Ripples from the paisley underground. Three records purchased on the basis of
hearing one tune off of each on the radio, and in all cases, alas, it was the
band’s best song. Funny how often that happens. Love Circus were San Francisco
band who released only a single, a comp track, and this ep collection of pretty
unremarkable songs, except for the last track, which wonderfully captures the
whole Rain Parade/Dream Syndicate vibe—really take two of the Byrds/Velvet
Underground (poppier side) vibe. Great verse construction trick where the rhythm
guitar changes chords while the bass keeps on the same note. Nice not quite
rhythm, not quite lead guitar arpeggios. Summer of love love lyrics. Untucked
paisley shirts worn by underemployed mop-topped college grads—not too far
fetched a speculation, right? Please raise your hand if you’ve been there. Maybe
on the rest of the ep they were going for a Green on Red vibe. Not too much
info out there on them, except that guitarist Dale Duncan went on to form Flying
Color and later Map of Wyoming. Confusing things is the apparent existence of
another SF band in the 60’s of the same name.

“We like the Velvet Underground AND the Monkees” must have been the thinking
that went into the name. Featuring Don Fleming (Half Japanese, B.A.L.L) the
Washington, DC-based Velvet Monkeys offered mostly humorous, often more
punked-up lower-fi pop culture mash-ups remotely akin to those of the Young
Fresh Fellows. “It’s All the Same”, the best tune of their 1989 compilation,
uncharacteristically mines very similar Paisley Underground musical territory,
and is pleasingly close to being an actual Monkees song. More hyped and less
lazy/groovy than the Love Circus cut. Can’t you picture Peter or Mickey singing
it? Still, it’s got Rain Parade written all over it. Were all these bands doing
this kind of thing simultaneously? Surely there was some sort of feedback loop
going on.

Meanwhile, over in Sweden and Australia, there was a garage-rock revival going
on, and records by band such as the Nomads, the Playthings, Pushtwangers, the
Someloves, Lime Spiders, and the Watermelon Men began to find their way over to
college radio stations across the various ponds. This Watermelon Men track fits
nicely into the Paisley Underground mold, though they probably weren’t conscious
of the sonic connection. It sounds a bit like the Bangles, doesn’t it? Or the
Velvet Monkeys track. Extra points to all those Swedish bands like them
struggling with simple rhyme schemes and English grammar (pick up the Playmates
album for an extreme example). Maybe Swedish bands would’ve had more luck in the
States if they had kept some mystery about themselves by singing in Swedish,
much as Dungen do today. Or not. It is garage-rock we’re talking about, one of
the most conservative genres of retro out there.

-Andrew Chalfen

So Charity and I met up one evening last week to have a pleasant evening's stroll through Boston's North End, followed by dinner in Chinatown. Because I work from home and Charity works in the Longwood Medical Area, we have to take different subway lines to meet up in Government Center. Government Center, no matter what the Jonathan Richman song about it says, is a horrible, horrible place, a vast, treeless, red-bricked expanse around the ugliest public building I've ever seen in my life. (Seriously, y'all, Image Google "'Government Center' Boston" and gaze upon the evil yourself, or just go here: www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/kallmann/front.jpg ) But there's a Newbury Comics nearby, so that makes it okay.

I often have to explain this to people who aren't from New England: Newbury Comics is actually a record store with a small sideline business in comics and other bits of geek-boy paraphernalia. They are, in fact, easily the most kick-ass record store chain since those long-forgotten days back in the early '80s when Sound Warehouse was actually good. I was browsing the used CDs idly with one hand and texting Charity with the other when I stumbled upon the circa-2001 reissues of the Suburbs' two Twin/Tone records, 1980's In Combo and 1981's Credit In Heaven, at the appealingly low price of $3.99 apiece. Having not heard the albums in years, but with fond memories of the group's high points, I snapped them up. (Also got a nice Barbara Acklin compilation -- you might know her hit "Am I the Same Girl," which I adore -- for only $2.97!)

Listening to these albums again, especially Credit In Heaven, in light of recent Little Hits discussions, I made a connection I'd never heard before but is now inescapable: The Suburbs were a slightly less pervy Human Sexual Response with a much less theatrical singer and better pop instincts. Like I suspect many Little Hits readers did, I came late to their dance-rock party: when I bought the Replacements' Let It Be in early '85, it was packaged with an inner sleeve that had a full Twin/Tone catalogue, with descriptions. Over the years, I've bought nearly all of the albums listed there, but the Suburbs' core catalogue -- these two, 1982's Dream Hog EP and the 1983 major-label bow Love Is The Law -- resonated more for me than the likes of the Phones or Curtiss A. Though I was rediscovering punk through new bands like the 'Mats, Husker Du and the Minutemen at this point, I was still a fairly hardcore Anglophile, and the Suburbs were possibly the most English-sounding American band I knew of in 1985. Specifically, they sounded heavily influenced by Roxy Music's early, weird albums, by Sparks (who I think I still thought were English at the time) and by the Gang of Four. Their fundamental sound was an odd mixture of dancey synth-pop and a much more ballsy, punky thrash element, and everything was held together by what I now recognize as one of the all-time great rhythm sections in bassist Michael Halliday and drummer Hugo Klaers.

The Suburbs were pitched toward MTV and college radio with the catchy dance-pop singles "Music For Boys," "Waiting" and "Love Is The Law," but their albums also were filled with two-minute freakouts like "Tape Your Wife To The Ceiling," which is what makes them so fundamentally different from, say, Spandau Ballet. (It must be said, however, that the Suburbs were very nearly as pretty as Spandau Ballet, and I assume that in Minneapolis in 1982, there wasn't necessarily a lot of cross-over between Suburbs fans and Replacements fans.) I strongly recommend picking up these CDs while they're still around: the Suburbs sound every bit as vital today as they did a quarter-century ago, and there's no reason why a fan of Franz Ferdinand or the Arctic Monkeys wouldn't find this band instantly comprehensible.

Incidentally, the video pages at Twin/Tone's website feature a number of live and promo videos from the Suburbs' career, which revealed something to me just now that I never knew before: though I've always somehow been under the impression that guitarist Beej Chaney was the group's primary lead singer, it turns out that keyboardist Chan Poling actually did the lion's share of the singing. Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the other bit of gossip I know about the Suburbs: the story I've always heard is that the band broke up not entirely from major-label ineptitude (though they had their share, like any former indie stars from the '80s), but because Chaney married an heiress to the Cargill Feed fortune and didn't need the tsuris anymore. Good for him, say I.

-Stewart Mason

After I exhausted the original Nuggets, I got into Pebbles. I had no idea where
to start, but the rumor was that Volume 7 was the one to get. So I got it.
Lots of ’66-'67 unknowns thrashing their hearts out into the overloaded cheap
microphones of two bit studios across the country (and UK, too). “Stop It Baby”
was the track that really grabbed me by the throat. The sounds were so heavy
and aggressive, lyrics dripping with sexual frustration and hormonal excitement,
perfectly distorted everything. The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night” must’ve
been a huge deal to these guys. It was a huge deal for me, I can tell you. It
always amazes me how this sound was so of its time and place that thousands of
retro garage bands from the late 70’s on up through today can’t seem to quite
get the sonics right, and here’s this band of screaming 19 year olds who’d
probably never set foot in a studio before and they hit pay dirt, as did many of
their unknown contemporaries, captured by the primitive recording equipment of
the day in an improbably perfect confluence of technology and cultural
phenomena. The irreproducible conditions of rock.

-Andrew Chalfen

I am by no means the biggest sports fan in the world -- Jon Harrison, for remaining a devoted fan of the Kansas City Royals despite a losing streak of possibly historic proportions, deserves the Little Hits crown -- but I have to admit, I'm always psyched for the World Cup. Unlike the Olympics, that other sporting quadrennial, I get the sense that average people around the globe actually care about and enjoy the World Cup, and it's always cool to feel that kind of global connection. However, I'm a realist about Team USA's chances, and therefore, my native Anglophilia leads me to support England, and the ethnic makeup of my adopted home of Allston, Massachusetts leads me to also support Brazil. (Seriously, this place went batshit crazy when Brazil won in 2002 -- people were driving around leaning out of car windows and waving enormous Brazilian flags!)

Anyway, to celebrate, we give you "The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme." Released to coincide with the 1986 World Cup, this instrumental is a deadpan parody of the sort of generic jock rock that accompanies sports highlight shows. It's such a perfect evocation of same, in fact, that I understand it's been used in that capacity occasionally over the last 20 years.

Colourbox themselves were a British synth-dance duo, brothers Steve and Martyn Young, who were kind of the odd band out at 4AD during the label's heyday. Their sample-based club-floor orientation was an odd fit with the likes of the Cocteau Twins and Modern English, but when they hooked up with the more abstract AR Kane, the group created the estimable "Pump Up the Volume," quite possibly the iconic U.K. dance track of the '80s. Due in part to legal and creative squabbles engendered by that single, the Young brothers apparently never released another record.

Ole, ole ole ole...

-Stewart Mason

I'm woefully ignorant of most of the output of the bands associated with Band of Outsiders. The reason I know this song is that the Dangtrippers used to cover it live. The enigmatic lyrics and cool guitar riff stuck with me for years until I was finally able to track down the record. I think...that there was another version of this recorded that was inferior to this Ivan Kraal-produced version, but I could be making that up.

Low Down Kids now includes an audio blog that delivers UK punk and power pop and tales delivered by one of the great raconteurs of our age. Highly recommended.

The Action are perhaps the "greatest" of the unknown Brit bands from the 60's. They started out as typical mods covering American R&B around 1965. Soon they caught the ear of George Martin and he signed them to Parlophone, and produced 5 singles. All those early 45's were wonderful but went nowhere. Perhaps the best of the Martin produced sides is their version of I'll Keep On Holding On" which can be found on Nuggets Volume 2.

By 1967 they had lost their deal with EMI/Parlophone and were on their own. About the same time they discovered various illegal substances and started to write their own tunes. Icaurus was recorded with the help of famed Yardbirds producer Giorgio Gomelsky and is little more than a demo but I reckon it's leagues better than much of what was actually released in 1967. Bassist Mike Evans is amazing. In fact he was great friends with Keith Moon and had even played with him in a band prior to Moon joining the Who. Reg King turns in a fab vocal as always.

Things didn't work out all that well for the Action. Reg King left and they morphed into Mighty Baby who put out 2 pretty swell discs that were also ignored.

This tune along with a plethora of other great songs can be found on The Action - Rolled Gold which is available from Parasol. You should buy it now!

Bobby Sutliff