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Now, I've listened to plenty of garage comps in my day. There are some great ones, but BFTG is its own thing, like how the Cramps are their own thing. When Tim puts the obscure tracks together in a sequence the sum is much greater than the parts: Each consecutive crazed rock 'n' roll record hits the garage-punk sweet spot of our collective frontal lobe more precisely. BFTG releases are like an amazing collage, a great gumbo, or your girlfriends' sexiest outfit. Or, for that matter, the best mixtape you ever made.Some compilation albums work, and some don't, and it seems very difficult to discern which components direct the work in one direction or another. I've been spilling a constant stream of BFTG comps on the turntable for most of my adult life, and you just can't fuck with them. They're like Picasso's Guernica or a perfect sausage and peppers hero. They are art that is primeval and perfect. Compare them to Jackson Pollock—it's in the pour. If you or I poured paint it would look like some asshole poured some paint. But when Pollock poured paint it became amazing and beautiful. The pour of Back from the Grave volumes nine and ten is mind-boggling.BFTG releases are like an amazing collage, a great gumbo, or your girlfriends' sexiest outfit. Or, for that matter, the best mixtape you ever made.
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Nuggets begat the late and great Greg Shaw's compilation series Pebbles, a series which wasn't particularly worried about clearing rights. Shaw, who I'd argue is the Johnny Appleseed of American punk, had published rock 'n' roll fanzines since the mid 1960s. His Mojo Navigator appeared in the middle of the San Francisco rock scene in 1966. By 1969 it had evolved into a retro-rock connoisseur bible, exploring the lore and history of primitive American musics ranging from rockabilly to garage punk, alongside lengthy and insightful excursions into marginal British Invasion sounds. Bomp became a record label, a professional rock zine, and a distribution outlet for the sounds that came to be called punk rock. From 1978 on, Shaw compiled and released the Pebbles garage punk anthology series.The release of Pebbles was timed perfectly with the boost in interest in all things 60s, a snacky side dish to the post-punk skinny tie power-pop entree of 1979/1980. Punk-era ears had gotten people used to raunch, and the avalanches of indie 45s had advanced the momentum of obscurity-seeking. The musical language of 60s garage punk wasn't as familiar then as it is now, either. To most, the 60s was pop and choruses and ringing Rickenbackers; there wasn't a distinction between the cutesy stuff and gruntiest and most primitive. This is certainly reflected in the Pebbles comps, as is Greg Shaw's personal taste, with its baffling adoration of melody sitting in counterpoint to garage punk raunch. Following Pebbles, numerous other garage-punk/garage-psych compilations started mushrooming by the early 1980s.
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It's been 33 years since the first Back from the Grave, and five decades since these sounds were first etched on wax, but they still sound fresh, the lyrical wounds still raw. For collectors and compilers, it seems like there will always be gold in them thar hills of the 60s punk scene, always new bands and songs to discover and digest.There's something comforting about BFTG's enduring power. The teenagers who made that music had tapped into something great, and my teenaged self recognized that ineffable thing two decades later. Its power endures, while the pop cultural dreck produced in the following decades is chugging steadily toward oblivion. The 60s zombie punks on the comp covers will never die, and they'll go on decapitating and burying their imitators and descendants for a long, long time.Order Back from the Grave albums here.Johan Kugelberg runs the project space/archiving company Boo-Hooray. Follow him on Twitter."Attitude, anger and snot is PRECISELY what 60s punk is all about" –Tim Warren