It all started in 1973 when Lenny Kaye, then an Elektra Records employee, compiled a double album of his favorite lesser-known rock & roll 45’s. Fifty years later, that album’s title “Nuggets” has become synonymous with an especially wild moment in late ‘60s rock — a moment when teenage hormones and sheer attitude fueled records like the Seeds’ “Pushing Too Hard,” Count Five’s ”Psychotic Reaction” and the Standells’ Boston-associated classic, “Dirty Water.”

“These songs really capture a moment when there was a great sense of possibility,” Kaye said this week. “The moment was post-British Invasion and pre-progressive rock. And these were groups trying to take advantage of the new palette of sound that was available, but weren’t sure what to do with it. But if you were playing parties and college mixers at that time, this was the playlist you were working from.

“It is adolescent, in a sense — Rock started out teenage and grew into possibly being art, so this was right in the middle. It had anger, it had frustration, all those qualities we think of as adolescent. It is full of itself in a certain way, it doesn’t want to be told what to do. It has a sense of rebellion but also a sense of trying to understand how to become more mature, as rock and roll would be in years to come.”

Kaye went onto a notable career as a musician, writer, DJ (currently on Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel), and longtime right-hand man to Patti Smith. In the past year he’s hosted “Nuggets” anniversary shows in different cities, and the Boston area gets its turn at the Cut in Gloucester tonight. Joining Kaye will be an all-star cast including ex-R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, and a handful of local heroes: Willie Alexander, Barrence Whitfield, David Minehan (the Neighborhoods), Clint Conley (Mission of Burma), Bill Janovitz (Buffalo Tom), two of The Cars (Greg Hawkes and David Robinson), and more.

Everyone will pick a favorite tune from the “Nuggets” album and the surrounding era. “They’re great songs, that’s why they’ve held on for so long,” Kaye says. “They have great hooks and the audience responds immediately. It’s testament to what moves people, and what makes people move.”

The influence of “Nuggets” went across to England as well. Hugo Burnham, the founding Gang of Four drummer and current Endicott College professor, recalls discovering it in the later ‘70s. He’ll be one of the guest stars performing at the Cut.

“It was one of those double albums that we heard about and eventually found, probably at Virgin Records,” he said this week. “Quite a few musicians and journalists were talking about it. And hell, Lenny Kaye from Patti’s band? Woo-hoo! And a lot of those songs were covered by or influenced the US bands we were discovering — and by ‘we’ I mean my generation of English punks and post-punks. But I discovered some of the Nuggets songs years before as a kid. My brother especially loved ‘Woolly Bully’ and we used to jump around on the bed screaming it at each other.”