Their affection for Joy Division was far too obvious, and their lyrics were perhaps embarassingly earnest, but what the hell does that matter to a seventeen-year-old? This was another record mail-ordered for cheap (in the mid-late 80s there were piles of this 12" in Midwestern record shops for $1.99) that wormed it's way into my teenage heart ca. 1983. All of the rules suggest that this record should suck at this late date, but, paradoxically, the qualities referred to above have given the item a warmth that has allowed it to age rather well; I ripped it the other day for iPod purposes and was surprised to find that all four of the songs still worked to varying degrees, at least for me.

Information about Sport of Kings (the band) is kind of hard to come by (meaning I found no good leads during the 45 seconds I spent researching them online), but they were almost certainly from Chicago, and I'm thinking that they eventually hooked up with the Wax Trax Records dance mo-sheen, releasing at least one more 12" that I can still see in my mind's eye. I believe it was called "Parade."

By the way, speaking of UK-sounding US bands, does anyone have a song from an old Trouser Press flexi called "Not Even For a Minute?" I'm thinking the band's name started with the letter "L."

I know it's terribly tacky to exult in the misfortunes of others, but one of the nicest things that ever happened to me was the financial collapse of Enigma Records in 1990-91. As the label started to go under, their LPs and CDs began flooding the remainder bins of chains like Record Bar and Camelot for bargain-basement prices that allowed me (a broke college student on the Texas/New Mexico border with limited access to the indie stores where I would have been able to find these records for full price) to stock up on gems by artists like Game Theory, the Cavedogs, Wire (through their licensing deal with Mute) and, crucially, the Close Lobsters. To this day one of my favorite bands of their time and place, the Close Lobsters were one of several points of entry into the UK indie scene (unlike many bands lumped under this banner, they actually WERE on the legendary C86 cassette released by the NME) and I surely would not have discovered them as early as 1990 without being able to pick up their entire output for $5.64 plus tax at the Record Bar outlet in Lubbock's South Plains Mall one afternoon in early 1990.

Yet as much as I love all three of those records (the 1988 EP What Is There To Smile About? and 1989's Headache Rhetoric complete the trio), for me the primal appeal of the Close Lobsters is neatly summed up by the debut album's stunning opener "Just Too Bloody Stupid." A killer twang-guitar opening riff, rhythm guitars that define the whole post-Smiths British indie aesthetic of treble plus caffeine, and singer Andrew Burnett's atypically punky vocal style and dark lyrical sense ("These backwards, spineless, selfish swine" isn't your usual chorus hook) combine for a nervy three-minute rush of semi-psychedelic fuzz-pop bliss. Nearly two decades later, it still sounds incredibly fresh.

-Stewart Mason

I've had insomnia ever since I was a little kid, which meant that I was more than usually attuned to the oddities of late night TV than most when I was growing up. One thing I miss about the pre-cable days is that the main thing local TV stations used to fill up the overnight hours were cheap old movies. Although I don't remember a thing about the film itself -- I probably turned the channel within the first five minutes -- I distinctly remember watching the opening credits of the 1969 film Goodbye Columbus on late night TV in Boulder when I was 10 or 11 years old, because this song stuck with me forever. It's one of the earliest examples I ever heard of a certain brand of pop music that's a big favorite of mine: stuff that's right on the edge of being hopelessly square but is nevertheless convinced of its own youthquake exuberance. Exhibit A: the theme to Love American Style, which uncoincidentally was co-written by Charles Fox, who wrote the incidental score to this movie.

I've still never seen this movie, but in high school, I read the Philip Roth novella that it's based on. I sometimes wonder if this movie is as depressing as the story, because if it is, this chirpy theme song is seriously false advertising.

-Stewart Mason

Most of the time the trained ear can, upon hearing a mid-60s 45, determine if the band is of US or UK origin, but here are two fine examples of decidedly English-sounding singles by American bands from Chicago and Hays, KS. respectively. The Shames track is the flipside of "Sugar and Spice," revered the world over due to its inclusion on the original Nuggets. It goes through a good number of changes and a "Louie Louie" derived solo before closing up shop before 2:00 with some crashing freakbeat chords. They made some lovely psych-pop for Columbia thereafter, but nothing this tuff.

Rumour was that Blue Things mainman Val Stecklein had some relatives in the small Kansas town where I went to high school, and in my youth I would occasionally bump into an adult who, discovering my interest in music of the era, would spin tales about the time the Blue Things opened for the Beau Brummels in Salina or whatever. What I do know for sure is that The Blue Things went to Nashville and cut a pretty damned impressive (and now quite collectible) self-titled folk-rock LP for RCA in '66, then made a pair of astonishing fuzzy psych 45s before limping out of their major label period with a New Vaudeville Band soundalike called "Yes My Friend." "Orange Rooftop" was the first post-LP 45, and it's quite a departure. You can hear the entire RCA works on a CD issued by Rewind in 2001.