You would think that the town that produced Buddy Holly would maintain at least a small power pop scene, but my semi-hometown of Lubbock, Texas (actually, I was born in Denver City, about a hundred miles away, a town that makes Jon's hometown of Pratt, KS look like Paris) has never had a particularly active local music presence despite being home to the rather huge campus of Texas Tech University. When I was attending high school in Lubbock, the Nelsons were pretty much IT when it came to decent local bands, but as far as the kids at Monterey High were concerned, they were full-on rock stars. Pretty much the only new wave-influenced band in Lubbock through the first half of the '80s, the Nelsons took a lot of cues from the likes of the Rezillos and the B-52's, producing a jumpy, herky-jerky take on new wave bubblegum that favored scratchy-scratchy guitars, a cheap organ and a goofy comic outlook. (Singer Donnie Allison's closing spoken-word rant is saved from total dorkiness only by the gleeful abandon with which he delivers it.) It worked, for a while, and the Nelsons actually flirted with mainstream success, winning one round of MTV's Basement Tapes contest (remember that? It was like a battle of the bands where a lot of local bands sent in really crappy homemade videos in and we all sat around and laughed at how awful they were) with a deeply silly video for this very song. But then Ricky Nelson died and the Nelsons changed their name out of respect when they found out that his twin sons Gunnar and Matthew were using it in L.A. Only problem was, they changed their name to Unexplained Cattle Mutilations. Yeah, pretty much nobody ever heard from them again.

-Stewart Mason

I know for a fact that there's a total of 17 people out there who are familiar with this song, because that's how many copies of this single I sold. This was the final release on my label Flamingo Records, which lasted from 1995 to 1998, and to this day, I feel really bad about the way this single just barely limped out, lost in a morass of personal and professional traumas on my part. (A lawsuit against a pressing plant in relation to Flamingo's sole CD release, a reissue of R. Stevie Moore's 1976 LP debut Phonography, was what led most directly to the label's protracted demise.) Although this was not meant to be the label's final release -- I was also bankrolling and producing sessions for two bands in my former hometown of Albuquerque, the Ant Farmers and Luxochamp (three members of which went on to semi-fame as the Rondelles), around this time, until the studio was condemned and the tapes frozen, which is a WHOLE other can of worms -- there were two sadly appropriate portents scratched into the runoff grooves. Side A read "January 11, 1929" (my mother's birthdate; she'd died just before this single went off to the pressing plant) and side B read "Purr purr snag," a tribute to my now-wife Charity's recently deceased cat Toby Dammit and his charming late-life habit of settling in on Charity's chest when she was asleep, contentedly purring for a while and then suddenly sneezing directly in her face.

Anyway, the song. The Larch (yes, they were named after the Monty Python bit) were a New York City band, but the crisp Britpop of "Free Kick" wasn't an Anglophiliac affectation: singer/songwriter Ian Roure was from Portsmouth, England, and the sardonic "Free Kick" sounds like Nick Hornby's football memoir Fever Pitch set to an old Dentists single. Big ups must be sent towards Paula Carino, then of fellow Flamingo signees Regular Einstein, who mailed me the Larch's demo cassette, and apologies again to Ian and the boys for dropping the ball so thoroughly on what I really thought was the best single I ever put out.

-Stewart Mason

Little Hits guest spots. I'm sure others of you have suggested it, but Stewart Mason did so most recently, so he gets to go first. Contact me if you're interested. Brain Kirk is also on board.

After seeing the replies from Andrew Chalfen and Fantom, it occurred to me that this may be a good way to keep Little Hits interesting for 2006. I love doing this blog, but I don't think I want to do it every day any more. So if you're interested, drop me a line at jonhar@sunflower.com. I'll have to run everything by the guys, (especially Mickey, who likes to perch himself on my person while I'm working on LH) but as Stewart pointed out, most of you have a pretty good idea what goes on here. If enough people are willing to help out, we can maybe still do a song a day for quite a while.

Thanks again,

Jon

Friends-

I want to take a moment to express once again my thanks for all of your kind words and suggestions. I also want to apologize for being so far behind.

That said, it's going to get worse before it gets better. I will be out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday, so no posts this week. The posts will then appear sporadically until Dec. 6th, when I have a huge school project due. After that, it will get easier, so I'll be doing some "rock blocks" to make up for lost time at that point. I still want to have 365 songs up by the end of the year.

As for 2006, I think I'll continue doing this, but not at the rate of a song every day. The big news (I hope) for 2006: Little Hits will become a record label. Our first disc will be a 45 by Lawrence Girls In the Garage, the Shebangs. The hit side is a cool punk RnB shaker with a freakbeat guitar solo entitled "Maybe Yes, Maybe No." The flip is a tuff folk-punk cover of the Saints' "A Minor Aversion." We intend to release great pop and rock 'n' roll 45s until it becomes obvious that it's a complete financial disaster, so if you've got a truly great song that you don't ever intend to see any real money out of, keep us in mind.

Best wishes,

Jon