The Monochrome Set clearly thought very highly of this song, as they recorded it at least four times that I know of. (Don't forget Tracey Thorn's lovely cover of it on the flip of her "Plain Sailing" single, either.) However, the canonical version for me has always been this take, originally on their 1980 debut album Strange Boutique. Continuing a Little Hits mini-trend of songs that mine almost unbearable tension from a simple voice and guitar format, this version of "Goodbye Joe" is the tensest by far. For all of the Monochrome Set's early image as a wacky, zany band, this is an exceedingly dark song that's made all the more unsettling by the oblique lyrics, which create an atmosphere of menace without ever spelling out who Joe is or what he's done that Bid's so wound up about. Finally, the absolutely genius way that the clattering, reverb heavy guitar line slowly fractures into a kaleidoscopic dub mix of itself -- with a sinister bit of circus music creeping in just to complete the sense of unease -- before snapping right back for the final verse is one of my favorite musical moments of the entire UK post-punk scene.

-Stewart Mason

Sort of a companion track in my mind to Barbara Manning's "Don't Rewind" (both songs originally appeared on the 1990 AIDS charity compilation Acoustic Music Project), Sonya Hunter's "Paint" is more expansive and pretty than Manning's song, but it seems similarly tightly wound and oddly obsessive. Though Hunter is a folk-based singer-songwriter, she's not just another coffeehouse Phoebe: in other hands, this song's lyric, a fantasy about painting all the everyday objects in your sight, might be unbearably twee, but Hunter doesn't try to turn the idea into a metaphor for anything other than a surreal art project, to "beautify some things that beauty has stumbled by." The other keys to this song are the absolutely gorgeous chorus melody and ex-Wire Train/World Party guitarist Jeff Trott's trebly, psychedelic electric guitar, which adds an entirely different feel to what would otherwise be a completely straightforward acoustic folk song. If you ever lay hands on a copy of Favorite Short Stories, do so: as much as I love this song, it isn't even the best on the record.

-Stewart Mason

Throughout Barbara Manning's career, there have been three constants: New Zealand, baseball and her former bandmate Cole Marquis. Constant #1: Manning is perhaps the only more ardent fan of '80s and '90s Kiwi music than Jon Harrison, and "Don't Rewind" has the same nervous tension as many of the great early Flying Nun singles, particularly since Manning sings the lyrics (especially the chorus) as if only tremendous personal control is keeping her from reaching out and smacking the person she's singing to. Constant #2: although the song was originally recorded for a terrific Bay Area AIDS Charity compilation called Acoustic Music Project (Alias Records, 1990), most people know it from her odds and sods compilation One Perfect Green Blanket, the cover and title of which reference Manning's sports obsession. Constant #3: "Don't Rewind" was written by Manning's former 28th Day bandmate Cole Marquis. Although this song dates from the earliest days of her solo career, around the same time as her other signature song "Lately I Keep Scissors," the truth is that as great as some of Barbara Manning's later records have been, this is still her masterpiece.

-Stewart Mason

I love rip-offs of bands I love, perhaps because that's all I ever accomplished as a musician. The Hard Times were obviously a talented bunch of kids (there's a bio at the Rev-ola site, where they also offer a career-spanning compilation CD), but this one lurches into Byrds territory in a number of not-terribly subtle ways. Result? Frequent spins at Little Hits Record Night.

Mari Wilson was a protégé of Tot Taylor, who had previously led the late '70s UK power pop band Advertising. Wilson's pop career, which lasted all of two years from early 1982 to early 1984, was a carefully constructed collaboration between herself, Taylor, songwriter Teddy Johns, producer Tony Mansfield (New Musik, etc.) and photographer Richard Ashworth. Tongue in cheek glamour was the rule of the day, with Wilson dressing unfailingly in opera gloves and evening gowns, a foot-tall beehive hairdo completing the picture. Her music was similarly inspired by Julie London, Dionne Warwick and the other middle of the road pop singers of the pre-Sgt. Pepper's era, given a distinctly early-'80s UK synth-pop gloss. Her sole album, 1983's Showpeople, shows how limited the pose really was, but in small doses, it could be hugely enjoyable, as on this brilliantly gimmicky and infuriatingly catchy single. Wilson reappeared in the early '90s as a straight jazz-pop singer. More recently, she sang the old Doris Day tune "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps" as the theme to the highly recommended British sitcom Coupling. (Trivia note: future AAA singer/songwriter Julia Fordham was one of Wilson's backing singers, the Wilsations.)

-Stewart Mason

Go Sailor didn't last long, just three EPs and a couple of compilation tracks, all of them collected on the 1996 self-titled CD. Regardless, I think they were easily the best of all of Rose Melberg's '90s projects, largely because her bandmates Amy Linton (formerly of the Albuquerque-based popsters Henry's Dress, more recently leader of the Aislers Set) and Paul Curran (nowadays of the lovably goofy Onion Flavored Rings) were her best foils, providing the best showcase for her sweet'n'sour worldview. "Long Distance," the title track from their second 7" EP, leans distinctly towards the sour half of that equation, even though it takes a couple of listens for you to notice that in the adorable, winsome chorus, she's openly stating that she wouldn't mind if the guy pestering her died. And people thought the twee pop bands were all about hearts 'n' flowers 'n' rainbow-colored unicorns.

-Stewart Mason

Someone could write a book about Amelia Fletcher, and someday, somebody probably will. Since the mid-'80s, Fletcher's Everygirl vocals have been at the center of an elongated string of bands, or rather, basically the same band with a new name for each major personnel change: first Talulah Gosh, then Heavenly (TG plus keyboardist Cathy Rogers), then Marine Research (Heavenly minus Amelia's drummer brother Mathew Fletcher, who committed suicide in 1996), then Tender Trap (basically the core duo of Fletcher and bassist Rob Pursey). She was the face of the twee pop scene: Little Hits could do a week just on songs with guest vocals by Amelia, and you have no idea how many women I knew in the '90s who were either directly or unconsciously copping Amelia's signature slicked-down short back and sides with bangs. The way she deliberately played with gender roles in Heavenly's songs was also highly influential to a scene filled with straight girls vaguely flirting with the idea of not being quite so. (My understanding is that many of Heavenly's lyrics were written by Mathew Fletcher, and Amelia simply didn't change the gender pronouns of Mathew's songs, although she was in a relationship with guitarist Peter Momtchiloff since before Talulah Gosh formed.)

On the other hand, "Sperm Meets Egg, So What?" is all girl, a first-person song about a woman who thinks she might be pregnant, but really really really hopes that she isn't. This is one of my favorite song lyrics of all time, because it does something you rarely see in a three-minute pop song: it deals with messy, conflicting emotions in a decidedly real-world fashion, with cockeyed humor and moments of sheer panic. It's also a sterling example of what became a Heavenly trademark during this era: Fletcher and Rogers' voices are artfully arranged on this song, with Rogers' harmonies darting in and out of Fletcher's lead as a kind of commentary on the story. Plus, the song itself is just unbelievably catchy. Truly, this is one of the great indie songs of the '90s.

Incidentally, Heavenly had beyond a doubt the best day jobs of any band in history: Peter Momtchiloff is the Philosophy editor at Oxford University Press, Rob Pursey has a long career as a producer at the BBC (his long-distance romantic drama series NY-LON recently ran on BBC America), and Cathy Rogers is the creator and host of a British competitive reality series called Scrapheap Challenge, which runs in the US under the name Junkyard Wars. And Amelia? Well, at the time Talulah Gosh was starting, she was an economics student at Oxford. By the time Heavenly were going strong, she was a lecturer there, and now she's Dr. Amelia Fletcher, chief economist at a UK governmental organization called the Office Of Fair Trading. I mean, really. How cool is this woman?

-Stewart Mason

The last really great single Sarah Records ever released (Matt and Claire really did decide to pack in at the right time, because there's a definite decline in quality in the label's final year or so), "Paris" is the grand high point of Northern Picture Library's short career, a hazy, careening five-minute slice of neo-psychedelic atmospherics and a sense of palpable heartbreak. Unfortunately, Northern Picture Library are mostly forgotten these days as the brief bridge point between the Field Mice and Trembling Blue Stars, the other two bands formed by singer/songwriter Bob Wratten. Their records are exquisite, however, and I'm going to go so far as to say that Northern Picture Library are a better band than either of their brethren, largely because Wratten largely keeps his mouth shut and lets Annemari Davies (who's simply a better singer than Wratten ever was, or has been since) handle the lead vocals. Don't get me wrong, "Emma's House" and "ABBA On the Jukebox" are great, but "Paris" is, for me, the pinnacle.

-Stewart Mason

True musical naïvete can never be taught, and when it's gone, it can never be recaptured. Such is the story of Shonen Knife, whose '80s and early '90s stretch of punk-naif albums and singles still enchants me, even though I find everything that came after their 1992 major label debut Let's Knife to be somewhere between dull and lame. Shonen Knife were smarter and funnier than even a lot of their fans gave them credit for; I feel strongly that they knew they had an appealing hook as far as their American fans went, but at the same time, I don't think songs like this dead-simple wish of Christmas cheer are the least bit contrived: they did, in fact, want us to enjoy the holidays, and Naoko Yamano's usual obsessions (bison, marshmallows, space travel) appear because it wouldn't be a Shonen Knife song without them, the same way that it wouldn't be Christmas if your uncle Elwood wasn't wearing those goofy reindeer antlers.

-Stewart Mason

I'm getting married in a few weeks and some time ago, I ripped this classic preparatory text from The Cosmpolitans for my bride-to-be. She wasn't terribly impressed, but it's a hoot, especially the Siouxsie-like choral chant of the title. If audio books are such a big thing, lord knows why this early take on /The Rules/ didn't make the Cosmopolitans into star advice columnists.

Jamie Sims and Nel Moore started off as the Cosmopolitan Dance Troop, following the dB's to New York from North Carolina and accompanying them on stage as go-go dancers (the dB's with go-go dancers must have been a sight to behold, but the only aid to the imagination is the sleeve below). dB's drummer Will Rigby then accompanied the Cosmos as they evolved into a musical act in their own right, though still wielding batons, marracas and tambourines, before heading into the studio with Mitch Easter, who added guitar and drums. The beloved /Shake to Date/ compilation LP, which includes two of the three tracks from the EP, says "Wild Moose Party" was a local radio hit in NYC and claimed an LP was "in the works."

Two and half decades later, we're still waiting. Moore stuck around NYC a long time, becoming an acclaimed classical harmonica instructor, session performer and studio manager before eventually returning to North Carolina where she still teaches and records as well performs with blues act Tommy B & The Stingers. Not sure where Sims has gone.

Zach Coleman

This is the best song from one of those records that in its released form is a sprawling, slapdash, overlong mess, but I know from personal experience that if you try to edit this two-disc set down to a sleek 45 minutes or so, it all falls apart. However, it also all makes a lot more sense if you know the backstory.

The Leslie Spit Treeo (the Leslie Spit is a topographical feature of their native Toronto, and no incarnation of the band actually had three people in it) were given the Best New Artist award at the Junos in 1990, and apparently, that screws you up just like winning the Best New Artist Grammy: in the states, they were signed to I.R.S. Records, a label that all but ceased to exist in terms of visibility and promotion around the time R.E.M. bolted in 1988. After a difficult second and all-but-unnoticed third album and a long period of lawsuits and the usual crap, the band's two main members, singer Laura Hubert and guitarist Pat Langer (now is as good a time as any to mention that the couple's dog, Tag, was always considered a full-time member of the band, and was also officially their manager and the president of their new label) holed themselves up to record the scattershot and occasionally deeply odd Chocolate Chip Cookies. A sort of rock opera, with narration by Canadian cult actor/writer Don McKellar, whom the Spits knew from their ongoing association with the maverick director Bruce McDonald (they appeared in two of his movies, Roadkill and Dance Me Outside), Chocolate Chip Cookies is a barely veiled satire of their time with EMI Canada, packaged in a white paper bag that was deliberately reminiscent of the logo of Christies, the Canadian subunit of Nabisco. A lawsuit was duly filed, and remaining stock of this version was burned in a ceremonial bonfire on Yonge Street, in front of Sam the Record Man, where as you can see is where I bought this copy during the few weeks it was available.

So, after all this, what's the music like? The ongoing problem with the Leslie Spit Treeo is that they were so completely schizoid that you can't really say what kind of band they were. "Nebulous" is and has always been my favorite song of theirs, three minutes of Hubert's hoarse, scratchy voice, Langer's tense, percussive acoustic guitar and a few stray bits of noise that float in and out of the mix, including a vocal cameo by the aforementioned Tag at one point. Mostly, it's always sort of reminded me of the Mekons. Regardless, lovely song. The album as a whole overreaches by a mile, but in a really charming way. If you ever see a copy (and be prepared to pay a mint if it's the original cookie-bag issue), pick it up. The couple and the band split up not long after this album, incidentally. No word on what became of Tag, although I'm afraid he's most likely in Doggie Heaven by now.

Hailing from Norfolk, VA the Waxing Poetics were HUGE in their hometown. They sold out local venue The Boathouse regularly, but drive two hours in any direction and it was a totally different story. Imagine playing for 1000 people one night and 3 the next. Signed to Emergo (a subsidiary of Roadrunner Records) their first album Hermitage was recorded at the Drive-In Studio and produced by Mitch Easter and Mike Mills. "If You Knew Sushi" was a great little hit for '80's college radio.

They followed Hermitage with a more mature Manakin Moon in 1988 which contained a great cover of Eno's "Needles In The Camel's Eye". They finally called it quits after the sadly overlooked "Bedtime Story" in 1990. They had a one-off reunion on 2003 which is well documented here.

-Michael Slawter