When punk was starting back in 77 and 78 there were many references to this album as one of the cornerstones to the whole punk thing. Of course what chance in those days would you have of getting an album that had been released five years previous. But one day I'm looking through the boxes of records at the Monash University Record Shop and there it is. Thick cardboard. Cut out. Nuggets. It was like discovering gold. Couldn't wait to get it home and play it. And song after song was just brilliant. After weeks of listening to this album, I think I'd changed the way I wrote songs.
And what songs. "Don't Look Back by the Remains. "Lies" by the Knickerbockers. How long had I been looking for that single? This album was chock full of legendary songs. We'd put these songs on cassette and play them before the band went on stage.
One day I went looking through my albums. This would be in the 90s. I couldn't find the album. By then I had quite a few albums so it took me a few looks to realise it wasn't there. And the Undertones and god know what else had disappeared. Had I sold them? Unlikely. Did I lend them to someone? Unfortunately, the mists of time have closed around this mystery.
So began the process of looking to find all those missing albums. Record fairs and record shops came back into my life. And what a pleasure it has been to rediscover records after using CDs for so long. Rhino released a 4 CD box of Nuggets (volume 1 & 2) but it doesn't beat putting the needle on the record.
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