Jim Keays says he had to be a pioneer in the mid-'60s.


An influential 1970s album returns with local companions.

THERE is never a shortage of influential records, given that the contours of popular music constantly change, but rare is the collection that has been steadily influencing sounds and minds alike for four long decades. But that's the case with Nuggets, the genuinely seminal 1972 compilation of 1960s American guitar bands that laid the foundations for garage rock and set the scene for punk.

''I probably first heard Nuggets when I was 17 and it blew my mind. I realised '60s music wasn't all British Invasion bands and the Forrest Gump soundtrack,'' Sydney-based musician Owen Penglis says. ''A friend who was a bit older than me had sprung for the box-set edition and he thought I would like it. He was right - some of the bands sound like teenagers on a rampage before they have to go to war.''

The Straight Arrows with Owen Penglis, front left.

The Straight Arrows with Owen Penglis, front left.

Twelve years on and Penglis, who fronts the raw-and-ready garage rock outfit Straight Arrows and is a leading producer of unadorned fellow acts, is just one of many musicians and fans around the world who've taken their cue from the original Nuggets, which was compiled by music journalist and future Patti Smith Group member Lenny Kaye.

The 40th anniversary of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 brings not only a newly remastered edition of the original collection of often underappreciated regional successes and one-hit wonders, but also two new companion pieces. Down Under Nuggets: Original Australian Artyfacts 1965-67 collects together Australian equivalents, while Nuggets: Antipodean Interpolations of the First Psychedelic Era finds a selection of generally garage-friendly contemporary Australian groups paying tribute to the original works.

''I thought it sounded like a good idea, but I didn't want to screw up one of my favourite compilations,'' says Penglis, who with Straight Arrows toughens up one of the cleanest tracks on the original Nuggets, The Knickerbockers' 1965 Beatles homage Lies. ''The equipment they were using is like a four-track cassette desk now, so you can get a four-track and plug a mic into it now and get what sounds like real music.''

The world contained within Nuggets, Penglis suggests, is ''a completely different culture'', and that's why it has served as a springboard for successive generations, providing young musicians with a stripped-down mindset. Much the same applies with Down Under Nuggets, whose track listing includes the likes of the Missing Links, the Loved Ones and Masters Apprentices.

''They call it garage punk now, but it was just rock'n'roll music. There was no genre - it was just the music we wanted to make,'' remembers former Masters Apprentices frontman Jim Keays. ''We thought the lifespan of these songs was a couple of months at most.''

Released as a single in 1967, just after Masters Apprentices had relocated from Adelaide to Melbourne, Buried and Dead is two minutes and 36 seconds of sneering dedication interspersed with climactic grunts, raucous guitar and blues harmonica licks that Keays had been taught by Rolling Stone Brian Jones during the British group's 1965 Australian tour.

According to Keays, the band were figuring out recording technology and the music business as they went: Masters Apprentices would sometimes record four songs in an afternoon and then play three gigs that night across Frankston, Preston and Box Hill. The resulting sound, the 66-year-old notes, doesn't just hold nostalgic value. Like an Owen Penglis production, Keays used Nuggets as a signpost for his most recent solo album, Dirty, Dirty. ''You had to be a pioneer,'' Keays says of Australia's mid-'60s music scene, and one of the enduring strengths of Nuggets is that it encourages each new wave of young disciples to make the same choice. Garage rock remains forever young.

EG and Warner Music are giving away five prize packs with each of the three Nuggets albums. Email details to egfreebies@theage.com.au by noon Friday November 30 with the word NUGGETS in the subject field to enter.