For the most part, my wife and I are entirely simpatico when it comes to our musical tastes, with one major exception: she pretty much has to leave the room whenever I'm playing an Altered Images record, because Clare Grogan's voice just drives her positively bugfuck. Me, I think it's one of the all-time great pop voices, a weird, needling, hiccupy squeak of a voice that manages to be endearing and slightly irritating at the same time. "Dead Pop Stars" was Altered Images' first single, and it features the band in their first incarnation (with lead guitarist Caesar, soon to decamp to form his own band, the indiepop stalwarts the Wake), produced by Siouxsie and the Banshees' Steve Severin. Severin produces this song in his own band's image, and there's no denying that the group sound like a junior Scottish Banshees clone here, but "Dead Pop Stars" is such a fabulous, bizarre record in its own right that it's no mere imitation. It's surprising to think that in less than a year, they were the brightest, bubblegummiest band in the land on the back of singles like "Happy Birthday," "See Those Eyes" and "Don't Talk To Me About Love," all of which are just as wonderful as this, but in an entirely different musical style.

-Stewart Mason

Brooding big UK guitars from 1981, part two. Who in the world was Modern Eon? “Child’s Play” was a source of fascination for me when I first heard it on Philly’s WKDU. I would call the station requesting “I’ll Be the Driver” and the deejays would have no idea what I was talking about. It’s pretentious and overblown as all get-out, and to this day I’m afraid to play it for friends in fear that they’ll never take anything I say seriously ever again. The album from which it hails is dreadful. But the tune has so much I love about 1981. With production from Hugh Jones (could there be a bigger snare sound?), it’s got the latest in primitive synth technology, Cocteau Twins/Comsat Angels guitar flourishes, conforms to my theory of the 1981 proper approach to sax solo, has great hooks, and very dippy epic druggy magical lyrics sung by an unusual (some would say ridiculous) sounding vocalist who nevertheless seems completely invested in whatever the hell it is that he’s singing about. Kind of the UK equivalent to the Three O’Clock’s Michael Quercio.

Andrew Chalfen

There are elements of Start's sound (besides just their name) that suggest that this young Lawrence, KS. band members were fans of the Jam. Their lyrics are charming, almost painfully earnest slices of youthful introspection, the drumming is stiff-but-propulsive, and on "Where I Want To Be," guitarist Jay Francis demonstrates some tasty Weller rips. However, Start saw fit to fill in the sound with keyboards rather than slashing chords, and instead of the punkly call-to-arms of the neo-mod bands, Start substitute a naive sweetness. The results are more interesting than most similar genre exercises and a rather unique (especially for a US band) blip on the radar from the early college-radio era, .

Friends, I'm growing tired of pretending that I'm going to catch up someday. The next post will be the Song Of the Day for February 23, 2006. There will from now on be a Song of the Day almost every day, but I'm not going to scramble to catch up on missed days anymore. I can't seem to get to the computer and do this everyday, what with school and work and various other goofball projects.

I appreciate very much the efforts of Stewart Mason, Andrew Chalfen, Mark Griffey, Steve Mitchell, Michael Slawter, and anyone else who has gone to the trouble to send in a guest spot. Keep 'em coming.

Thanks very much,

Jon

As you can probably tell from the cover scans here, I've never been one of those guys who treat their records with the care an archaeologist gives to Etruscan pottery shards. As far as I'm concerned, records are here to be played, and since I don't ever plan on selling any of them, I never pay much attention to what they're worth. (Also, living in a house with three cats means that there's not much likelihood that the spines of any of my LPs is going to remain unclawed, so what's the point?) However, I always like to find out how much the Times' first album goes for on eBay -- it regularly sells for well over a hundred bucks -- because I paid 20 cents for this copy at a Best Buy in Albuquerque in October of 1995. They were having a deep clearance sale that included a lot of old LPs, which by this point consisted of over three dozen copies of the soundtrack to John Travolta's lame Saturday Night Fever sequel Stayin' Alive, the Giant Records issue of Shonen Knife's Pretty Little Baka Guy and this. The Shonen Knife record was pretty great, but this is absolutely one of the best value for money purchases I've ever made.

Ironically, although I was already a Television Personalities fan by this point, I didn't know about the Times when I bought this, and was surprised to learn when I opened the DIY silkscreen sleeve (the back, incidentally, is blank save for a piece of paper glued to one corner with the song titles typed onto it) that the album was on Dan Treacy's Whaam! label. In fact, as I later learned, the Times at this point were basically the Television Personalities with Ed Ball as singer-songwriter instead of Treacy. Although Ball has maintained a career for close to 30 years now, the honest truth is that I don't think he's ever been a patch on Treacy as a songwriter, although he's always capable of a few gems. (His 1996 solo single "The Mill Hill Self-Hate Club" is one such goodie, if you ever locate it.) An early version of "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" was released as a single under the name the Teenage Filmstars in 1980, during the period when Ball and Treacy didn't have stable names for their project(s), but I kind of prefer this version, which is a bit peppier and more lo-fi.

-Stewart Mason

There were some pretty cool comps of 60s modfreakbeatpsych coming out of Europe in the 90s like Digging For Gold, Incredible Sound Show Stories and so forth. While these provided many hoours of listening enjoyment, they were fairly straight updates of predecessors like Rubble and the European volumes of Pebbles. For something truly weird and different, there was a series devoted (mostly) to German beat and early psychedelia called Prae Kraut Pandaemonium (and its CD companion Elektrick Loosers). To say that these LPs present a rather deviant take on typical beat and psych templates is a gross understatement.

The liner notes of PKP Vol. 7 say little about the Loosers; only that another song called "Understand" appeared on vol. 3 (sorry, never found that one), and that this was a privately pressed German single. It is hooked by a guitar break that suggests falling down stairs.

Austria's Slaves released three singles in 1966. One of them, "Slaves Time" was compiled on the second Rhino Nuggets box. The one presented here appeared on Elektrick Loosers 3, and one of the international Pebbles comps. It is something of a high-water mark in beat dementia; while the band provides a very cool Pretty Things-style backdrop, some guy who lives in a dumpster mumbles about imagined slights, somehow managing to almost hook up with the band at the end of each verse. "Run away as fast as you can. Shut up. Shut up." Man, we love that.

Squeeze have largely suppressed memories of their admittedly uneven John Cale-produced debut album, but they've practically wiped this three-song 7" out of existence in the manner of the old Soviet purges. They barely acknowledge it exists even in the recent song-by-song overview of their career, even though they don't seem particularly embarrassed by the largely awful Domino album. Still, you can't really blame them. I only found it myself a couple of months ago, while I was trolling eBay looking for an old Mekons single my wife wanted. I only paid ten bucks for it in VG+ condition, which is under the going rate, but I still think I overpaid a bit. This song, the a-side, is a catchy little pub rock tune, but the two on the flip are indeed pretty bad. However, they deserve points for using a lockgroove on the fadeout matrix, a neat trick I've always liked. I've included a few seconds of the effect at the end of this file.

Anglophile trivia: "Packet of three" is the common UK term for a box of condoms. Given that the band's original name was Cum, this is not the least bit out of character.

-Stewart Mason

To this day, I still get guff for my love of brooding big guitar 80’s bands from the UK. The Chameleons, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Comsat Angels, etc. Dramatic, overly-serious, romantically depressive, and epic (some would say pretentious) in all aspects. Gothic without actually being Goth. I’ve often wondered what band put out the first record of this genre. Does it stem from Joy Division? Early U2? My latest shaky theory is that it originated with the Damned’s excellent “Wait for the Blackout”–the opening tune of my first ever radio show–with a bit of Siouxsie and the Banshee’s “Happy House” thrown in there.

TV 21 was one of the lesser known bands that trafficked in these pre-Raphaelite lands. An early-ish Ian Brodie production in the vein of Steve Lillywhite, the drums pound, the guitar oscillates through its chorus and Roland Echoplex, and the synths re-enforce the general vibe of precision and uneasiness. You can almost hear the peroxide hair and multi-zippered blue janitor’s suits. Precision is the right word for this–I love how precise and alive the production and playing sound on so many of these English records, especially when compared to most of the stuff coming out of the US underground (and mainstream, too) at the time, recordings which seemed flat and staid by comparison. Bright beefy English production that added a nice aggressive edge. The 7” of Something’s Wrong is edited slightly from the album version, probably for the better. Edits like this for 7”’s, probably for radio, seemed fairly common back then. I somehow wound up with three different edits of U2’s “New Year’s Day” (speaking of Edge). The other notable track from the TV 21 album A Thin Red Line, “Snakes and Ladders”, also became a single.

Andrew Chalfen

This trio has always maintained a foot in two different camps without ever fully committing to either. Too weird and psychedelic to grab the twee indie kids, but a little too poppy and light to be fully embraced by the Ptolemaic Terrascope crowd, Uncle Wiggly are left with the small handful of people who like both. Luckily, that part of the Venn Diagram includes me. The flip of their 1990 debut single "Litmus Nephew," "Favorite Movie Theme" is a strummy-jangly near-instrumental with a vocal part that's so indistinct that I'm quite certain the lads aren't actually singing real words. Oddly appealing, though.

-Stewart Mason

I figure every city had a group like the Slickee Boys in the early '80s. You can tell just by looking at 'em that they're no spring chickens -- receding hairlines, old-guy ponytails and all -- but they were inspired by the new wave to drop all the Grateful Dead covers and get a little modern. Most of these bands, it must be said, are incredibly lame. But then there's the Slickee Boys, who managed a killer single in 1983's "When I Go To The Beach." Surfy power pop that's just a hairsbreadth away from being corny, this is a great jumpy new wave gem. (P.S. Another good one by a buncha old-dude bandwagon-jumpers: the Monroes' "What Do All the People Know.")

-Stewart Mason

The Shins are currently one of the biggest indie bands in the world, which is kinda weird for me, because I still think of them as one of the biggest bands on the teensy, insular pop scene of my former adopted hometown of Albuquerque. This single, produced by Jon Little of the Ant Farmers (Burque's other big band of the mid-'90s), doesn't quite capture the My Bloody Valentine-like sweep of this powerful song, the highlight of Flake's live sets. Yet on its own merits, it's still a compelling early glimpse of James Mercer's idiosyncratic but appealing pop craft. Although a remake of "Deluca" is on Flake Music's sole CD, When You Land Here It's Time To Return, it lacks the rough-hewn charm of the original; although it's likely that Flake's several vinyl-only releases will someday be gathered, it hasn't happened yet. The other side of this single is an equally great little bit of noise by Henry's Dress, another Albuquerque band, led by Amy Linton of Go Sailor and the Aislers Set.

-Stewart Mason

In going overboard compiling around 60 plus possible songs to review for Little Hits, I discovered that ten of my selections dated from 1981, and the number increases to over 20 if one includes 1980 and 1982. Most of these tunes I discovered post-’82, usually on college radio. It might be a stretch, but I think there is a unifying aesthetic to a bunch of these tracks. Most of them are from the UK, or are influenced by various trends in the UK around that time. What appeals to me most about that period was the sense that bands were reaching beyond punk and embracing all sorts of ideas and combinations of sound, with a kind of pioneering full-steam ahead into the unknown spirit. Sort of like if somehow the promise of side one of Television’s Marquee Moon had finally come to fruition across the spectrum of underground music. Even the retro garage stuff seemed fresh, I guess because it was the first wave of recycling and the very idea of recycling seemed fresh, almost punk. Maybe it’s nostalgia getting the better of me, but it’s hard to get excited about the retro-post-punk acts of the past few years because they seem so studied, so self-aware of their musical antecedents, so unable to operate without an ironic tinge, so concerned with mimicking the attitude and sound in just the right way rather than tearing off into their own thing.

One record I actually heard and purchased in 1981 was this track by a duo called the Holidays. I’ve yet to find any biographical info about the group, other than they seem to be from Scotland. Which kind of makes sense in a low budget Roxy Music, proto-Aztec Camera/Orange Juice way. I heard it one warm July night in a taxi in a suburb of London, at the height of my Anglophilia. This was the summer of the wedding hype of Charles and Diana, Brixton riots, National Front. It was a dumpy and grumpy museum of a country. The excitement of punk had morphed into self-parody, leaving a gray rainy vacuum in its place. The Specials “Ghost Town” was the number one song on the radio. I had my first sighting of Motorhead fans.

Anyway, I made the cabbie turn the radio up and wrote down the Holidays, buying the single the next day in town. Neat sounds, clever rhythmic stuff going on with the drums, chirpy keyboards, and a decent, appropriate, and not-over the top usage of the saxophone, one of the hallmarks of many records from the 1981-era. Maybe I heard the song on John Peel’s show. Radio was mostly awful, so I think it must’ve been Peel’s doing. Peel would premier U2’s “Fire” and the Jam’s “Funeral Pyre” as I lay in my too-small bed watching the sun set into twilight at 10 pm – dark, foreboding, urgent music, perfect for the times, and for my dramatic moody late teen head (I worshipped both bands back then). But the Holiday’s tune was romantic and ambling, kind of lyrically interesting and just sort of different. It still make me gently happy. On that July night it made me want to meet a nice lass with a hot English accent and make out with her on a hazily-backlit bridge to the strains of “Waterloo Sunset”.

Andrew Chalfen

This is an early stab at pop glory by Canadian Moe Berg, later of The Pursuit Of Happiness. This record makes Berg's arrival at gems like "She's So Young" with THOP seem inevitable; one of the B-side tunes, "It's Gone" is another good 'un, with less buzz, and more lilt. The Minds must have been on the bill at some pretty good shows; the oversized picture sleeve thanks the Pointed Sticks and The Rock 'n' Roll Bitches.

Tsunami's tough indie-pop was bracing and ingenious. Led by the loud, purposeful guitar banging of Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson, they made more than a dozen 45s (as well as a couple of LPs), most of them on their own Simple Machines Records. The label itself was one of the most inspirng developments of the early 90s; it was well-known for its concern for the community, its commitment to fair play, and its utter lack of rock-world bullshit. Oh yeah, all their records looked great, too, even the ones I didn't care for. Their booklet on how to release an independent record doubtless contributed to the deluge of crappy indie-rock 45s that flooded every indie distributor in the world by the mid-90s, but we don't hold that against them.

Chris Sievey is a lovable failure to rival John Otway. The Beatle-obsessed singer/guitarist/songwriter and his mates made perhaps a dozen singles on a variety of labels without ever getting to make an LP. Almost every one of them is a gem, humorous without being "wacky," and generally sporting very sticky choruses. We could argue all day about which one is the best; It might be "I'm In Love With the Girl On the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk," or it might be "If You Really Love Me (Buy Me A Shirt)" or any of several other contenders with shorter names, but this B-side is the one we felt like hearing the most right now. You really should check out the compilation on Cherry Red and make up your own mind. After the Freshies ended, Sievey created a substantial discography under the psuedonym Frank Sidebottom, which is a whole 'nother story.

The Higson’s single took me over 23 years of searching to find. Last summer I hit pay dirt at Mystery Train, a marvelous used record shop in Gloucester, MA. First heard in the Philly dorm room of my pal who went by the apt name of Map. Indeed, he certainly showed me the way with these two records. The Higsons track embodied our irreverent gonzo side, I guess. It was so great to put it on the turntable after all these years and have it be as fantastic as I remembered it. It has many of the hallmarks of 1981 post-punk experimentation: the dissonant slashing guitar chords, the chorused white-boy funk bass, the ska references, the crazed chanting. Map also introduced me to the Monochrome Set, specifically their spaghetti western-tinged single “Cast a Long Shadow”, which I eventually tracked down on the excellent Cherry Red Records compilation “The Eyes of Barbara Steele” (pictured below). Whereas the Higsons seemed like the kind of guys you would have a few pints and jokes with after the football match, the Monochrome Set came off like eccentric Dada-ist nobility. I’m sure I speak for Little Hits in saying that the first four Monochrome Set albums are indespensible. I started out with their fantastic comp “Volume, Contrast, Brilliance” (one of my desert island records) and moved on to Love Zombies and then Eligible Bachelors. Yow. Anyway, Map was kind of daffy goofy gangly faux-spastic nerdy in all the right ways back then, and these two songs really are the musical equivalent of my memories of him from that time. Plus the tunes are a laugh riot and yet somehow remain elevated above all-out jokey novelty record status, perhaps because they are really more sophisticated and witty than say, oh, the Pop-O-Pies. Quite a feat to sing “Hoo ha a-debba debba debbay, hoo ha a-dep dep doo” and “bah bup bup bah bah bah bup bah bah bup bah” and keep your ascot pin in place.

Andrew Chalfen

By the time their first EP came out in 1990, the Angels of Epistemology were long since broken up -- its six songs were recorded in 1987 and '88 -- and bizarrely, it wasn't until 1992 that a CD was released that gathered most of the band's recordings. Even more bizarrely, that CD, Fruit, lacks the under-two-minute leadoff track from the untitled EP, "Response," which just might be the best thing the group ever did. Much of the band's repertoire consisted of faux-ethnic instrumentals along the lines of what Camper Van Beethoven was doing at the time, but "Response" has the ramshackle sound of a great New Zealand indie single. Like something by the Tall Dwarfs, Look Blue Go Purple or the Great Unwashed, "Response" is simultaneously inscrutably insular and bizarrely catchy, with an odd structure that switches back and forth between a propulsive, strummy A section and a weird, semi-rapped B section in lieu of the usual verse and chorus thing. This song might be why Merge Records agreed to release the band's tapes long after they'd broken up: "Response" sounded very much of a piece with what Superchunk and Pavement were doing a few years later. Points for swiping the cover art from Abba's Greatest Hits, too.

-Stewart Mason