Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Let's Get Together - Valente, Dino
2. I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die - Country Joe & The Fish
3. You Were On My Mind - We Five
4. Number One - Charlatans (2)
5. Can't Come Down - Warlocks (1)
6. Don't Talk To Strangers - Beau Brummels
7. Anything - Vejtables
8. It's No Secret - Jefferson Airplane
9. Johnny Was A Good Boy - Mystery Trend
10. Free Advice - Great Society
11. Mr Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man) - Grass Roots
12. Stranger In A Strange Land - Blackburn & Snow
13. Who Do You Love - Quicksilver Messenger Service
14. She's My Baby - Mojo Men
15. Coffee Cup - Wildflower (1)
16. Live Your Own Life - Family Tree (3)
17. Fat City - Sons Of Champlin
18. Human Monkey - Frantics
19. Bye Bye Bye - Tikis
20. Section 43 - Country Joe & The Fish
21. Hello Hello - Sopwith Camel
22. Hello Hello - Sopwith Camel

Disc 2:

1. Psychotic Reaction - Count Five
2. Got Love - Front Line (1)
3. Satisfaction Guaranteed - Mourning Reign
4. Foolish Woman - Oxford Circle
5. My Buddy Sin - Stained Glass
6. Streetcar - Otherside (2)
7. Suzy Creamcheese - Teddy His Patches
8. Rubiyat - Immediate Family
9. Rumors - Syndicate Of Sound
10. Sometimes I Wonder - Harbinger Complex
11. Want Ad Reader - New Breed (1)
12. I'm A Good Woman - Generation (4)
13. No Way Out - Chocolate Watch Band
14. Hey I'm Lost - Engle, Butch & The Styx
15. I Love You - People (1)
16. America - Public Nuisance
17. Fly To New York - Country Weather
18. Thing In E - Savage Resurrection
19. Hearts To Cry - Frumious Bandersnatch
20. Hearts To Cry - Frumious Bandersnatch

Disc 3:

1. Alabama Bound - Charlatans (2)
2. Carl Street - Mystery Trend
3. Somebody To Love - Great Society
4. Superbird - Country Joe & The Fish
5. Two Days 'Til Tomorrow - Beau Brummels
6. Omaha - Moby Grape
7. Up And Down - Serpent Power
8. Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) - Grateful Dead
9. Codine - Quicksilver Messenger Service
10. Down On Me - Big Brother & The Holding Company
11. Think Twice - Salvation
12. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
13. Roll With It - Miller, Steve Band
14. Why Did You Put Me On - Notes From The Underground
15. Underdog - Sly & The Family Stone
16. Summertime Blues - Blue Cheer
17. Glue - Ace Of Cups
18. Soul Sacrifice - Santana, Carlos
19. Bells - Loading Zone
20. Glue - Ace Of Cups
21. Bells - Loading Zone

Disc 4:

1. Evil Ways - Santana, Carlos
2. Red The Sign Post - Fifty Foot Hose
3. Lemonaide Kid - Kak
4. 1982 A - Sons Of Champlin
5. How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away - Hicks, Dan & His Hot Licks
6. Amphetamine Gazelle - Mad River
7. Quicksilver Girl - Miller, Steve Band
8. Revolution - Mother Earth (1)
9. Murder In My Heart For The Judge - Moby Grape
10. Light Your Windows - Quicksilver Messenger Service
11. I'm Drowning - Flamin' Groovies
12. Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Lady - Sea Train
13. White Bird - It's A Beautiful Day
14. Dark Star - Grateful Dead
15. Fool - Blue Cheer
16. Mexico - Jefferson Airplane
17. Mercedes Benz - Joplin, Janis
18. Get Together - Youngbloods (1)
19. Mexico - Jefferson Airplane
20. Mercedes Benz - Joplin, Janis
21. Get Together - Youngbloods (1)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22462 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-24
• Number of discs: 4
• Format: Box set

Uncut September 2007
"Hypnotising 77-track distillation of the Bay Area's
heyday..ignited by high voltage garage-rock, distorted electro-folk,
social commentary and mind melting acid..."

Album Description
SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS is the last word on one of popular
music's defining
regional scenes -- though as scenes go, the music it
produced is remarkably diverse. The 77 tracks heard here share little
beyond an artistic adventurousness long encouraged in the City by the Bay
(which was a magnet for free thinkers from the days of the
Beats.

Celebrating the folk-rock, garage, and psychotic reactions of such
neighboring areas as Sacramento, San Jose, Berkeley, and Sausalito. While
rarely given the respect accorded to the Dead or the Airplane, groups like
The Chocolate Watchband ("No Way Out"), Frumious Bandersnatch
("Hearts To Cry"), Butch Engle & The Styx ("Hey I'm Lost"),
and Teddy & His Patches ("Suzy Creamcheese") could easily match
their more vaunted SF brethren when it came to intensity, instrumental
skill, musical ambition, and just plain weirdness.

The summer of 1967
drew legions of flower children from all over the country to the
intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets and - following the epochal
Monterey Pop Festival -- legions of record company A&R people. The
resulting gold rush produced such nuggets as "Somebody To Love"
(performed here by Grace Slick with her original group The Great! Society),
"White Rabbit," Moby Grape's "Omaha," and Blue Cheer's
thunderous take on "Summertime Blues." Musicians, too, flocked to
the area, and the Summer Of Love disc shows such transplants as Janis
Joplin (from Texas) and Steve Miller (who'd left Chicago for 'Frisco)
entering the spotlight.

By the end of the decade, the extended
instrumental jamming of Santana, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the
Grateful Dead that for many embodied the SF rock scene finally found a
receptive home at radio when San Francisco became ground zero for freeform
FM.

Customer Reviews

Hippie Heaven!
A collection of this type could never please everyone! Alex Palao, an Englishman who "wasn't there at the time", does a very good job of pleasing himself, however, and I'm sure many more of us at the same time. Issued to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of The Summer of Love this collection of late sixties SF sounds is a pretty representative selection of the major and minor sounds from that era.

The collection highlights more of an overall SF atmosphere than a specific unified sound and shows what a unique city San Francisco was for artists of that period. Some tracks will be over familiar and some unknown, and we could all choose some to leave out or different ones to add. Although far from perfect this is a true labour of love by someone who has done his research with great care. The CDs are loosely themed under the headings "Seismic Rumbles", "Suburbia", "Summer of Love" & "The Man Can't Bust Our Music".

The book is nothing less than sumptuous with 120 pages of rare photographs and information. Each track is reviewed in detail with recording information and pictures of the sleeves where available. The only criticism would be the way the CDs are housed in the back of the book; my discs are showing signs of scuffing from fitting at the factory. Great care would be needed handling them over a period of time.

The collection is a worthy addition to the "Nuggets" family, although the term nuggets can't be genuinely applied to a number of the tracks many of us will already own. Check out the price on Amazon's sellers as retailers such as Caiman currently offer this package for around £28, which makes it truly excellent value.

Too young to hear it the first time.
65-70 were years that I didn't experience due to not being born until 1978. Having been given this Book/CD combo by my Uncle I now wish I had been born 30 years earlier. It's truly a great package especially for someone like me who has only ever really heard the most succesfull of these artists played in the background by relatives at social occasions. This set has been on constant rotation on my iPod since it landed in my lap wrapped in christmas paper last thursday. The tracks essembled on the CD's are all brillaint in their own individual ways, I can't think of one I don't like. The book also gives a brilliant insight into the time and place these tracks were written and laid down. How accurate it is I can't say but from reading it while listening to the CD's I amost felt I had been there.

Truly awesome and a worthy addition to any music collection/bookcase.

Beautifully presented book, but unimaginative choice of tracks
This third entry in the premium "Nuggets" box sets from Rhino takes a different path to the others -- instead of four jewel-case CDs in a box with a booklet, it's a large, beautiful book with the four CDs jammed in the back. It looks superb, too -- lavished with great care, full of interesting and rare photos of the bands, and perhaps the most luxurious CD-book set I've ever seen. Remember the "Harvest Heritage" book? This ups the ante, though the CDs are layered into the cardboard package in such a way that they're not well protected and will soon scratch. Put too much weight on the book, too, and you risk snapping them.

Unlike the other sets, too, this takes a very narrow course -- simply the music of the San Francisco area from 1965 to 1970. Not necessarily "psychedelic", but the explosion in bands and performers, bookended suitably by two versions of Dino Valenti's hippie anthem "Let's Get Together". This is no in-depth study of the San Francisco scene, but a short introduction with 77 tracks.

Here's the first problem, though -- these tracks may have been hand-picked (and the guy who compiled it complains there wasn't room to include Creedence Clearwater Revival) but actually, the running time of the CDs is only 60 minutes or so each, so much more could have been included.

Worse still, unlike the other "Nuggets" sets, which focused on rare garage rock singles, the majority of this box comes from those album tracks we're all familiar with, including an unnecessary two tracks from the first Santana album. The CDs are carefully structured, but this doesn't help either -- the first two, dealing with folk rock and garage rock respectively, are by far the more interesting. After that the set loses focus, and though it claims that disk 3 covers summer of love ballroom music and disk 4 what came after, there's really no difference. The box drops a star simply because so much of it is obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in SF rock -- if only they'd bothered to dig up more rareties and pass over the album versions.

There is also some humorous posturing in the liner notes that doesn't help, though it follows the lighthearted pitch of the previous "Nuggets" boxes. At times this becomes partisan. For example, we are told that The Charlatans (psychedelic pioneers and near gods, apparently) were "spring-tight from a residency at a topless club in North Beach", enabling them to set down a terrific set of tracks in the summer of 1967. A couple of pages later, we read that Salvation (second division, unremembered) spent the summer of 1967 slumming it in "a sleazy topless joint in North Beach". Same place, different posture. It's telling.

There's also a mastering fault with disk 3 that makes Frumious Bandersnatch's "Hearts To Cry" unlistenable -- at least on my copy. This isn't a problem, since anybody with enthusiasm enough to want this big, luxurious book rather than any cheaper representative compilation of SF hippie hits will already have "The Berkeley EPs" -- along with at least half of what else is on offer here. But it's a terrific, reverential book, and one to be treasured.