My quest for a legendary punk mix tape

In the early 1980s, I was a young teenager being drawn into the small music scene of a provincial town. The moment was post-punk – bands like Joy Division, The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen were driving my interest – but I was also fascinated by the punk movement that had immediately preceded it.

One of the enduring origin-story legends of punk, frequently mentioned in the music press articles I was then devouring, was that it had been kickstarted when Lenny Kaye, later the guitarist in the Patti Smith Group, curated (as we’d say now) a compilation album of lo-fi 1960s American garage bands called Nuggets. 

Nuggets had come out quietly in 1972 but became a cult word-of-mouth success in the years that followed, particularly stateside. Its appeal was that it sounded wildly different and fresh next to the then prevalent lush rock sounds of the mid-seventies, Exile-period Stones, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.