The Three O’Clock conflating Todd-hood with godhood by reviving the Nazz’s “Open My Eyes,” noted by Kaye as the most deceptively hard-to-cover song from the classic “Nuggets” catalog. Andrew Sandoval and Chris Price, also giving props to the power-pop leanings of the movement with “Sugar and Spice.” All Day Sucker getting cocky with “96 Tears,” the tune that Kaye said frustrated him for decades, due to never being able to license it for a “Nuggets” collection till last month’s vinyl boxed set. “Weird Al” Yankovic and Susanna Hoffs at the “Nuggets” concert at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Calif., (Chris Willman/Variety)īut that’s not to disparage all the other next-generation and generation-after-next artists that did justice to these songs throughout the 220 minutes of music: Peter Case (or as Kaye called him, “the soul of Plim himself”), doing the Knickerbockers’ “Lies,” representing the more British Invasion-leaning side of garage-rock, with something that seems like it should have been a Plimsouls cover staple, even if it wasn’t. ![]() Aside from maybe Zaremba, Hoffs is probably the artist you’d most want to hear sing a whole set of her own of this material (and she came close, with the ’60s covers album she did once upon a time with Matthew Sweet). Hoffs returned sans accordion for the Strangeloves’ “I Want Candy,” probably more familiar to the under-65 portion of the audience through its ’80s Bow Wow Wow cover. Opening the second half after intermission were seemingly unlikely bedfellows Hoffs and “Weird Al” Yankovic, the latter a swirl of curls as he added accordion power licks to the Mojo Men’s “Sit Down, I Think I Love You,” kicking off the sweeter section of the show before things got dirty again. Kaye obviously holds Zaremba in high regard, introducing him as “the singer from a group that continues the ‘Nuggets’ tradition on for the next half-century and really continues the spirit of this music,” and his faith was well-placed in thinking the singer could pull off both the liveliest and grungiest gold there was to be mined out of the genre. ![]() He was the only guest of the evening to be awarded three numbers, and he earned them all, with moves like Jagger and growly vocals to match the visible sinew, knocking off a trio of better-known “Nuggets” classics - “Dirty Water, “Little Girl” and “Talk Talk” - in quick, sleazy succession. It was a Kaye’s partner in satellite broadcasting, Zaremba, a fellow host on “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” on SiriusXM, who’d be most likely to be proclaimed by acclamation as the most vivacious performer of the night. They stood in for all the burgeoning garage bands forming across America that were stars in their own right, for just as long as it took to get a rehearsal in before dad got home and needed the carport. It just celebrated the rougher and rowdier side of ’60s rock, the bands that were mostly a little too rugged to chart more than one hit, if they managed even that. When it was released in ’72, “Nuggets” as an album was about a kind of nostalgia for the very recent past of the ’60s, but unlike, say, the “American Graffiti” album, which came out a year later and celebrated a slightly earlier era, it wasn’t about hits still well familiar from oldies radio - which didn’t need to be dug up, right? But the “Nuggets” ethos wasn’t anti-hit, either. ![]() ![]() You’d definitely have to consider yourself part of the rock cognoscenti if you knew most of the “stars” on the bill - or know a plurality of the songs in the set list, for that matter. Yet, in invoking the golden age of Hollywood celebrity, Zaremba was being a wise guy, too. There was something at least half-serious in Zaremba’s MGM-invoking statement: it was a hell of an intergenerational cast coming together to perform these 32 rock ‘n’ roll chestnuts. The salute took the form of a semi-reconstruction of the 1972 compilation album “ Nuggets,” put together by the Wild Honey Foundation as one of its annual autism benefits at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, with the original compiler of “Nuggets,” Lenny Kaye, on board as emcee, resident historian, cheerleader and intermittent singer-guitarist. “More stars than there are in heaven!” crowed Peter Zaremba, lead singer of the Fleshtones, taking a cue from MGM’s famous slogan of the 1930s and ’40s as he boisterously extolled the cast of performers taking part in Friday night’s tribute to the garage-rock of the middle and late 1960s.
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