shilpa Ray
09) “Walk Away Renee” (The Left Banke) – w/ Mike Fornatale
10) “Night Time” (The Strangeloves)*
11) “Just Like Me” (Paul Revere & The Raiders)
12) “Nobody But Me” (The Human Beinz) – w/ Andy York
13) “Sugar and Spice” (The Searchers/The Cryan Shames)* – w/ Edward Rogers
14) “The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane” (Timon) – w/ Mike Doughty
15) “That’s the Way It’s Got to Be” (The Poets) – w/ Mike Doughty
16) “The Little Black Egg” (The Nightcrawlers) – w/ Jenni Muldaur
17) “Laugh, Laugh” (The Beau Brummels) – w/ Tom Clark
18) “Dirty Water” (The Standells)* – w/ Greg Di Gusa
19) “Open My Eyes” (The Nazz)*
20) “Pushin’ Too Hard” (The Seeds)*
21) “Open Up Your Door” (Richard & The Young Lions)
22) “My Little Red Book” (Love)
23) “7 and 7 Is” (Love)
24) “Journey to the Center of the Mind” (The Amboy Dukes)
25) “Gloria” (Them/Shadows of Knight)