The original bootleg 60s garage punk/psychedelic compilation. Very poor quality recordings & unofficial reproduction of copyrighted works. Nuggets came out on Elektra in 1972. A second volume was planned but as sales weren't that good at the time and the legal dept. had to do a lot of legwork tracking down every member of the bands to sign releases.... the idea was dropped.
A few years down the line collector, fanzine writer and all-round visionary Greg Shaw picked up the baton and ran with it, creating the Pebbles series.
The very first volume originally came out on Mastercharge Records in 1978 in a limited edition of 500, the following volumes were on BFD and then AiP Records. Some volumes of The Best of Pebbles appeared on Ubik.
Sound quality and legitimacy were two issues that didn't worry Greg Shaw too much. Without access to mastertapes Pebbles was compiled from original 45s or sometimes cassette tapes of ultra-rare tracks.
Vinyl pressings of Pebbles are thin and noisy. Tracks might be at the wrong speed, one time he even used a skipping record as the master.
As the series was unofficial a spurious address in Kookaburra, Australia was created in an attempt to either create mystery or to get around copyright laws.
Despite the flaws in the Pebbles albums Greg Shaw deserves credit for creating a whole new collector-centred genre (the 'comp') and for inspiring countless others to compile their own series and one-offs. Pebbles was certainly superseded by later collections like Back From the Grave - but it was the first and many in the scene are still very fond of the brand.