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Good morning! Is it like that? No, it's... Man, I can't do it because of the COVID because I have the long... Teach me, teach me! Good morning, Vietnam! There we go. Good morning, Vietnam! And...

You sound like you're doing the weather in Vietnam. Yes, it's hot. It's real hot in here. Hi. Hi. Welcome to No Dogs in Space, everybody. We're going to be talking about Good Morning Vietnam here in a bit, but you're going to have to wait for it. I'm Marcus Parks. I'm Caroline Hidalgo, and that's a Robin Williams movie, in case you weren't sure, just to make sure, because I've never seen it. You've never seen it? Ah, that's what we're going to watch this weekend. I don't know if it holds up. When I was a kid, I fucking loved that Vietnam movie. Obviously. I mean, it's

isn't it more of a radio DJ movie? It's a radio DJ. Yeah, it was, you know, I started in radio, in the radio FM business when I was 18. And yeah, Good Morning Vietnam when I was a kid, it was one of my favorite movies. I fucking adored it. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I love Pump Up the Volume. Yeah, Pump Up the Volume was also great, but I only saw that recently. Good Morning Vietnam, that was the one that was very, very near and dear to my heart. Listen,

Listeners, tell us your favorite radio teaching movie. The Warriors, maybe. Perhaps The Warriors. Perhaps Pontypool. There's plenty of them out there. Private parts. Play Misty for me. See, there's a lot. Probably more. There'll probably be more. Anyway, we're actually going to get into it because it all kind of ties in together. It really does. A thing called the soundtrack.

track. The soundtrack, the compilation. Yes, I'm very excited for this. So let's get into this. Remember, this is an extra play. As apart from our main series, we like to just dive into a certain part of something that we just feel like talking about. Sometimes we get recommendations or suggestions. This suggestion was something I think I

Nuggets! Original artifacts from the psychedelic era. Now y'all have heard us bang on about the Nuggets compilation a time or two over the years here on No Dogs in Space, and that's a good reason. While punks still would have happened if you took Nuggets out of the equation, the genre as it is would no doubt look a lot different if you did that. But Nuggets is a great movie.

Instead of introducing the stripped-down garage rock of the 60s to young musicians in the 70s, Nuggets, it gave these bands a deeper understanding of what was then the recent history of rock music. It was kind of like getting a compilation of tracks from 2015 in 2022.

See, while the Ramones already knew Let's Dance by Chris Montez and fucking everybody knew Louie Louie. I hope everyone knows Louie Louie. God damn it. If you don't go listen to Louie Louie, I'll allow it. Yeah, absolutely. Pause to listen to Louie Louie, come back. Yes. And you're going to enjoy it. And then like three weeks later, come back and listen to this. Once you've really, really listened to every version of Louie Louie. Yeah. And there are dozens.

Nuggets reaffirmed the idea that big songs can come in nasty little packages. In other words, the idea that short and loud works, that was reinforced. And as we said in our Patti Smith series, the man who helped bring Nuggets to the ears of music lovers everywhere was Lenny K, patron saint of the record fair and guitarist for the

for the Patti Smith group. That's right. Lenny K is a patron saint of the record fair because that's where we see him. There are many Lenny K sightings. I saw him at three consecutive WFMU record fairs in Brooklyn. And how many times did you approach him? None. I know that's the problem. We should have said hi. Apparently people do approach him all the time because he did mention that in an interview that I saw the other day. And he seemed to be perfectly fine with it. But that's the thing. I don't want him to be perfectly fine with it. He seems like he's

I mean, he didn't seem, you know, I don't know if I'm blowing his butt. I don't know if he wants to make it friends every time he turns a corner. But here you go, especially with record collecting nerds. Exactly. No, he doesn't want to start that conversation again for the 15 millionth time. OK, so, yes, Lenny K., as we know from the Patti Smith series, guitarist and music collaborator and arranger for the Patti Smith group. Mm hmm.

And of course, before then, he actually was asked to compile a list of songs for this thing that we're going to talk about, Nuggets, a psychedelic garage rock pop compilation album that came out in 1972 on Elektra Records. And it's a double LP and with liner notes that Lenny K wrote himself. And it's one of the first mentions of punk rock.

where they mentioned punk rock for the first time. Yeah, codifies it. Yes, we're going to get into that. But it's basically an archaeological dig into the bizarre splendor of the mid-60s, a time when nobody seemed too sure what was happening, but never let that get in the way of enjoying it to the fullest. Yeah, yeah. That's in the liner notes. Fuck yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Now, one question you may have about Nuggets is because I had this exact same question. Why was Nuggets

was Lenny K. releasing an album that collected rock singles from 1964 until 1968 in the year 1972. Very recent history. Yes. These are recent just songs that came out just a few years back, like you were saying. Well, the answer, as was pointed out in the Rolling Stone review of the Nuggets compilation, it's actually pretty simple. Basically, a lot of shit happened in the 60s. No. No.

And when it came to music, most fans were focused on what was coming out of England and San Francisco rather than say,

Austin, Texas or Minneapolis, Minnesota. And every city in America was putting out amazing music in the 1960s. But not all of it reached the mainstream. Not all of it reached the entirety of America. And a lot of these songs on Nuggets, they were at the very least, they were local hits back when a local hit was a thing that was still possible. But many of them never broke through to the national stage. And they were therefore at danger of being lost to the sheer size of America.

Now Nuggets is actually important not just for bringing these songs to wider attention, but also because it introduced the idea of the rescue compilation to music nerds everywhere. Where before compilation albums were mostly put out by record companies to make an extra buck on a single, Nuggets inspired thousands of other record obsessives to curate and release their own compilations of songs that would have been forgotten had these record nerds not saved them. And these compilations, dozens of which are still released every day,

every month, they can be highly curated. There are compilations that collect psychedelic pop from Thailand. Disco hits only popular in Pakistan from 1979 till 1983. Country songs that are only about trucking. We have that. We have, no, I have all of these compilations that I've named so far. Yes, I know. It's checkered.

marked all of these. You got single, you got compilations. It's garage and punk singles from Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Detroit, dozens of other cities and regions. You've got red hot rockabilly. You've got so many different people out there collecting all these 45 singles that otherwise would have been lost to the sands of time had they not put them on a compilation. And all that started with Nuggets, or at least Nuggets was the compilation that popularized the notion.

So to get an idea of why Nuggets took off and is still talked about 50 years later, let's listen to some samples of songs featured on the compilation. Starting with Farmer John. My favorite song. My favorite song in the Nuggets compilation. Sorry, do it again. Oh my God. Play Farmer John. Starting with Farmer John by The Premieres. Yay! Farmer John.

and so on and so forth for the next two minutes. That was great. The premieres. They're from San Gabriel, California. Chicano rock group. Love them. Love them. I mean, they did mostly covers. Farmer John is a cover by Don and Dewey, R&B duo. And the thing I love about the premieres is that if you're not a strong singer, just have two people in your band sing and then have a party around it while you're trying to record. Or at least a... Well, of course.

Quote unquote party. Yeah, exactly. Because they did just invite a bunch of people to come over and make a lot of noise to make it seem like it was like live, like, like, you know, they were performing or something. But really, it was just like just getting a lot of people to just like yip and holler and all that business just to kind of bring some more energy to it. And also to hide the fact that maybe if you can't sing very well,

It doesn't matter because it's all about the energy. And that's why I love that song. And I know we listen a lot to the Headcoats, Billy Childish's version of David Crockett. Yeah, it's the same exact melody. So catchy. So much fun. I love it. Listen to that. Yeah, that features Holly Golightly, who was also in These Darlings. No, I can't remember what her name of her band was, but Holly Golightly is fucking amazing as well. NoDogsInSpace.gmail.com.

Please, Holly, tell us. Please, please. And the premieres, they were, you know, we talked about like a lot of shit going on in the 60s. The premieres are actually broken up by the 60s because as they were touring and trying to make it as musicians, two of them got drafted and had to go fight in Vietnam. One of them was a machine gunner on the ground. Like these guys were, one of the other one was an artillery guy. So yeah, their band was literally destroyed by Vietnam. It was, I mean, luckily those guys came back

But it was during a very, it was a crazy time. I don't know how else to say it. These dark times with the Chicano riots and everything. And a lot of Mexican-Americans looking around being like, how come they're sending us all the time to Vietnam? This is not about that. This is not about this. That show is not about this. I'm sorry I'm getting into it too much.

But I'm new to L.A. We're both new to California. So I'm like learning a lot of the history of it. And it's really great. So if anyone has any great Chicano rock history, send it my way. Please do. And speaking of Vietnam, our next song, The Castaways with Liar Liar. Cool. Why speaking up? Because it's on the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Fucking love that song. I've loved that song since I was a kid. And that's because I had the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack on cassette tape. And when I look back at the track listing, like I can see that this soundtrack actually shaped my music taste quite a bit. I mean, this one had Game of Love by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, had Five O'Clock World by the Vogues, fucking California Sun. It was the first place I heard California Sun. I got you, I feel good, James Brown, all that stuff introduced to me by the soundtrack.

the compilation. You know, it's fucking great. It's how this shit works out. Castaways, of course, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They recorded that song at Soma Records or was it? They were signed to Soma Records. I think it was released on Soma Records, which we talked about in the replacement series because Soma Records being from the Twin Cities.

with the guy, Amos, right? Because Soma backwards. Yeah. And he was one of the major, I guess they started out pretty small and then they became one of the major distribution companies in the whole country. So they were able to like have these big songs just go all over the country like Surfin' Bird. Yeah, Surfin' Bird. Which is under Soma Records. Yeah. And of course, if you want to know the history of Surfin' Bird, we did an entire episode on it. Why do you think I know this shit? Yeah.

I wouldn't otherwise. I promise you that. So let's go from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Let's go down to Austin, Texas for the 13th floor elevator. You're going to miss me here on No Dogs in Space. One morning as the sun greased the dome. You're going to have the sun greased the dome. And girl, you're going to find that I'm not getting real.

That's the thing. I'm going to give y'all a history of the 13th floor elevators because we're going to be doing an entire fucking series on the 13th floor elevators. We're going to do 13th floor elevators. We're going to do Rocky Erickson. We're going to do the Austin, Texas psychedelic scene. It's going to be fucking amazing. Yeah, you heard that song. We're going to get in that guy's head.

And I am looking forward to that. That is spring 2023, my friends. Goddamn right. We're getting another series that we're going to do before that, but 13th floor elevators, that's coming 2023, guaranteed. And then, of course, we got my favorite song on the entire compilation. I love this. I love this. Please, sorry. Go ahead, play the song. Love this. We've got Nighttime by The Strange Loves. ♪

Yeah, since that is my favorite song and my favorite band on Nuggets, well, I don't know what's my favorite band, but man, I fucking love the album that song's on. We're going to go into the fascinating story of the strange loves themselves because it's such an interesting microcosm of the music business in the 1960s.

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Now, the Strange Loves were actually a writing and production team made up of three dudes named Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Goddard. And I'm going to say Goddard as best as I can throughout the rest of this. Yeah, yeah. It's Goddard. Yeah, Goddard. Unless Richard himself wants to come at us. I don't think anyone's going to yell at us.

Well, these guys got together in the late 50s and early 60s. This was the Brill Building days when 1650 Broadway in Manhattan was the center of the songwriting world. It's very much like Brill Building is like where songwriters would come around and try to like...

they give their songs to very famous singers. Yeah. It was a very different time back then. That's kind of how I think Carole King got her start. Yep. Sorry. Carole King is a whole different person. Carole King got her start in that and just being a songwriter. And then eventually, you know, they...

Tapestry. Yeah, exactly. Tapestry happens in history. Well, basically, Bob, Jerry, and Richard were in the same ballpark as Lou Reed, who during the same time period was writing oddball songs under assumed names. Songs like Do the Ostrich, which we talked about a lot in our Velvet Underground series. He also had more commercial compositions like this one called Cycle Annie, which was released under the band name The Beach Nuts. I love that. You'd better, better watch out for little cymbals.

Watch out for little cycle. Watch out for little cycle. She don't wear blouses, she don't wear skirts. Just tie boots and racing shirts. Those beaches alongside Pasadena. Many, they just don't come any minute, y'all better. Watch out for little cycle. Watch out for little cycle. The competition in Harley, California. Class A scramblers, she can take on any cars. Her age is all boarded, got a four-speed kit.

That's 1964. You know what? It's a good song. It's a fairly catchy song, but it definitely sounds like Lou Reed knows that he has better things to do. Or he's just trying to put a... It's almost like he's playing with his niece and she's like, play me a song, Uncle Lou. And he's like, okay, I'll do something.

Annie again. And you can tell he's just like, all right, I'll do it again. But I like it. I like it too. I mean, there's a reason why it kind of sounds like that because Lou Reed's job when he recorded that song was writing and recording sound alike singles for a ripoff label in Long Island City, Queens called Pickwick Records.

Songwriter musicians for hire like Lou Reed would sit in a room and write 10 California-style surf songs or 10 Detroit-style R&B songs. Then they would immediately record them in speed-fueled marathon sessions so Pickwick could release these songs as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Yeah, this is kind of like Walmart bin stuff. Yeah. You know, the stuff that your parents get at the supermarket because they think that you would like it because it's got like a guitar on it kind of thing. Yes, my parents did get that kind of stuff. I think they did say these were specifically like supermarket albums. Yes. In other words, the guys at Pickwick were working in a sort of song factory. It's like something closer to a sweatshop where a bunch of cheap manufactured shit would add up to a small profit.

The guys who eventually made up the strange loves, however, they were a little more bespoke. While their approach was similar to Lou Reed at Pickwick, Bob, Jerry, and Richard were trying to craft bona fide hits, although it took a while for that craft to reach hit levels, as we'll soon find out.

Now, as far as their approach, they would ride trends both musical and cultural. And sometimes those trends would be fairly ghoulish. For example, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in that plane crash. Which one? Ha ha ha!

That plane crash, you know, the day the music died. Bob and Jerry immediately got to work on a song capitalizing on the tragedy. And this wasn't actually that rare back in the day, but usually they were tributes. You know, like when Cowboy Coppice, uh,

Hank Shaw Hawkins, Hawkins and Patsy Cline died in their plane crash. There were a bunch of tribute songs written. They were sent to charity. There was a very beautiful tribute song written for Buddy Holly and all these guys way back when. This one, though, this is a cash grab. Right. Yeah. I don't think this is a tribute. No, this is. But I mean, the word here, the keyword here is capitalizing on the tragedy.

These guys wrote a song dedicated to the eponymous Donna, sung about in the Ritchie Valens tune. They wrote it as quickly as they could, and then they called a session. The single was recorded on Saturday, it was pressed on Sunday, and it was released on Monday under the name The Kittens. And here, in all its terrible, rushed, off-key glory, is a letter to Donna. Dear Donna,

This letter I write to you To tell you something Even me it's true He loved you dearly Till his very last day And I know his memory Will not fade away Their daughter though he was seventeen

Oh

All right. You know, if you're not a strong lead and that's OK, I'm not either. Yeah, neither am I. Maybe it's best to invite a friend along. They didn't. But there were two other guys doing that. But oh, but the doubling up the main vocals. Yeah, like the premieres. Yeah, that's right. Take a note from the premieres, like I said. And he's assuming a lot about Richie Valens. He's speaking a little bit too. He's being a little churlish.

Yes. Oh, yes. So, yeah, Donna being Richie Valens' girlfriend at the time or girl he was seeing. I'm not sure. I don't know if you want to believe the movie. It's very Hollywood, but it's great. La Bamba. Yeah. Richie.

Richie. I can't do it. I would usually do it fully. I still got the COVID though, but so I can go, Richie. You're doing it already. And, but yeah, so this is, this was happening right after the Monday after the crash. The week after. The week after. Oh, okay. Well, that's,

Fine, I guess. But hey, this is them just they're just throwing everything at the wall. They're just trying anything. They are. And they're god awful at this point. I mean, that song's terrible. It's a rip off. They can't sing, but it is still their job. And after they added another guy to their songwriting team, a future industry legend named Richard Goddard, they continued working on their craft by again capitalizing on the latest trends.

By 1963, the group were calling themselves FGG, Feldman Goldstein Goddard, and they'd begun specializing in girl group songs. And after years of banging their heads against the wall with piddling offerings, they finally struck gold with one of the classics of the girl group genre. Yes! My boyfriend's back. No, no, don't sing it, just play it. I'm sorry, I love this song. Elad, Elad

My boyfriend's back. He's singing, coming, better cut it. Hey, love. That I was untrue. Hey, love. My boyfriend's back. So look out now, cause he's coming to. Hey, love. My boyfriend's back.

You ever see the movie My Boyfriend's Back? No. I can't believe this. We have to. This is like a classic of the early 90s rom-com genre. It's a girl's boyfriend dies and he comes back to life. Like as a zombie. As a zombie. Okay. And it's a zombie movie, romantic comedy, early 90s. It's probably fucking terrible. But I remember it was fun when I was a kid.

Cool. The song. The song is fantastic. I love this song because it was one of those like CDs that my parents had when I was like a little kid of like the 60s or whatever their childhood was. And this was one of the songs. And I love this song. 1964. Oh, God. Yeah, exactly. You know, those commercials and everything. I love this song. This song is so good. It's amazing. And then I... Because, you know, we...

you know, you wanted to talk about the strange loves and everything. I did get into learning about the story about it, about my boyfriend's back. And it is really it makes sense from a writer's point of view, right? Like Bob Feldman, you know, the F of the FGG of this songwriting company. He was just hanging out at a candy store in Brooklyn near where he went to school. And then he was just like just sitting there and an

All of a sudden, like this woman next to him started screaming at this one guy saying exactly those things. My boyfriend's back and you're going to be in fucking trouble. And you've been saying these things about me that aren't true. And when my boyfriend gets a hold of you, he's going to beat the shit out of you, asshole. And this is I'm this is an actual quote that Feldman said. And then so he wrote it all down while she was yelling at this guy and then went to the other guys and like, let's write a song.

on the point of view of this really frustrated woman. And, you know, it makes perfect sense. It does. You know, it's just like, and Lou Reed did the same thing whenever he was hanging out with the Warhol factory people. It's just like, take a pen and a paper and just write it down or on your phone or something when you hear something interesting. Yeah, I mean, I do think it's appropriate that my boyfriend's back and Femme Fatale live in the same space. They're my favorite songs. How is that?

How is that a thing? Feldman, Goldstein, and Gutterer focused on writing songs in the girl group style for the next year or so. But when the Beatles hit American shores in February of 1964, the songwriting team of FGG decided to pivot once more to capitalize on the British invasion style.

And so, as they were all sitting around a table one night getting super high... That's another thing. FGG smoked a lot of pot every day, all day, for years. It's creativity fuel. FGG decided to create a foreign beat group with its own made-up history in which Feldman, Goldstein, and Garderer would write, sing, and play all of the songs. And since they all loved the movie Dr. Strangelove, which had come out just like a few months earlier, they called their band FGG.

the strange loves. Now, if FGG was going to create a story for a foreign beat group, they'd have to choose a country that spoke English because they still had to go out and do the interviews. But since everyone was pretty familiar with British accents by this point, because of the Beatles and the Stones, FGG decided that their group would be from the fake town of Armstrong, Australia. Oh God. As far as why they chose Australia in particular, Goddard later said, quote,

Nobody in the United States in 1965 really knew any Australians. So they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. They just know there's a bunch of white people who speak English on this big, gigantic continent on the other side of the world. Otherwise, that makes sense. So, I mean, without the Internet and everything, like, would you know another Australian? Do you presently talk to other Australians? Unfortunately, we don't have that, although we will have that chance next year. Yeah, we will have that chance. I know Wade.

There you go. That's it. Hey, Wade. How you doing? We're going Australian next year. Yeah, next August. Thanks, everyone, for being understanding about the postponement on that tour. But yeah, and I think... I actually do think that Crocodile Dundee was like...

America's introduction to Australia. You might be right. We didn't know anything about it until then. But to expand the narrative, Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gardner became Miles Niles and Giles Strange. Giles. Giles? Yeah, I think with a G. Is it Giles? I guess. I think so. Giles! Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's like Frasier. Yeah.

They were three sheep farming brothers who'd gotten rich by inventing a new form of sheep crossbreeding, which of course had given them more time to focus on their music.

Why is no one asking the questions about what is sheep crossbreeding? What kind of technique did you invent when you mean sheep crossbreeding? But no, everyone just forgets about that. It's like, OK, now tell us about this ban. Yeah. What is this? Does the American agricultural industry know about this new crossbreeding program? Or is the government trying to shut you up? Yeah.

For publicity photographs, the newly christened Strangelove's posed in zebra stripe vests because they also knew very little about Australia. They also posed and played with big African drums because again, their conception of Australia was a little muddy. Those drums were also, by the way,

Stolen. Nice. This is what pot does to people sometimes. Just take the fucking drums, man. Just fucking take the drums. Why am I wearing a zebra vest? Maybe I should detox. The first single released by the Strange Loves, Love Love, it's unremarkable. It features a spoken word section in the middle where one of them tries to sound Australian, but he just sounds like he's from Liverpool.

The single did chart at number 122, which wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the international sensation that My Boyfriend's Back had been, which My Boyfriend's Back had hit number one in America, Ireland, and hit number two in England. No, we're still talking about it today. I don't know if you know about the Hess truck commercials, but it's still a big thing. Yeah, they had made a whole movie, I heard. Oh, yeah, the movie you just told me about that came out in the 90s, yes. But since Love Love did well enough,

The strange loves approached Atlantic Records in hopes of landing a deal. But when they took a meeting at the Atlantic offices with the head of talent development, they were actually screamed at for being, quote, white dudes bastardizing rhythm and blues. Fair cop, as the British might say. I don't know. Wow. Wow, Atlantic Records. That's...

Great. Fair. Fair point. That's fair. Now, the Strange Loves figured Atlantic was a bust, but on their way out, they ran into one of the other owners of Atlantic, and he told them that they might fit with a new label Atlantic was starting called Bang Records. At the helm of Bang was a songwriter and producer named Burt Burns.

Now, Burt Burns is one of the great unsung songwriters of the 60s. I actually just watched a documentary about this guy. It's called Bang! The Burt Burns Story. It's a fucking incredible music documentary. It really gives you a sense of what these guys' lives were like back in the 60s.

Amongst dozens of hits, he wrote Twist and Shout. That was, of course, first recorded by the Isley Brothers and made famous by the Beatles. He wrote Tell Him by The Exciters, which is an incredible soul song from that period. It's got a nice beat to it. And most notably, he wrote this song right here just before he tragically and appropriately died of heart failure in 1967. ♪ Didn't I make you like you? ♪ ♪ Didn't I give you everything? ♪ ♪ It's never gonna show you back ♪

That was the original recording of Peace of My Heart. That was by Irma Franklin. Of course, that song was made famous by Janis Joplin just a couple of years later. I love it when you get all AM radio. But of course, made famous by Janis Joplin. Of course, made famous with Janis Joplin just a couple of years later. Excuse me, I'm coming. I'm coming.

As a part of the band Big Brother and The Holding Company, of course, Art Crum did some incredible artwork for that album. Coming up next here on WZ95. Okay. All right. Moving on. And so The Strange Love signed with Bang Records and started working on a single with Burt Burns.

Now, in the rock and roll tradition of taking something dirty and turning it into something innocent, Burt and the boys have become interested in a new X-rated book by Terry Southern called Candy. And so Burt came up with a title based around the name Candy and provided a few lines of rhymes. The strange loves then finished writing the lyrics, gave it a bow diddly beat, and recorded it with those stolen African drums. In fact, their entire album was recorded with those stolen African drums.

The result was, as you may have already guessed, bonk candy. We're just saying we don't like the Bow Wow Wow version. Or the Pringles version. So ridiculous. How can you fit in Pringles instead of candy? What is that? Sorry, I woke up weird today. You did wake up full of grudges. Yeah, I did. Sometimes I wake up weird. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happened today.

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Well, as far as the rest of the songs on the album went, the I Want Candy album by the Strangelove's, I actually really liked the album. It's a solid listen. They get a few covers on there. They do a version of Hang On Sloopy. That has its own story. Hang On Sloopy. I wanted to, Carolina made me cut five paragraphs of Hang On Sloopy. Because it was half the script. It

I mean, what's the point of that? I know. So we're going to do a whole other extra play on Hang On Sloopy because that song has a fascinating story. Be glad that there's not an episode in this episode. You're welcome. We're going to get into Burt Burns and how much he loved Cuban music and how that actually did have a huge effect on the sound of the 60s. The sound of pop in the 60s is just one dude who loved going to Cuba all the time. But that's going to be a totally different extra play because that has its own fascinating history. But...

As far as the song that appeared on Nuggets went, the song that the Strangelubs played on Nuggets, Nighttime. That was an FGG composition, even though it sounds like a cover. They... Okay. They...

They may have swiped the nighttime, bright time rhyme from Ray Charles. They might have. They might have. They may be guilty of that. Yes. But the composition and the rest of the lyrics, that's 100% FGG. But the thing about the Strange Loves is that these guys were all basically the office workers of songwriting. And once they started playing road gigs to support I Want Candy, they soon discovered

that touring fucking sucks if you're not built for it. Some people love it. You know, some people live their entire lives on the road. But if you're just a bunch of guys whose job is to write songs, road life is fucking horrible. So... You woke up weird too, man. Yeah, I did. I did. So the fake band that was the Strange Loves hired another fake band to play... Okay, it's not a fake band. Ha!

By the way, The Strange Loves is a real band because they have real instruments and they play and they do the whole thing real, right? It's just that they have a fake backstory. A manufactured story. Yes, there you go. But it is also a manufactured band where they're saying, we're going to write songs. And what is GWAR? Is GWAR a fake band? What planet do they come from? Planet dick suck. You see,

I can find it in the map. It's real. All right. Is it Planet Dick Sucker or is it like Planet Toxic Waste Ass? There's a lot of unofficial names. Yeah, there's a lot of unofficial... Planet Gordy. I don't know. Like, there's a... I'm sure there's plenty of gore fans that are screaming at us right now that know the entire lore of gore. We should do a thing, an extra play on gore. I'd love to do an extra play on gore. You got to see gore. You said they were fucking amazing. Well, it was after Odorous passed away, unfortunately. It was at... Anyway, it's...

Where were we? The Strange Loves. We're here on The Strange Loves. And that's the thing is that, yeah, we can agree to disagree on whether or not they're a real band. They are a real band. Yeah.

They're real aliens. But they still hired a fake band to play as the Strangelove's. That is also still a band. Were they playing the instruments? A false band, I'd say. They're playing the instruments. Under an assumed name, I guess. Under the name of the Strangelove's, as far as people are going out. But it's real!

It's because that's the thing. If you go out to see the Rolling Stones, if a bunch of other guys show up and they're not the Rolling Stones, but they still sound exactly like the Rolling Stones. Did you see the Rolling Stones? I would call them the fake Rolling Stones. This is the fake Strange Loves. And not a fake band. All right. I saw a band. Ha!

Well, the point is, is that not a goddamn person would notice the difference unless they brought the I Want Candy LP to the show and compared the picture on the sleeve to the guys on the stage.

But after the strange love sort of sputtered out, Feldman, Goldstein, and Goddard, they went their separate ways. Although all of them did stay in the music industry as professionals. Most notably, Richard Goddard, he co-founded Sire Records with Seymour Stein. Sire, of course, was the label that signed the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Madonna, so many others.

Goddard also produced hundreds of tracks throughout his career, including the track that's parodied for our theme song. He produced Love Comes in Spurts by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. From My Boyfriend's Back to Richard Hell and the Voidoids. It's great. Yeah. And Blondie. He did Ex-Offender by Blondie. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I saw an interview with Richard Goddard who did say the reason why they eventually split up

And Richard, you know, joined forces with Seymour Stein to make a production company. And then later, like a year later, that the record company, it's because these bands were coming in like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and stuff like they were writing their own songs. Yeah, they didn't need songwriters or buildings full of songwriters. So they're the

Like, OK, there's not much of a market for us anymore. There's a lot more personal expression, which we'll talk about. But so, yeah, they just found other ways to do it. Like we'll produce these artists. We'll produce Debbie Harry and Richard Hell and all them. And speaking of other producers, Lenny K. Yeah. Also, well, also a musician in a real band and producer. It's definitely a real band. The Patti Smith group is definitely a real band. Yes.

And he, as we know, he compiled the songs for the compilation, the Nuggets compilation we're talking about. And if you're wondering why he was asked out of anybody around, I'm going to get a little bit in his bio really quick. Because we didn't really talk about it in the Patti Smith series. We didn't really get into his background.

It's interesting. It's a fun little microcosm of the evolution of rock and roll in the 50s and 60s. It's very, very fun. It's strange. So Lenny K., of course, New York City, baby. Yeah. Where we where we came from. But I mean, he was born in New York City. He was raised in Queens and Brooklyn. And then eventually his family settled in northern New Jersey, kind of in the suburbs kind of thing.

And he's like Lenny K has always been, of course, a lifelong music nerd. He started collecting records at 12 years old, but he started playing music even earlier when he was like about five or six. His dad brought him an accordion that he got from Italy and set him up with some lessons and which lasted until Lenny was about nine because he's like, where do you go from that? Four years of accordion lessons? If you're

not into accordion music on your free time or polka or anything like that. I'm not sure exactly. It's just not going to keep going. You've got to be a big Frankie Yankovic fan. Yes, yes, exactly. But Lenny...

was not, I guess. But he was a big music fan. He was into doo-wop. Like that was like his favorite thing. Of course, like him and Patti Smith later dancing to doo-wop. That all makes sense. He loved, by high school, he was already like playing acoustic guitar and learning like how to play folk music because he wanted to be like this lonesome folk singer in his parents' backyard. Like, I'm going to work on my music.

Kind of like dorky little, he's adorable. But then when the Beatles came to America in 1964 and the whole British invasion thing happened, Lenny, who was about like 17, 18 at the time, he decided to put down the lonely acoustic guitar and pick up an electric one.

Because he said, like many other kids, watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was like he saw what his future would be. Yeah. And he's like, that's going to be it. It's going to start a rock and roll band. Well, I think the Beatles like that. There's that old adage of like, you know, women want him. Men want to be him. I think it's with the Beatles, like you don't have to gender it. You could say with the Beatles, almost everyone in America, they either wanted the Beatles or they wanted to be the Beatles. Right. You know, why not?

Los dos. Right? So... ¿Por qué no? Los dos. We've been doing that. I know it's a 10-year-old joke. Anyway. So, yes. Lenny wanted to start a rock and roll band. He's 18 years old. He did. Like a few months after watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, he joined a band in college who called... They called themselves The Vandals. Bringing down the house with your kind of music. Yeah.

And I mean, you know, it's so good. Yeah. And, you know, and this poet coming. Yeah. Yeah. This band, like, you know, they're playing like at parties, at mixers, at frat houses, only covers. They're not writing their own original songs or anything like that. They're just doing Friday, Saturday nights for just dances for drunk people. And people want to have a good time. Remember, the Trashmen used to do this. Lou Reed did it, too, with his college band, L.A. and El Dorado's.

And this is all like Louie Louie, you know, R&B covers, What I Say, or You Make Me Want to Shout, Kick My Hits Up. Yeah, I know. I love it. Which was not a hit when it first came out, strangely enough. That's what we learned recently. Yes. So it was those kind of songs. And so Lenny, he had that band and another one called The Zoo later on. And then as we remember, we said in the Patti Smith series, he had like about a week where he was

singer in the band where he was Link Cromwell. He was like, you know, he his uncle got him like a weird gig of singing a song and then they released it. And then just, you know, it kind of came and went within the same week. But it gave him a sense of something of like, oh, maybe I can like actually take this into more of a career. I'll spin this more and and learn how to be a performer, singer, musician. Right. And so by the late 60s,

though. He had moved, Lenny had moved to Manhattan. He got a job at a record store as a record store clerk because those, that's where it begins sometimes, guys. That's where it begins. At this place on Bleeker Street called the Village Oldies, which was a precursor to Bleeker Bob's that was owned by Broadway Al and Bleeker Bob. You know, just the

It's really history, like very famous record record store downtown. That was the place where I went in and asked for the first time if they had any Lou Reed. And then they said it might be next to the underground, the Velvet Underground records. And I said, what is that? It's where you learn. That's where you learn. The record store is where you begin. That's where you're supposed to learn without a doubt.

And so he was working there. And then he's also Lenny's also a freelance writer. He was like writing reviews on the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. It was actually his review of the Velvet Underground that was that was printed in Fusion magazine that had Danny Fields calling Lenny up and saying, who?

are you? Yeah. Like we must be friends. That was always Danny Fields. Yes. Yes. He was so good at like just seeking out really cool people. So so Lenny K, you know, his writing was featured on Rolling Stone, Cream, Roxene and Esquire magazine. And that's where he got the attention of Jack Holtzman, president and founder of Electra Records.

Yes. And Electra Records, of course, but would put out The Doors, The Stooges, The MC5, all these amazing groups. Exactly. And Jack. So Jack saw something in Lenny, of course, and he probably heard about like, this is the guy who has amazing taste. This is a tastemaker kind of guy.

So he hired Lenny to do A&R, A&R, you know, artists and repertoire. Basically, somebody who goes around finding great bands to sign. Isn't it artists and representation? No, I Googled it. It said repertoire. Repertoire, really? Yeah, yeah. I learned something. Yeah, so did I. I'm sorry, just artists and repertoire sounds wrong for some reason.

I don't know who you should talk to. But that's what I Googled it. I don't think that's right. Really? So Lenny. So Lenny's watching bands live. He's listening to tape sent in and stuff. And, you know, remember Danny Fields did this for Elektra a little while before he got fired. Yeah, the company freak. Yes. Actually, he did it about a year before Lenny got hired. So Lenny might have gotten Danny's job.

So anyways, after, you know, that's a check out the studio series. If you want to hear a little bit more on that, it's really fun. So Lenny, when he was working at A&R, he tried to sign Blue Oyster Cult. That didn't work. And then he got a tape by, and this is a weird one. I don't know why I'm bringing this up, but he got a tape by these two guys named Hull and Oates. Yeah.

And then he said, never happened and threw it in the trash. And I think they went with like Arista or someone. Anyway, so like after six months of working for Electra,

I think Lenny was either fired or just stopped coming in because he wasn't signing anyone they liked and it was just not working out. But then one day in late 1970, when Lenny K was about 24, Jack Holtzman called him up and said, hey, could you put together a list of great rock songs from a few years ago that you think might have been overlooked or overshadowed? Because I want to make a great compilation album. Yeah. And I think the...

reason why and this is just me speculating here is because it wasn't just Lenny not bringing anything to Jack Holtzman Jack Holtzman would also bring bands to Lenny and say like hey do you want to work with these guys and be like like I don't like it so I think Jack Holtzman actually got a very good idea of what Lenny K's music taste was and where his specialties lie so when he had this idea I think he knew like oh fucking Lenny would be perfect for this because that was always Jack Holtzman's

biggest strength was taste and knowing who to tell what to do. Yeah. Holtzman was fucking brilliant at that. I've been skimming his book because I didn't have time to read it. And he's just way too smart for me. Yeah. He knew what he was. And he knows how to spin it very well, too. And you walk away like, wow.

What a man. Yeah. I mean, one of those guys that knows how to spin failures as successes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. OK, so Lenny, he took that to task because whatever Jack Holtzman tells him to do, he's like, I'll do it. Because remember, Jack is a stand up guy. Even when they dropped the stooges, he still gave Iggy Pop a Nikon camera. Yeah, really? Yeah. Yeah. No, he's still always like a friend to all, no matter what. Anyway, so Lenny is like, yeah, Jack, my new pal guy. Yes.

So Lenny spent all this time putting together about 50 or 60 songs that he thought would be good for the compilation. Songs that had come out between 1964 and 1968, which were the same years that Lenny was playing with his college bands when he was 1920, playing covers or popular foot stomping rock songs. You know, the songs that kids that age wanted to listen to, to dance to, and also very important to learn how to play to. A little something that will soon be called

garage rock. Yeah. So there it is. It's like some songs that just start out really simple, like one chord or three chords at most. And they're so simple and they're just so energetic. It's perfect. It makes total sense. And many of those songs made it on nuggets. I mean, of course, there's psychedelic songs, there's pop covers. The genres were not

too important. It was more about the energy of the songs of that era. And Lenny lived that era. So he was really tuned into that. He was the perfect, perfect

person for this. He even drove across country in 1967 to San Francisco because he heard like there's a bunch of hoopla going on over there. What's going on over there? So, I mean, he says in his book, Lightning Striking and how important all of that was, how important it was to like listen to the radio and to hear other people talk about other music and stuff. So he was able to curate whatever of his choosing. So some of these songs are pretty up

But many of them were kind of mid-level hits that you might have heard on the radio at that time. Or maybe it was regional because you said before Lenny wanted to make it like regional. He wanted to be like, you know, great songs from Texas or great songs from the Midwest and stuff. But Jack Holtzman was like, no, we're just doing this once. Just pick your favorite songs. He wanted to do eight compilations. That was his original pitch was eight compilations from all over America. He's like, you're getting a double album and that's it. Great.

Cool. Okay. We'll do that. So he picked us some songs and these songs are exciting and they're fun to play at a party. They're better than Chalk Champs. I'll tell you that. Much, much better. And he had all these resources, as I said, driving across country, going to record stores, collecting records, being in a

knowing what rocks, what, what, and playing with some of these bands. Exactly. That's exactly it. So he's even says Lenny K says to, even to this day, 50 years after nuggets have come out, people buy him drinks everywhere. He goes because of nuggets. Yeah.

Not anything else. Not like, thanks for producing this. Thanks for Patty's Best Group. It's Nuggets. And it changed people's, it blew people's minds when they finally got to it. Of course, some people took many, many years because Nuggets came out in October 1972, officially titled Nuggets, Original Artifacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965 to 1968.

But it sold very poorly, like less than 7000 copies in total, I heard. But it sold better when Seymour Stein reissued it in 1976 under his Sire Records label. And of course, we know that Greg Shaw came out with the Pebbles compilation. Yeah. Based in 1978, kind of based on inspired by the Nuggets because Lenny K and Greg Shaw were buddies and everything.

So then thus was born the compilation album, the carefully curated compilation album. Yes. That is so important. So this is ended up meaning so much more. It just it. Also, by the way, Jack Holtzman did mention that this is the only Nuggets, the only companion album not by a single artist that Rolling Stone recognized in the 250 best rock albums of all time. No shit. Yes. He underlined it.

It's at $191. Hey, $191. That's not bad at all. Yeah. I mean, this is, as you said, like it's the beginning of the compilation, but it's like more, it's specifically the beginning of the compilation that's made with love and respect and care. You know, it's the rescue compilation. Like we can't let this stuff die. It's not because the compilations that, you know, me and you grew up with, you know, they were, you know, they were soundtracks.

You know, it's like, you know, The Crow. Our version of the compilation, which I actually did. Yeah. Like the Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Trainspotting introduced me to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop when I was a little kid. Yeah. The Crow soundtrack introduced me to Joy Division, like kind of sideways because there was the Nine Inch Nails cover of Dead Souls. Yeah. Yeah. And then when I saw like the Joy Division tape, when I bought the isolation tape, I saw Dead Souls on there. I was like,

Oh, I know that song. And then I fucking fell in love with it. I mean, those soundtracks in the 90s were the gateway for so bad finding out so many different bands. Yeah. You know what? We'll post because I already wrote really quickly a top 10 favorite soundtracks of all time. It's a boom. It's there. We'll post it on No Dog's Pod on our Instagram because seriously, the soundtrack is like our generation of anyone 30 and 40 or whatever. And even in their 20s, it just

For some reason, we were obsessed with that. Yeah. And don't even get me started on the fucking punk compilations. The punk-a-rama. You're right. I forgot about those. Yeah. Punk-a-rama one through four, you know, the fat records compilations, all that, like the label compilations, which were, of course, a gateway into a lot of cool shit back in the 90s as well. Yes. It's the ultimate playlist. It's mixed tape. Yeah. It's great. I love this. And I love how it started with Letty K. It's wonderful. It's wonderful.

But concerning Nuggets, bands during this era, the bands that were on Nuggets, they were really only as good as their next single. And when a band bombed, it wasn't easy for them to recover. As such, rock bands were much more commercial-minded in the era of Nuggets, with few exceptions like 13th Floor Elevators, who got some success without compromise. The Elevators were

openly proselytized about taking psychedelic drugs in Texas in the mid-60s, and they still managed to get a performance on American Bandstand. Of course, some of them got arrested, and then Rocky Erickson went to jail. There's a whole story that, God damn it, we're going to get into the incredible story of the 13th Floor Elevators. Yes, we're doing it. But the point is, for most of these bands, personal expression was found more in the performances than in the lyrics.

But concerning that, early punk artists were adept at recognizing performative expression. People like the Ramones, people like Patti Smith. And when they made their own art, they combined the performative feelings of the songs on Nuggets with whatever it was that they wanted to write about. Television did this. Yeah, they didn't have to worry about, is anyone going to freak out about a song about sniff and glue? They didn't have to worry about, is anyone going to freak out about a song about organ energy and Wilhelm Reich?

For Patti Smith, she wrote songs about horses and Johnny and aliens. With the Ramones, they wrote songs about what they didn't want to do or what they did want to do. Oh, yeah. I want to be your boyfriend. I don't want to walk around with you. I want to go down to the basement. I don't want to be buried in a bed cemetery. It's all about what they want. Seriously, look at the lyrics. Yeah, look at the lyrics. They could write a song about, you know, male sex work. You know, they could write a song about, you know, having a...

CIA coups in Cuba. And all that's just the first album. But for most of the people who heard Nuggets when it was re-released at the dawn of the punk era in 1976, the compilation was basically a recipe book for pure rock and roll, the good stuff.

And while punk would have still happened without the compilation, it's possible that it wouldn't have happened without the songs that were featured on said compilation. And I, for one, would like to thank Lenny K for saving such a crucial piece of rock and roll history. Yes. Yes. That's great. And also speaking of us giving kudos to everyone, if we could play the song. Yes.

I would like to take this time to honor a genius. A genius. Yes. A true genius. Seriously, the best song to put on to, if you have any mood, any mood whatsoever, Twin Peaks theme, beautiful.

Beautiful. Angelo Badalamente. Angelo Badalamente. Of course, he wrote the save. We're talking about soundtracks. He just passed away this month. It's the ultimate soundtrack. Yeah. And I would even say this isn't a compilation, of course. This is just a soundtrack. This is Angelo Badalamente composing and scoring and playing all of these songs that were so beautiful and made Twin Peaks the show that it was, made it as magical and weird as possible.

and unsettling as it was all throughout the years. Angelo Badalamente, thank you so much for everything that you did for music in general, for TV, for media, for everything. And if you're interested in learning more about this, there's a fantastic 33 and a third about the soundtrack to Twin Peaks that talks a lot about Angelo Badalamente and

his history. And at the same time, let's also honor Julie Cruz, who passed just this last June. Julie Cruz collaborated with David Lynch and Angelo Badalamente, most famously on the theme for Twin Peaks, when she released a version with vocals as the incredible song Falling. Of course, she also sang it in the pilot episode of Twin Peaks. But as per David Lynch's daily weather report that was released on YouTube just last Friday. I never get the

number. But hey, now that we live in L.A., we can actually go and check out the Daily Weather Report and David Lynch every morning can tell us how to dress. But this song right here, he said on his last weather report, he didn't put one out yesterday, so maybe he's at the funeral for Angelo. His favorite collaboration that the three of them did together was The World Spends. Badalamente composed it, Lynch wrote the lyrics, and Julie Cruz sang it

She performed this song in episode 14 of Twin Peaks. It's the scene where James and Donna are there talking about Harold Smith at the roadhouse. It's when Cooper's also there watching Julie Crew sing this song. She disappears from the stage. The giant comes on and says, it is happening again. So here it is. The world spins around.

Written by David Lynch, composed by Angelo Badalamente, and sung by Julie Cruz. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. We'll be back soon. Yeah, we'll be back next year. We'll be back next year. We're already starting work on the next series. Yeah, you're going to be so excited. You're going to love it. Here it is. Here's Julie Cruz. Enjoy it, everybody. Happy holidays. Goodbye. Dust is dancing in the space. Sun comes up and down each day. Light and shadow change the world.

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