One of the first really blatant examples that I’ve come across of Americans singing with a British accent. Or if the singer is actually British, then massive points off for trying so hard. This was, after all, a band from Boston, another in a long line of Boston outfits trying single-handedly to create some sort of mod movement in town and failing miserably (the Prime Movers come to mind). They left this track and a disappointing ep in their ripple. Dig the Political Statement lyrics. But man, it all works. The verses are Close Lobsters (we’ll get to them in a future post), the choruses are Jam, and the instrumental break is top-notch Echo and the Bunnymen, all wrapped up in an endearing mid-fi neophyte bundle. Maybe they should’ve moved to England. One of the guitarists/vocalists was a John Dragonetti, who latter turns up leading the band Jack Drag. Seems he grew up in the Middle East, attending various elite schools, so it’s likely that he’s our boy. Don’t know if we should give him his points back, though.

-Andrew Chalfen

Me, I'm a coffee man, have been ever since high school when I used to bunk off homeroom at Monterey High and go to the doughnut shop across the street for a chocolate glazed and a cup of black, no sugar while I read the Dallas Morning News. Plus, I'm from Texas, where tea is served iced or not at all. But over the last couple of years, I've developed a fondness for what the veddy English Roy Wood terms a jolly cup of tea. It's supposed to be good for you, for one thing, but it's also a nice way to clear your mind and sit for a few minutes in the late afternoon or evening. In fact, there's a cup of Wilson Select Earl Grey from Upton Tea Importers (www.uptontea.com) just to my left as I type, being sniffed curiously by Angus the Scottish Ninja Kitten, who serves the same editorial function here at Little Hits New England that Mickey does at the home office.



I can think of no band with a greater disconnect between their hit singles and what their actual albums sounded like than Roy Wood's Wizzard. Remembered almost solely these days for their great glam rock 45s "See My Baby Jive" (acknowledged by Bjorn and Benny as the direct inspiration for ABBA's chart-topper "Waterloo") and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday," Wizzard's albums were unfailingly odd. The weirdest by far was their 1973 debut Wizzard Brew (released in a different sleeve as Wizzard's Brew in the US, by the same label who mistakenly named ELO's untitled debut No Answer after a staff member's note about an uncompleted call placed to EMI's London office was misinterpreted). Containing none of the four UK chart hits Wizzard scored in 1973, the album is basically the Move's sludge rock epic Looking On distilled through a combination of Gary Glitter and Chuck Berry. But smack in the middle, ending side one after the 14-minute boogie "Meet Me At the Jailhouse," there's "Jolly Cup of Tea," a two-minute salvo of bizarre music hall nonsense setting chanted mass vocals against a Salvation Army parade band. This was released by a major label, folks. It hit the album charts. The 1970s were much weirder than many people give them credit for.

-Stewart Mason

The purest pop the Individuals ever came up with was tucked away on the B-side of the "Dancing With My Eighty Wives" single. More generally they were quirkier and less melodic/60s influenced than say, the dB's, but the LP which spawned the aforemention single, Fields, still retains a substantial amount of period charm and has a few Mix Tape Test™ winners like "Leap Of Faith" and "White." We've never seen a copy of their debut, the "Aquamarine" EP. After the Individuals became just that, Glen Morrow formed Rage To Live and helmed the Bar/None label, Janet and Doug Wygal formed the Wygals, and Jon Klages made an EP for Coyote backed by Yo La Tengo.

My high school years were marked by a succession of Boston bands that were trumpeted as the next big national thing by local heavyweight rock radio station WBCN. And why not? After J. Giles, Aerosmith, and, well, Boston became huge, it seemed like the town was developing a reasonably high batting average. The success of the Cars, though, really sent the hype into overdrive. I recall a slew of hyped bands that had big local followings but which never quite achieved escape velocity, probably for the classic reason that their (mostly) major label debuts never lived up to the excitement of the live shows. There were the Stompers (the local Springsteen/South Side Johnny guys), the Jon Butcher Axis (Boston’s answer to Jimi Hendrix), the Rings (Cars wannabe’s who played my high school, much to my glee), Robyn Lane and the Chartbusters (I guess the female Tom Petty, though that’s not quite accurate), and Robert Ellis Oral (sort of a dough-faced one-man Hall and Oats, only with a keyboard). And then there were the Atlantics.

The Atlantics were cuddly skinny red and blue tie new wavers, and they had a pretty big following for a spell into the early 80’s. I think Big City Rock was their only album (what marketing bozo came up with that desperate title?), and it contained their only local “hit”, the catchy ditty “When You’re Young”. ABC records must’ve been a terrible label for the Atlantics, or for anybody around that time. I spent years trying to hunt down a copy of the thing—in Boston, no less. Its first spin on my turntable only brought disappointment. Super clean, bland production and performances. The only time I saw them (at Boston University, in 1981), they were a smokin’ well-oiled rave-up hook-crankin’ machine. They had it going on the way Blondie had it going on. Only without the hot babe. What was it about these Boston bands who suffered through years of lame production and terrible cover design? Maybe that trauma was a national thing. New sounds shoved into a 70’s template for success. Major labels have learned a lot since then, huh?

-Andrew Chalfen

One of the most notoriously weird b-sides of the '60s, and a song that's stayed surprisingly obscure over the years, even among Turtles fans, "Umbassa and the Dragon" is basically the middle hour of Peter Jackson's King Kong condensed to a little over three minutes. Not so much a song as it is a story in sound that includes a bit of singing, "Umbassa and the Dragon" is about as racially sensitive and anthropologically accurate as the old B-movie adventures that inspired it, but it's still oddly impressive. How many bands would go to the trouble of making something this weird for the flipside of a single (the 1968 flop "Sound Asleep," not really one of the Turtles' best efforts) that most people were going to listen to once, if that? Testament to the overall sloppiness with which the notoriously shady L.A. indie label White Whale treated their cash cow, the label doesn't even get the song title right, dropping a key word. Listening to this, it's not surprising that when the Turtles broke up, almost all of them (not just singers Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, who renamed themselves Flo and Eddie around the same time, but also drummer John Barbata and bassist Jim Pons) went on to play with Frank Zappa.

-Stewart Mason

Released in 1987, the self-titled debut by Colorblind James Experience sounds like nothing before or since. Over long, repetitive riffs, singer Chuck Cuminale spun bizarre, narrative tales that drew equally from Herman Melville and Lewis Carroll. Carroll’s great riddle was, “How is a raven like a writing desk?” Cuminale’s was “Why’d the Boy Throw the Clock Out the Window?”

The origins of the Colorblind James Experience go back to 1978, when Cuminale, an Italian-American who came from a large, working class family, formed the first incarnation under the moniker Colorblind James and the Nitecaps. After a move to San Francisco in 1980, the name was changed to the Experience. It was at this time that Cuminale’s brother in law Phil Marshall was drafted to play lead guitar, and he proved to be a mainstay of the band’s lineup and sound for the next 12 years. (Marshall now writes an entertaining and informative blog about CJE at rexhavoc.blogspot.com)

In 1982, the group recorded seven songs with Peter Miller, known to many psych hounds as Big Boy Pete, a legendary engineer and all-around weirdo who recorded the immortal “Cold Turkey.” Of all the songs the band recorded with Miller, only “Why’d The Boy Throw the Clock Out the Window?” made it to the band’s self-released debut.

After seven years of obscurity, the band’s unassuming debut actually yielded a minor hit in England, with the typically droll “Considering a Move to Memphis.” John Peel was largely responsible for the band’s success abroad, and the band went on to tour the UK three times. Although the debut was picked up and re-released by Fundamental back home, CJE were never able to achieve anything more than cult status there.

The group went on to release five more albums before Culminale passed away of a heart attack in 2001. He was 49.

-Mark Griffey

No, not the Dominique Durand/Andy Chase/Adam Schlesinger band. This Ivy is British, and they just barely predate the more well-known Franco-American trio, releasing two singles in the waning days of the Sarah label and, as far as I know, nothing else. The fact that the two bands are completely unrelated hasn't stopped a lot of people who you'd think would have known better from confusing them. (Similarly, some unscrupulous dealers have been known to hawk this single on eBay with "Fountains of Wayne" as a keyword phrase.)

But enough about what they aren't. What they were was perhaps the closest that Sarah ever came to a band that could possibly have made it in the American alternative pop scene of the early '90s. "Wish You Would" is a hazy, distorted and sludgy record, with the requisite My Bloody Valentine influence sharing space with a singer who sounds a lot like that girl from the Cranberries (complete with a trill that would likely have gotten really annoying over the course of a full album) and a lead guitarist who has apparently worn out all of his Smashing Pumpkins records. I suspect there are a lot of diehard Sarah Records fans who kind of hate this song, but while it sounds rather dated in a way that most of the Sarah 45s definitely do not, there's something kind of charming about this record.

-Stewart Mason

Okay, yes, I know, a New York minimalist composer is not what you came to Little Hits to find, but hear me out. It's all about the context. This single was released in the UK in 1983, not too long after Laurie Anderson scored an actual chart hit there with "O Superman." Indie labels like Factory Benelux and Les Disques du Crepuscule were releasing records by "serious" composers like Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Andrew Poppy (as The Lost Jockey) and Wim Mertens (as Soft Verdict), records that were aimed at the same artsy-studenty post-post-punk scene that bought records by, I dunno, Crispy Ambulance. And remember, during this period Philip Glass himself was producing records by a great and sadly un-remembered New York new wave band called Polyrock. (Given that Interpol in particular are biting huge chunks of Polyrock's look and sound, the time is right for a Polyrock revival -- look for a Little Hits post of their one semi-hit "Romantic Me" soonish.) All of this was a rare and wondrous occurrence, one of the few times that pop music and "serious" music were in easy co-existence. "Facades" is part of that odd little moment in pop history. And furthermore, it's really VERY pretty.

-Stewart Mason