My friend Chris Beneke is one of my favorite songwriters of all time. His songs have an honesty, a simplicity, and a beauty thatI admire and envy. These tracks are from an open mic night performance at the Bottleneck in Lawrence in the winter of 1990 (is that right, Mark Johnson?). There were just a handful of people there; I seem to remember it was very cold that night. I also believe it was the first time I ever heard him play. There was a board tape made of this brief performance, and for years a few cassettes circulated amongst a few of us Wilmas guys and and other members of our camp. It would be no exaggeration to say that they were prized by each of us who owned it, and that we felt we were privvy to something unique and fragile.

Chris didn't play in public that often, I'm not exactly sure if he just didn't care for playing, or just didn't care for the venues available to him, or just had several other irons in the fire most of the time. He tried a few things with a band (which Mike Horan and I participated in), but I recall most vividly his solo acoustic performances, his breathy voice and buckling knees evoking nothing so much as some absurd cross between Daniel Johnston and Big Star. Chris recorded a longer tape of his Little Hits a few years later while out of the country, and there are some four-track demos around somewhere, so maybe Chris will let us run some of his other gems at some point.

Here's another candidate for the next volume of Yellow Pills: Prefill. Ray Paul was a Boston songwriter who played most everything on this record, though he did recieve some assistance from another Boston legend known as Mr. Curt, who made a few records of his own. "How Do You Know?" gets the slight nod over Paul's Twilley-ish first 45, "Lady Be Mine Tonight." He also released an LP called Go Time in 1980, and a CD compiling most of the above in the late 90s.

Recently Ray Paul has reactivated his Permanent Press label (which released discs by the likes of the William Pears and Spongetones during the 90s) to do a DVD release of some of his archival material, including a performance with Emmit Rhodes.

More neglected Australians. I see in the drawer here that there are three 45s, of which I can reliably say that this is the second. Over on the CD (I kind of wish the guys would learn to fetch) shelf we also find a CDEP entitled "Fairydust," also on the most excellently-named Plenny O' Hooks label. Was there anything else?

Were the Welcome Mat being realistic or merely cynical when on the back of the sleeve they thanked "Collector scum the world over?"

When little Mickey hears this, his fuzzy heart starts beating so fast I worry that he'll explode. "He means it so much!" he says, on the brink of tears. The "he" in question is Mike Jarvis, the amazing voice of the Lackloves, and prior to that of the Blow Pops. This is one of THEE examples of what happens when SOUL meets power pop. "UNTIL THE END OF TIME!" My God, the infinite sadness...is there something NOT to get about that?!? An absolute classic, our single favorite song of 2002, and one to play over and over, because you will NEVER forget that moment when you discover that your love, while it is so strong that you can physically feel it dissolving your internal organs, is not powerful enough to overcome mere circumstance.

This is an alternate version from the one on the Starcitybaby CD. Mr. Rainbow Quartz decided he liked the basement demo better, but we prefer the "finished" version. Either one is deadly.

This probably isn't for everybody, (or then again, maybe it is) but I've always thought this was an amazing, haunting gem of a record. It has the intimacy of an improvised lullabye, or a work song for folding laundry. The inevitable "house" remixes miss the point, stripping the song of it's awesome quiet.

Elvis Costello and Talking Heads have been cited as important influences on this Chapel Hill combo; on the charming "Venus" it is clearly the former that is predominant. The "Big Boy's Dream" EP was the first of several X-Teens releases and was produced by...surprise!...Don Dixon. They would later comply with the 1982 law that required all southern pop bands to work with Mitch Easter; he produced their eponymous LP on Dolphin (See also: Tommy Keene, Lifeboat) in 1983.

The first dBs album without Chris Stamey, Like This, was an unqualified success. Peter Holsapple loaded it up with great songs, and while certain production flourishes make it seem a bit dated, it still stands up just fine. Neither it nor the following The Sound Of Music are currently in print, although I'm sure someone will rectify that eventually. "Darby Hall" would not have been out of place on Like This; perhaps it was felt that it was too similar to the lovely "On the Battlefront." For whatever reason it was relegated to the b-side of the"Love Is For Lovers" 45, and was included as a bonus track on the CD issue of the album, which changes hands on eBay for exhorbitant prices.