A double play from the early part of the Spongetones wondrous career. I remember hearing their first album, Beat Music at a mall record shop called the Brass Ear in Hays, Kansas and realizing immediately that I needed it. (The clerk at the Brass Ear did that to me a couple of times. "I'll bet I can sell that dorky kid this Spongetones record.") They've continued to make fine records for over 20 years that swing gently to and fro around an axis that reads "outright Beatle imitation," and have done so with such obvious affection and skill that it is impossible to dismiss their artistry.

Th' other night at the Redwalls show Tom Sorrells and Benji King were going on about how great this LP, and in particular this song were, so I grabbed a copy at work the other day, took it back to my desk, plopped it on and...Wow! Those guys were dead on (again). I loved it instantly and so much that I thought you all should hear it.

I had loved the Embarrassment like I loved my own lungs, so in the fall of 1986 I was intrigued to learn that Bill Goffrier had a new band. Upon hearing their debut EP I was not the least bit disappointed. I've never spent much time with their final LP, the major-label Slam, but all three of their Homestead releases were heavily-relied-upon texts of the era, especially Craps, which contains such parallel-universe hits as "Meet the Witch" and "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House." As for the track presented here, let's just say discretely that this cover of a classic hit single from their youth shows the band somehow both cheeky and reverent and obviously having a great time, a feeling that permeates most everything they ever did.

Also, Dave, Mark, Cody, Chris Hayes, etc. can you verify my failing memory? I seem to recall that when Big Dipper played the Bottleneck in early 1989 that they performed Husker Du's "Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill" as an encore with drummer Jeff Oliphant on vocals. Oliphant had stripped down to his boxers and was frugging madly, and at the conclusion of the number was tackled by extremely tall bassist Steve Michener (ex-Dumptruck) and pitched headlong into the crowd. It was awesome. At least the way I remember it...

This 45 is, in our opinion, undervalued by power pop collectors, though I think the band has always resisted being lumped in with that scene. Both sides are really solid, and a bit of an odd wrinkle for the genre with wiggy guitar, and vocals which don't immediately hearken back to the British Invasion. Skooshny is still active (we like their Even My Eyes CD, 1996), and released a career retrospective in 2004.