As much as I dearly love it, I don't put a lot of vintage soul up here for several reasons. Chief among them: the fact that I don't know that much about it and the fact that there are many superior audio blogs devoted to this very subject. However, I thought perhaps some of you might enjoy the change of pace provided by this 45, which I heard for the first time during a set by Superwolf over in KC (between sets of this Nuggets/Pebbles cover band I was playing in at the time). I dig the way the James Brown verses swerve into the Wilson Pickett chorus. And check the fade out, where our afflicted vocalist tells us that if he weren't in so much pain "I think I'd do that thing/They call the shing-a-ling." I feel that way every day of my life.

I don't know if this has appeared on any of those Kent (UK) CDs that excavate gems from the Atlantic Records catalog, but you can still get the original single pretty cheap. And unlike some of the 45s that seem to be all the rage ($$$!), it's a great record, meaning "it's a good song," as opposed to "it has five seconds of really cool drums on it."

Rusty Willoughby has a knack for knocking 'em out in a manner both snotty and tuneful. Perhaps that's because they never seem to say more than is absolutely necessary. Here are a couple of Mickey's favorites from the first Flop LP, neither of which hit 2:00. Mr. Willoughby had a Sub Pop 45 in 1999 and currently has a new band called Llama. You can keep up with his projects here.

I always had this 45 around, but I never realised what a good song it really was until I heard Franklin Bruno do a live solo version of it. It's on the Valley Girl soundtrack too, but does anyone know if their Slash LP was any good?

Here, in a nutshell, is the evolution of Boston's beloved Neighborhoods, from the mod/pop leanings of the first single (the band photo on the back of the sleeve bears this out) to the middle of the decade, when they'd assimilated the same beloved-in-their-youth hard rock bands that infected the Replacements. "Arrogance" is probably the best song on a good album. I saw them a couple of years later after they signed to Imago; the deal seemed to have bought them a lot of shiny new gear. By that point they were a fine bar band (not as common a commodity as you might think, especially nowadays) but not much more.

Nixon's Head, from Philadelphia, came recommended by our old pals the Wishniaks, and turned out to be a fairly typical group of rock 'n' roll-smitten young men who decided to have a go. Despite some tasteful and nifty material, they labored in obscurity, much like Philly pop peers Flight of Mavis and the aforementioned Wishniaks. Besides two solid EPs, they indulged in a good bit of side-project/alter ego tomfoolery under names like Frankenslade and the Autumn Carousel, then reformed in the late 90s to make another couple of records. They're hanging in there. The band was headed by trivia expert/Groove Disques guy Jim Slade; make sure to visit the label's web site for his well-considered thoughts on the correct way to write and play rock music, as well as the latest Trolleyvox news.