I always kind of get the Blades confused with the Brakes of "The Way I See It" non-fame, and I know that's kind of stupid but I also get Melissa Manchester confused with Maureen McGovern, Pearl Jam confused with Uriah Heep, Devendra Banhart confused with Adam Sandler, and Modest Mouse confused with a plastic grocery sack full of used toothbrushes and dryer lint. Anyway, the Blades provide excellent Irish Power Pop with a more extensive discography than I'd have guessed, much of which is available here.

The Bongos, the Feelies, Yo La Tengo...we used to wonder what made Hoboken so cool. I can't tell you how excited I was just to be in Maxwells for the first time in the mid-90s.

If the Bongos' Drums Along the Hudson plays like a singles compilation, Richard Barone says that's no accident, as most of the LPs tracks had been originally issued on 45s. The Bongos started with the intention of solely making singles, as they felt that was the most exciting medium for pop music. When you throw 'em all together though, you get a stellar LP, one I probably spent almost as much time with in high school as the dB's Repercussion, which is saying quite a bit. "Glow In the Dark" was always a particular favorite; enigmatic, exciting, hopeful, a perfect song for driving around aimlessly and indulging in a bit of night-daydreaming.

The "Numbers With Wings" EP is fantastic too, goes five for five in my book. I liked their RCA LP Beat Hotel immensely at the time, but years down the road some of the production choices haven't aged well. Still some terrific songs though. Richard Barone continues to do all kindsa things.

By the way, did anyone else notice that Barone did an acoustic-based arrangement of "The Man Who Sold the World" on his excellent live album Cool Blue Halo several years before Kurt Cobain did a very similar version of same on that MTV Unplugged thing? Coincidence? I wonder...

Steve Ward has rare gifts for both penning pop songs that evoke images too beautiful for this world, and for warm, lush production; the results have produced a slew of perfect moments, including "Blue Summer," a perfect song for gazing at moonlight on water on a hot July night. We should mention that Mr. Ward has several records out both under his own name and Cherry Twister; We're especially fond of At Home With Cherry Twister (Not Lame records, 2000), one of our favorite albums of the past fifteen years or so.

This showed up one day in the 45 bin at Kief's and it had Nikki Sudden's name on it, so naturally I was interested. On the forum at nikkisudden.com, he tells the story: He was working in a studio in Italy, and these guys wanted to record "Play With Fire" but couldn't sing it right, so he did a guide vocal for them, which they kept and released. "Love Song," while it doesn't actually seem to have any direct involvement, owes such an obvious stylistic debt to the Jacobites that I'd say they should pay Sudden and Kusworth royalties, but I'm sure there weren't any. Anyway, we love this record; Mr. Cat digs the punkly sneer, whining harp, and bashed tambourine, and the rest of us just marvel at the fact that we know exactly what the singer means although we can't understand a word.

I've always enjoyed Kendra Smith's post-Dream Syndicate variations on "All Tomorrow's Parties." Whether working with David Roback in Opal or leading her own project, she has maintained a high level of excellence, if not visibility, and I find her much more compelling than that pouty girl who replaced her to form Mazzy Star. We especially like her 1995 album on 4AD, Five Ways Of Disappearing. This track is from an elaborately packaged 1982 10-inch.

Music of my youth from the almost unbearably earnest Miracle Legion. Their first EP created a bit of a stir and was very difficult to find within a few months of its release, granting that expectations for this sort of thing were considerably lower than they would be now. (Selling 2000 copies of something like this would have been considered no small triumph.) They received plenty of the usual R.E.M. comparisons, but managed to establish their own identity over the course of several releases; one I particularly enjoy is the Me and Mr. Ray LP (1989), a stripped-down, largely acoustic affair that tends (like all of their records, really) toward sad melodies and movingly clunky lyrics. You can probably still find it pretty cheap in America's used LP bins. Songwriter/lead singer Mark Mulcahy continues to make the occasional solo record, and re-dubbed a later lineup of Miracle Legion Polaris to provide music for The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

I remember seeing Miracle Legion's one-time labelmates Dumptruck cover this song at a show in the mid-80s.