Pebbles series

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Pebbles series
Pebbles series

The Pebbles series is an extensive group of compilation albums in both LP and CD formats that have been issued on several record labels, though mostly by AIP Records. Together with the companion Highs in the Mid-Sixties series, the Pebbles series made available over 800 obscure, mostly American "Original Punk Rock" songs recorded in the mid-1960's — primarily known today as the garage rock and psychedelic rock genres — that were previously known only to a handful of collectors. In 2007, the release of the Pebbles, Volume 11 CD marked the final album in the Pebbles series – nearly 30 years after the original Pebbles album was released in 1978.

Including the Highs in the Mid-Sixties series, Best of Pebbles series, Essential Pebbles series, Planetary Pebbles series, and two box sets, close to 100 compilation albums have been released using the Pebbles name. Following on the heels of the success of the Pebbles series, dozens of other series of garage rock compilation albums have been started, with numerous albums being released each year for several decades.

Contents

[edit] "Pebbles" Compared with "Nuggets"

The name "Pebbles" is a diminutive of the name of the seminal Nuggets album of similar music; since in almost all cases, the recordings compiled on these albums were, at best, regional hits with little or no national exposure. By contrast, several of the bands presented on the original Nuggets compilation had one or more national hit songs, such as the Seeds, Blues Magoos, Electric Prunes, the Standells, Count Five and others. As additional albums were released under both of these names over the years, Nuggets albums tended to feature more familiar bands, while Pebbles albums usually unearthed virtually unknown recording artists or previously unreleased tracks by better known bands.

[edit] Nature of the Music

The Pebbles series describes the recordings on their albums as "Original punk rock and psychedelic rock from the fabulous Sixties." These recordings were primarily made by the numerous American bands that were formed in the wake of the British Invasion. Essentially referring to the young age and lack of sophistication of the musicians, the term "punk rock" was coined (or at least popularized) by Lenny Kaye, who was involved in compiling the original Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. Some of the recordings of this type were credited to individual musicians, but most were made by young combos and rock bands that were typically composed of teenagers; and they almost invariably come from 45 singles. In many cases, the band would release a routine cover song of a well-known hit as the "A" side of a single and include a more interesting original song as the "B" side that would be more appropriate for inclusion on a compilation album. However, the wyld covers by some of the garage rock bands are as renowned as any of the original songs, and numerous cover songs have also been compiled on the Pebbles series.

"Punk rock" is now mainly applied to several waves of bands that formed in the 1970s and later, and many of these bands cite the music on Nuggets and Pebbles albums as major influences. This type of music is now generally identified as the genres of garage rock, named after the practice venue that most young bands utilize, and psychedelic rock, since many songs were designed to be enjoyed while under the influence of psychoactive drugs such as marijuana and LSD.

[edit] Mastercharge Records

The original release of the first Pebbles album was on Mastercharge Records in 1978 and was circulated primarily among a small group of collectors in Australia, where interest in this obscure music first germinated. Only 500 albums were pressed with a pink and black pasted-on cover. (One radio playlist posted on the Internet mentioned a Pebbles, Volume 2 on Mastercharge, but this was probably an incorrect reference to the BFD release).

[edit] BFD Records

The legitimacy of BFD Records was long in question. It was discovered in the early '80s that the creator of the Pebbles series was Greg Shaw (of Bomp! Records). Creating a bogus record label eliminated the worry of smaller record labels being able to find the creator of the Pebbles series and asking for royalties. In most cases, the records were produced in such small numbers that locating anyone regarding royalties would have been impossible.

[edit] AIP Records

Beginning in 1983 (based on copyright notices on the album covers, although their website maintains it was 1979), Bomp! Records created AIP Records in part to issue further volumes in the Pebbles series. In all, 28 LPs and 12 CDs have been issued in the Pebbles series under their auspices. Many of the LPs and CDs have basically the same catalogue numbers, and there is significant overlap in the tracks on the first 6 volumes on LP and CD — with the CD release of Volume 6 being shifted to the English Freakbeat series — adding to the confusion. However, the overlap is far from complete; Pebbles, Volume 5 is the sole CD that has all of the songs from the corresponding LP, and only about half of the surf rock tracks from the Pebbles, Volume 4 LP were released on that CD.

When AIP Records revived the Pebbles series in 1983, the company was apparently more interested in documenting local music scenes than in scattershot groupings of American garage rock records, so the Highs in the Mid-Sixties series was begun concurrently, with a total of 23 volumes devoted to recordings from specific American cities, states and regions, as compared to the 18 volumes of AIP Pebbles LPs. What's more, 10 of the 18 LPs that AIP issued in the Pebbles series were compilations of recordings from continental Europe in the sub-series the Continent Lashes Back. More recently, AIP Records has begun the Essential Pebbles series and Planetary Pebbles series.

According to the Bomp! Records website, the release of the Pebbles, Volume 11 CD in 2007 – actually several years after the release of the Pebbles, Volume 12 CD – represents the last album that will ever be issued in the Pebbles series.

To their credit, when AIP began issuing Pebbles albums on CD, the albums included numerous recordings that were not as yet on the LPs. Also – after the release of the first six volumes on CD – all of the tracks on the Pebbles CDs had been previously un-reissued on CD. Even the first two releases in the Essential Pebbles series include a second CD of previously un-reissued music in addition to the distillation from the previous Pebbles albums.

[edit] ESD Records

According to the AIP Records website, ESD Records (also known as East Side Digital) issued 4 volumes of CDs in the Pebbles series in 1989-1990. Though compiled by AIP, the tracks are almost completely different from those in the corresponding volumes of the LPs and CDs described previously (although a sizable number of the tracks on ESD's Pebbles, Volume 2 appear on both the earlier Pebbles, Volume 3 LP and the later CD reissue). Particularly on ESD's Pebbles, Volume 1, many of the tracks are either new to Pebbles or are buried on the higher-numbered volumes in the Pebbles series or Highs in the Mid-Sixties series. The albums had a limited run of only 1,000 each and are now difficult to locate; but, not surprisingly, the ESD and AIP CDs are often confused. One added bonus in the ESD CDs is that the excellent liner notes are written by Nigel Strange (who wrote liner notes for several of the BFD Records albums also).

[edit] Other Record Labels

Besides these albums in the Pebbles series, the Pebbles name has been used in other Bomp! Records releases outside of AIP Records, and other LPs and CDs have been issued under this name, or similar names such as the Best of Pebbles series. A series was started in 1993 for release in Japan (complete with liner notes in Japanese), called the Great Pebbles series (although to date, only one CD has been released under this name). A 5-LP Pebbles Box of the first five volumes in the Pebbles series — always the most popular according to the AIP Records website — was made available in the United Kingdom several years also; while a similar CD box set came out more recently, called the Trash Box. However, in each case, the tracks on the box sets differ significantly from those on the individual Pebbles LPs and CDs.

[edit] Liner Notes

One outstanding feature of the Pebbles series are the detailed liner notes that are included on nearly all of the albums, dating back even to the original release on Mastercharge Records. On the AIP Records releases and most of the others, they provide what little information is available on the artists on the album (and/or the general music scene that led to the recordings), though the printing on the original 45 disc is often the extent of it.

On the other hand, the tongue-in-cheek liner notes on the Pebbles, Volume 2 LP that were credited to "A. Seltzer" are a nearly incoherent rant on garage rock that still provide some info on the bands, along with observations ranging from blunt – "These guys were the losers in a scene where Question Mark & the Mysterians were the winners; they were such bad news that even the likes of the Trashmen looked down on 'em" – to simply over-the-top: "My pick for the Grammy this year is 'Green Fuz' by Randy Alvey & Green Fuz, which has to be the rottenest recording ever made but has more honest-to-Howard Cosell energy than anything the wimpy Sex Pistols ever dreamed of puking up." The two-part pseudo-scholarly exposition on the Pebbles, Volume 7 and Pebbles, Volume 8 LPs took British Invasion musicians to task, accusing them all of being throwback, "dance hall" bands and coming to the bizarre conclusion that Tiny Tim represented the peak of popular music. Volume Two also features a humorous series of fictional LPs available on the BFD label, such as Sid Vicious Live at Folsom Prison.

While the liner notes on the BFD Records were more conversational and commented as often on the music as on the musicians, AIP Records brought a touch more scholarship to theirs — though not without the same often playful spirit — and usually provided more information on band members and future bands. There was also a stock liner notes section on many of the AIP albums that closed with: "Truly this was the pinnacle of rock and roll, and until something comes along that surpasses it, we can only sit back and wonder at how great innocence can be."

[edit] Annotations

As with the liner notes, BFD Records only occasionally provided information on songwriters and release dates of the recordings that were being compiled. AIP Records was more attentive to these details and also provided the record label and catalogue number in many cases, particularly on the CDs. On the other hand, the word "the" was dropped from almost all of the band names on the track listings for the AIP CDs.

[edit] Cover Art

In keeping with the lo-fi nature of the recordings, many of the early Pebbles LPs had black-and-white covers, and none were issued with full-color covers. The BFD Records album covers were noted for the crazed drawings and strange photographs, which were carried forward into the first few releases by AIP Records, although most of their releases had more conventional covers (such as a photograph of one of the bands represented on the album).

[edit] Discography

[edit] LPs

[edit] CDs — AIP Records

[edit] CDs — ESD Records

[edit] Box Sets

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Web Radio