Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Vanishing Girl - The Dukes of Stratosphear
2. Help You Ann - The Lyres
3. The Real World - The Bangles
4. We're Living in Violent Times - The Barracudas
5. The Trains - Nashville Ramblers
6. Seven Years - Watermelon Men
7. Strangers When We Meet - The Smithereens
8. Wading Through a Ventilator - The Soft Boys
9. I Can't Hide - The Flamin' Groovies
10. The Girl from Baltimore - The Fleshtones
11. It's a Good Thing - That Petrol Emotion
12. She's Fine - Stems
13. All My Life - Point
14. Down at the Nightclub - The Creeps
15. (My Girl) Maryanne - The Spongetones
16. She Turns to Flowers - The Salvation Army
17. You Are My Friend - Rain Parade
18. Mr. Unreliable - Inmates
19. (I Thought) You Wanted to Know - Chris Stamey, The dB's
20. She Don't Know Why I'm Here [Single Version] - The Last
21. There Must Be a Better Life - Biff Bang Pow!
22. Slave Girl - Lime Spiders
23. I May Hate You Sometimes - The Posies
24. I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape - Times
25. It's About Time - The Pandoras
26. I Live for Buzz - Swingin' Neckbreakers
27. I Want You Back - Hoodoo Gurus

Disc 2:

1. This Damn Nation - The Godfathers
2. Tell Me When It's Over - Dream Syndicate
3. Whenever I'm Gone - The Prisoners
4. New Kind of Kick - The Cramps
5. And She Rides - The Long Ryders
6. Motorbike Beat - Revillos
7. Tears (Only Dry) - The Vipers
8. 25 O'Clock - The Dukes of Stratosphear
9. Don't Give It Up Now - The Lyres
10. If and When - Chris Stamey, The dB's
11. Pabst Blue Ribbon - The Untamed Youth
12. There She Goes - The La's
13. Kingsley J - Vibrasonic
14. I Can Never Tell - The Crawdaddys
15. Make Me Stay - Green Telescope
16. Everyday Things - The Plimsouls
17. I Wanna Destroy You - The Soft Boys
18. It's You - Mickey & the Milkshakes
19. Apology - The Posies
20. Lights Are Changing - The Bevis Frond
21. Ahead of My Time - Droogs
22. Welcome to My Love - Funseekers
23. Flowers in the Sky - Revolving Paint Dream
24. Metal Baby - Teenage Fanclub

Disc 3:

1. The Unguarded Moment - The Church
2. I Can't Pretend - The Barracudas
3. Out of the Unknown - Died Pretty
4. L.A. Explosion - The Last
5. I'll Cry Alone - The Flamin' Groovies
6. Sunspots - Julian Cope
7. Hindu Gods of Love - Lipstick Killers
8. Death and Angels - Green on Red
9. Barbed Wire Heart - Sinners
10. Pink Frost - The Chills
11. She Told Me Lies - Chesterfield Kings
12. Beauty and Sadness - The Smithereens
13. Test Drive - The Mummies
14. Busy Man [EP Version] - DMZ
15. Love Will Grow - Stems
16. She Goes Out With Everybody - The Spongetones
17. Hypnotized - The Plimsouls
18. No Apology - The Unclaimed
19. God Knows It's True - Teenage Fanclub
20. You Keep on Lyin' - Hoods
21. Don't Break Down - The Sting Rays
22. The World Has Changed - The Fleshtones
23. Baby What's Wrong - Cynics
24. Psycko (Themes from Psycho and Vertigo) - Laika & the Cosmonauts
25. My Name Is Tom - The Jigsaw Seen

Disc 4:

1. Gentle Tuesday - Primal Scream
2. With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend - The Three O'Clock
3. Like Wow -- Wipeout! - Hoodoo Gurus
4. Bad News Travels Fast - The Fuzztones
5. Plains of Nazca [Single Edit] - Sun Dial
6. Getting Out of Hand - The Bangs
7. Please Don't Tell My Baby - Mickey & the Milkshakes
8. One Half Hour Ago - Rain Parade
9. You're My Loving Way - The Aardvarks
10. Transfiguration - Screaming Trees
11. A Scandal in Bohemia - United States of Existence
12. Where the Wolf Bane Blooms - The Nomads
13. Cheated and Lied - The Vipers
14. Strawberries Are Growing in My Garden (And It's Wintertime) - The Dentists
15. Won't Need Yours - Tell-Tale Hearts
16. Weakness - Inspiral Carpets
17. You'll Know Why - Miracle Workers
18. Not My Memory - The Unknowns
19. Far Away - The Prisoners
20. Ain't That a Man - The Optic Nerve
21. Mink Dress - Plasticland
22. Tight Turn - Raybeats
23. One Way Ticket - The Nerves
24. Tracy Hide [Cover Version] - The Wondermints

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29798 in Music
• Published on: 2005
• Released on: 2005-09-27
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered

Amazon.com
It would take thousands of dollars (or as many hours in download time) to hoard the most coveted songs from the eighties' top secret power pop bands, garage combos and post-new wave throngs into one collection. Or you can let Rhino Records, which masterfully conspired with writer/musician Lenny Kaye late last century to inflate and repackage Kaye's original Nuggets compilation, do the legwork. These four discs, though chaotically sequenced, scour all sides of the ponds to capture the vitality and innovation of mostly 1980-'85, introducing (or reintroducing) to-be-influential bands like San Francisco's Flamin' Groovies, New York's Raybeats, England's Soft Boys, Australia's the Church and Sweden's Nomads. Where else can you find XTC spin-off Dukes of Stratosphear, the La's "There She Goes" and the Bangles a half-decade prior to their manic Monday, along with the Cramps, the Plimsouls, the db's and the Bevis Frond in a single shebang—and with Rhino's ample, informative, transcendent liner notes, to boot? --Scott Holter

Customer Reviews

Worthy entry in the Nuggets family
I was born in the 60's. Born just as the Beatles were blasting all over the U.S. Born just as most of the songs on the first Nuggets comp. were being recorded. Even though I was too young to hear them firsthand, they did influence my love of punk/new wave/alt-rock. In the mid-80's I was music director for a large campus radio station that regularly spun bands like Dream Syndicate, Lyres and Rain Parade. I always laugh at people who say the 80's were a bad decade for music. Roll eyes. I've been waiting patiently for a box set like Children. And just like I'd expect from the first two boxes there are tons of songs on here I have never heard of even though I was rolling in records from the same time period.

I could definitely quibble with the choices. I always thought the Lyres fast version of "She Pays The Rent" was one of the better songs of the 80's. I also find Laika and the Cosmonauts an odd choice despite being a fantastic band. But, it's so insignifanct when so many awesome songs are put together like this. Rhino deserves much thanks for their time and effort on this box.

Half a loaf, if that
You ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Of course, I stole that line from John Lydon, who was never in a garage band -- then again, neither were half the acts on this box set.
I've lived the garage thing for over 20 years -- since seeing The Raybeats and The Vipers at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC (with Mr. "Nuggets" himself, Lenny Kaye, spinning 45s downstairs) that fateful frozen February Friday in 1983, and Rhino's third "Nuggets" box only vaguely resembles -- or represents -- garage history as many of us who really lived it knew it.
The incredible first "Nuggets" box, the 1998 amplification of Kaye's original two-LP 1972 landmark, succeeded wildly because it comes quite close to being something definitive, a fine representative of a great, undercredited era of rock'n'roll. To a large extent, the same goes for the second box, too. But this so-called "Children of Nuggets"? In short, in no way is this collection anywhere near definitive. Half the box seems to have been put together by real garageheads, the other half by skinny-tie, checker-sneakered, L.A. new wave popsters out of "Square Pegs" casting, or co-opted late-'80s corporate college radio geeks who never had, like, y'know, a clue. Here are some of the good points and bad points:
The good side:
* Some of the early modern garage greats are represented here (Flaming Groovies, Cramps, Fleshtones, Chesterfield Kings, The Lyres and Jeff Conolly's pre-Lyres group, DMZ).
* The Three O'Clock both "befour" (as The Salvation Army) and after the name change.
* XTC's two best songs under their Dukes of Stratosphear alias ("25 O'Clock" and "Vanishing Girl").
* "Beauty and Sadness," a standout early track by the most commercially successful band aligned with the garage tribe, The Smithereens.
* Not one, but two tunes each from The Fleshtones, The Vipers and Australia's much-beloved Hoodoo Gurus.
* The Pandoras, the first girls of the garage. Paula Pierce lives ...
* Some songs that just dead-on hit the target and represented the garage era as well as anything: "Baby What's Wrong" by Pittsburgh's eternal Cynics, a howler with the nastiest guitar fuzz riff ever unleashed; and the fiery "Down at the Nightclub" by The Creeps, a Swedish band that was only good for one memorable LP ("Enjoy the Creeps") before going in terrible directions. "Where the Wolfbane Blooms" by The Nomads, Sweden's best-known garage band until The Hives. The Swingin' Neckbreakers, the mighty, mighty Jersey trio with the semi-title tune to their classic first album, "Live for Buzz." Australia's Lime Spiders and their ultra-primitive knuckle-dragger, "Slave Girl."
* Great bands on the periphery of the garage thang: New York surf hipsters The Raybeats (Danny Amis long before Los Straitjackets). The Untamed Youth, Deke Dickerson's teenage surf band back in Missouri. The Mummies, the Bay Area's unraveled kings of juvenile trash madness. Laika & the Cosmonauts, Finland's contribution to surf/soundtrack hip.
* The Fuzztones and other mainstays: Plasticland, The Miracle Workers, The Tell-Tale Hearts.
The bad side:
* Some of the bands on here that I liked a lot in the day (The Godfathers, The Plimsouls, The La's) -- simply didn't belong here. Same goes for The Soft Boys, That Petrol Emotion, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, The Last, The Inmates and Primal Scream, among others. These acts belonged on Rhino's "Left of the Dial" box, if anything, not "Nuggets."
* Right bands, wrong songs, or not enough of them. This Fleshtones fan would've gone with super-rock stompers "Stop Fooling Around" and "Screaming Skull" instead. The Vipers' "Cheated and Lied" is fine, but what about "Nothing's From Today," "Tellin' Those Lies" or "Never Alone" instead of "Tears"? Or "10-5-60" or "Looking for Lewis and Clark" by The Long Ryders?
* How many times is Rhino going to use the same two Lyres songs ("Don't Give It Up Now" and "Help You Ann") in compilations? How about "I'm Telling You Girl," "Soapy," "She Pays the Rent" or "Not Looking Back"?
* If Rhino was attempting to incorporate British/Irish psychedelia/garage, it picked the wrong end of the '80s. No Teardrop Explodes, Echo & the Bunnymen or very early U2.
* Rhino tried to artificially rewrite history (and failed miserably) by drawing a line at 1996. This leaves out a whole slew of great young(er), more contemporary bands that deserved to be here: The Hives (of course), The Forty-Fives, The Mooney Suzuki, The Woggles, The Greenhornes, The Star Spangles, The Flaming Sideburns ... and did someone say The White Stripes?
* Speaking of the missing ... Oh, the land of the missing! Not just little nitpicks, mind you, but gaping holes. Most of the great girl groups: The Brood ("Since He's Been Gone"), The Friggs (whose "Bad Word for a Good Thing" has been all over Chevy commercials the last two years) and The Muffs. The two raw, powerful Detroit bands fronted by Mick Collins (Jack White's patron saint): The Gories and his current group, The Dirtbombs. Other prime Michigan groups (Outrageous Cherry, The Detroit Cobras, Demolition Dollrods). Rhode Island's psychedelic demons, Plan 9. The Gravedigger V ("All Black and Hairy"). True West. Marshmallow Overcoat ("Thirteen Ghosts"). Out of Connecticut, my pals The Double Naught Spys ("You Better Tell Me Now") and psych madmen The Not Quite. The Gruesomes, from Montreal. The Playn Jayn, from England. The Shoutless, from Sweden. The Cosmic Psychos, from Australia. Some of the stalwarts of the New York scene (The Cheepskates, The A-Bones, The Raunch Hands, The Headless Horsemen). The mighty Long Island garage pop bands (The Secret Service and The Mosquitos, whose "That Was Then, This Is Now" became The Monkees' comeback hit). Even Southern Culture on the Skids.
* Screaming Trees. You sure this isn't the "Children of Nirvana" box set?
I rambled about this box set because the garage thang inspires a LOT of passion among those who have truly lived and enjoyed it -- and, as mentioned, "Children of Nuggets" barely resembles anything like the musical history I or my friends (or even the bands) lived. I wanted to get this in before some of you do your Christmas shopping. To buy this at full price would be like paying for a full loaf of bread and getting half a loaf -- if even that. See if you can find this for half-price somewhere, because that's all it's worth. I've loved Rhino to death for 25 years, but this is, without question, the most disappointing and wrongheaded collection in Rhino's long history.

on the other hand....
I would have given it an EXTRA star just for introducing me to Died Pretty. Seriously, this box is every bit as good as the first two, plus it gives SO many new leads to follow. About a third of the tracks I have heard before, and like for sure. A third of them are bands I've never heard before, most of which are first rate and currently selling on ebay for 99c. This is a good thing for the voracious music accumulator. The other chunk are bands I *thought* I knew, but actually didn't, e.g The Hoodoo Gurus, who I am now going to pillage friends record collections for. Thats the deal here, these bands stuff is so much more available, but no less of a chocolate box. If anything, there are more outright surprises here than the first two boxes, of the "I didn't know *they* were *this* good" variety! Don't be put off by any thoughts of an "un-authentic" 80's-vibe, this is a solid stone classic collection. Well done, Rhino!