Two of our seasonal favorites. The Parasol EP also contained tracks by Cowboy and Spin Girl, Girl of the World, and White Town. This track also turns up as a bonus track on one of the THT CDs. The Giant Sand 45 was some kind of promo-only thing, I think. Peace.

Entry #3 in Little Hits' ongoing series "Stewart Mason's wispy-little-girl-singers," "As Skittish As Me" (from the flip of 1996's lovely "The Best Days" single) is everything I love about the Softies in a little under 110 seconds. A decade or so ago, while the Softies were still a going concern, I was on a mailing list that erupted into a days-long flame war about whether or not the Softies were, or were not, "punk rock." In fact, if I recall correctly, that episode was about the time I thought "Good lord, what am I doing here?" For the record, however, I would say that for their time and place, the Softies were exceedingly punk rock, in the sense that quiet, drumless twee-pop songs built on vaguely jazzy chords and delivered in winsomely ragged harmonies were a needed reaction to the flannel-clad dick-swinging that took precedence in the post-Nirvana age.

The Woodentops were one of those odd bands for me. You know how there was that one girl/guy in college who you fell passionately in bed with for about three weeks? Then one day it was over and not only were you not heartbroken about it, but to the extent that you ever thought of that person again, it was with a certain bemused wonder, like "Huh. That was fun. Well, moving on." Yeah, well, the Woodentops were kinda my musical equivalent to that girl. I was a senior in high school when their debut album, Giant, came out to a brief but fervent wash of ecstatic press, and I snapped it right up. For a few weeks there, possibly even a couple of months, Giant hit all the same pleasure centers for me that my big obsessions of the time, Prefab Sprout, Everything But the Girl and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, did, but in a kind of quirky way that I found really appealing. In particular, I really loved the way the acoustic rhythm guitar was playing about twice as fast as the rest of the band. (However, you must remember that I was a high school senior in Lubbock Texas in 1987, and therefore I had not yet heard the Wedding Present. When I did, about a year later in college, my first reaction was something along the lines of "Ah. So that's where the Woodentops got that.") But certainly by the time I graduated, Giant was no longer on or even near the top of my next-to-the-stereo pile; I had noticed that I never really bothered to play side two at all, and on side one, the only song that didn't tend to drone on too long was "Good Thing," which is the song I still remember when I think back fondly on the Woodentops, the same way that almost all of my passing thoughts about Wendy Chavez involve her breasts.

Right, the song. Back when CDs were still wicked expensive, magazines used to give freebie flexi-discs with their newsstand issues, and occasionally, an actual 7" vinyl single like this one, which includes a stonking version of the Shangri-Las' "Train From Kansas City" by my beloved Shop Assistants and a couple of minor tunes by the Icicle Works and the Mighty Lemon Drops along with this live-in-LA rendition of the Woodentops' "Love Train" (not the O'Jays song), which ups the energy level hugely and sounds much more exciting in retrospect than the comparatively tame and slick studio version.

-Stewart Mason

It's an oft-repeated but untrue story that all of the albums by Amon Duul I (the freakier precursor to Krautrock Kult Faves Amon Duul II) were recorded in a single acid-fueled 24-hour session that was eventually edited down into album-length chunks. As a result, the Shapiros probably win the award for having the most fruit fly-length existence of any band that released more than one single. According to the timeline in the posthumous compilation released in 2001 (also on Library Records), the Shapiros had their first rehearsal on September 7, 1994, played their first show nine days later, played their last show six days after that, and broke up by the end of the month. Four singles and a couple of compilation tracks (all from one session produced by Velocity Girl's Archie Moore) dribbled out over the next year or so, all of them rare enough that by 1997, lead singer/guitarist Pam Berry made me a mixtape of all the Shapiros material she had because the records were impossible to find.

Those who remember the names Pam Berry and Archie Moore from earlier Little Hits appearances (see November 5, 2005, Glo-Worm's "Wishing Well") have an idea of what the Shapiros were like. Although unlike Glo-Worm, the Shapiros had a proper rhythm section, they were equally defined by Berry's lighter than air voice and lovelorn lyrical sense. "Gone By Fall" is actually one of their more lighthearted tunes!

-Srewart Mason