Little Hits

2006-10-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

Los Popularos - Working Girls

Puerco-Maria Records 45, 1981

Los Popularos, formerly the Young Canadians, were a Vancouver crew who were apparently quite the rabble-rousers back in the heady early days of punk mayhem. This particular 45, however, reminds me of any number of pop hits from the first half of the 80s that were considered purchase-worthy singles (think Huey Lewis, Tommy Tutone, stuff like that) by essentially forgettable artists. So not so edgy or anything, but I'm a sucker for the chorus.

2006-10-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Worst - Little White Lies

From the Dig! Records LP, The Worst, 1993

More garage revival nonsense. By the 90s, I was not nearly so interested in the tunnel-vision Chesterfield Kings wanna-bes as I had been in the previous decade. It seemed that by then most of 'em were more concerned with getting their hair to look right than in knocking out a decent chorus. Inexplicably, the debut LP from these Canadians is a rock-solid monster, with every track full of stinging fuzz, squalling organ, and a cool, sinister vibe. Atypically for such affairs, all of the tracks here were written or co-written by guitarist/organist Rieuwert Buitenga, and most feature either a memorable hook, or an interesting production treat; often both. Six tracks clock in at under two minutes, which never hurts anything. "Little White Lies" is not the catchiest thing on the album, but I love the organ riff, the ghostly backing vocals, the fuzz tremolo, and the sneer. The Worst have a skill and passion that so many of their gear-ically correct peers can't even sniff from where they're standing. They articulate rather than re-create. Dig it.

2006-10-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

Antena - Achilles

From the EP Camino del Sol (Les Disques du Crespuscle, 1982)

What's the exact opposite of sounding dated? You know, a record that sounds bizarre and utterly unfashionable when it comes out, but sounds absolutely up-to-the-minute a good quarter-century later? Well, whatever the word is, it fits Antena's debut. Upon its release in 1982, who would have known what to make of this? These days, however, after Stereolab, Air and Nouvelle Vague, the immediate response is "Oh, yes. Of course."

In its original incarnation, Antena was a French trio led by singer Isabelle Powaga. The 1982 five-song EP Camino del Sol followed an earlier single recasting Joao Gilberto's "The Girl From Ipanema" into a discordant, largely electronic meeting between pioneering electro-minimalists the Young Marble Giants and Tracey Thorn's defiantly amateurish first group the Marine Girls. Leading off the EP, "Achilles" retains a hint of the Brazilian influence in the lazy percussion and the quasi-samba breakdown in the final minute, but the synth-heavy arrangement is straight out of the post-punk playbook, and Powaga's dead cool, heavily accented vocals wouldn't start to sound close to normal in pop music until at least a year or two into Stereolab's reign.

Largely ignored at the time (especially after the original group split and Powaga started a new lineup called Isabelle Antena, whose music sounds basically like a somewhat hipper version of UK adult contemporary pop singer Basia), Antena get resurrected every few years. The most recent reissue, part of Les Temps Moderne's outstanding devotion to Crespuscule, Factory Benelux and similarly influential labels, collects everything the original lineup of Antena ever recorded, including two bonus tracks. If you like this, I strongly recommend it.

-Stewart Mason

2006-10-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

The Would-Be-Goods - The Camera Loves Me

From the LP The Camera Loves Me (El, 1988)

For some fans of the twee end of the British indie scene, the apogee of the style was Mike Alway's label El Records. Alway's third label, after his time as the music director of Cherry Red and the head of the Warner subsidiary Blanco y Negro, El Records was The Alway Aesthetic in its purest form: the songs as light and frivolous as meringue, the artwork and graphic design impeccable, the liner notes right on the edge of terminally precious, all of it with a dry and veddy veddy English sense of whimsy. If P.G. Wodehouse had formed an indie label, it would have been El Records.

The Would-Be-Goods (name courtesy of the British children's author Evelyn Nesbit) were and are the project of singer-songwriter Jessica Griffin. Backed by a sort of El Records house band that at times included members of the Monochrome Set and other labelmates, Griffin debuted in 1987 with the "Fruit Paradise" single. 1988's "The Camera Loves Me" was both her second single and the title track of her first and best album, a song that marries Griffin's signature vocal and lyrical style with her catchiest tune, including a terrific chorus.

Somewhat surprisingly, Griffin has revived the Would-Be-Goods in the last few years, with ex-Heavenly guitarist Peter Momtchiloff as her musical foil.

-Stewart Mason

2006-08-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

Yo - I Meant To Tell You

Yo - Sun and Moon

From the Restless/Deadbeat Records LP Once In a Blue Moon, 1986

Gary Lucy reminded me of this oddball LP from my year in the dormitory. Once In a Blue Moon has held up quite well; though the strongest track might be the cover of Cat Steven's "Hard-Headed Woman" (which our legal counsel has advised us against posting), I count at least five others that appeared on mix tapes in my angsty early 20s. Yo were a San Francisco band who had some 7" action which you can sample on Hyped To Death's Homework series, plus at least two long players. Starting with some fine songs written by singer Bruce Rayburn, they added elements of trad folk and a healthy punk roar, as well as a dash of the then de rigueur "new sincerity" sound (see The Wild Seeds, Zeitgeist) to create something that was rather unique, well-crafted, and roundly ignored outside the Bay Area.

A Message From Jon:

2006-08-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm still here.

It's been an interesting and slightly strange August. I resigned my full-time position at The Love Garden, where I had worked for 14 years. I don't recall ever talking too much about the shop here on the blog, but let me just say a couple of things: First of all, I'm extremely proud of the store. We frequently hear customers from all over the country telling us that it's one of the best record stores they've ever seen. We strive to be fair, friendly, and interesting, and I think we've generally accomplished that, and I have every confidence that we will do so in the future. Secondly, I'd like to publicly state how much it meant to me that my bosses, Kory Willis and Kelly Corcoran (and earlier Zippy Hester) accommodated my school schedule, always paid me a living wage, and made sure I was taken care of financially when I had to miss weeks of work with a fairly serious health issue a couple of years ago.

Actually, let me drop this in, at the risk of giving you too much information. The "issue" referred to above was testicular cancer. I was 37 at the time, past the age at which the disease normally occurs. My point is, guys, check yourself out regularly, and if anything seems amiss, go to a doctor. I waited quite a while (probably a year or so) to do anything about it, and as a result had to endure chemotherapy that probably could have been avoided. I know...I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, the reason I quit the store was because I have a student teaching assignment this semester. I'll be teaching three Accelerated Senior English classes and one Science Fiction class. I'm very much looking forward to it, while simultaneously worrying that I'm a complete fraud.

I'm actually kind of hoping that being away from the store will make music more precious (because less of it) and therefore get me more excited about it than I have been for most of 2006. I really enjoy getting in my car after school and turning the stereo up, understanding that "up" is not nearly as loud as "up" was in 1982. I hope I will have more motivation to update this site frequently, because your kind words and comments and e-mails really do mean a lot to me. Once again, I'd like to thank Andrew Chalfen and Stewart Mason for their help and patience.

Oh yeah, saw a couple of Embarrassment reunion shows this weekend. I can't say they were musically stellar, but it was cool to see those four guys playing a bunch of songs I loved, and there were certainly glorious moments. Bill Goffrier was particularly good. He's still a post-punk guitar genius.

Thanks for letting me ramble. As a reward, here's a belated Little Hits tribute to the late Syd Barrett by Martin Newell's Cleaners From Venus.

Peace,

Jon

2006-08-08T04:14:00.000-07:00

Polyrock - Romantic Me

From the LP Polyrock (RCA 1980)

Jon just reminded me that I promised someone some months ago in the comments section to the Philip Glass piece that I was going to put up Polyrock's "Romantic Me" at some point. Apologies for the lateness, but here it is.

Best known -- let's not kid ourselves, pretty much ENTIRELY known -- as the new wave band produced by Philip Glass and his engineer/right hand man Kurt Muncasi, Polyrock were an artsy sextet led by brothers Billy and Tommy Robertson. Their debut album came out on RCA in 1980, which as mentioned elsewhere here on Little Hits was pretty much a death knell for the band's commercial chances since there was no other major label more clueless about new wave music. Not that they were likely to go much of anywhere in 1980, anyway: in those pre-MTV times, the heartland just wasn't ready for the synthed-out pulses of this primarily electronic band, or for Billy Robertson's tightly wound, shrieking vocals and elliptical-to-the-point-of-meaningless lyrics. In light of current alternative-rock radio, however, Polyrock would be as big as the Killers if they debuted right now; half the bands played on WFNX here in Boston are -- probably unconsciously -- biting huge chunks of their sound directly off this one song.

Polyrock managed one more major-label album, 1981's Changing Hearts, an EP on the PVC label and an after the fact compilation of unfinished demos and live tracks that came out on the ROIR cassette label sometime in the mid-'80s. All of their material is in this style, and is all of similar quality; if you see it in the used bins, pick it up.

-Stewart Mason

2006-08-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

Love - Wonder People (I Do Wonder)

Unreleased track, 1967 (collected as a bonus track on the 2001 Rhino/Elektra reissue of Forever Changes)

It was reported on the evening of August 3, 2006, that Love frontman Arthur Lee had died that afternoon, after battling leukemia. One of the most infuriating men in rock and roll history -- the definitive Lee biography has yet to be written, but I have no doubt that it will reveal that even his closest friends regularly wanted to kick him in the nuts -- Arthur Lee was also an artist of uncommon grace and delicacy. That one man could write both the stomping proto-punk of "Seven and Seven Is," one of the most unhinged records of the 1960s, and the dreamy "She Comes In Colors" on the same album is indicative of the duality at his core, and it was a huge part of what first drew me to Love as a high school senior when I picked up Rhino's mid-80s best-of almost entirely on a whim, having never heard the band before. (By the time I graduated, I was among those who thought Forever Changes was one of the greatest albums of all time.) Willfully self-destructive and possessing a legendarily violent mean streak, Lee could also be utterly charming; at one of his last concerts in Boston, in 2003, he was funny, self-deprecating and obviously grateful for the attention, but he was also every bit the cocky, no-bullshit frontman.

The glorious "Wonder People (I Do Wonder)" was written and recorded during the sessions for Lee's masterpiece, the epic Forever Changes, but left out of the final running order, supposedly because Lee thought this uncharacteristically optimistic, peppy song didn't fit with the bleakness at the album's core. (There's also the fact that the mod-a-go-go horn part is very reminiscent of the one that powers "Maybe the People Would Be the Times Or Between Clark and Hilldale," itself the one vaguely hopeful song on the record.) For all the depression and paranoia on display throughout Forever Changes, "Wonder People (I Do Wonder)" is as summery as a Lovin' Spoonful or Harpers Bizarre single, and proof that for all of his well-documented faults, Arthur Lee did have a sweet side. Our thoughts go to his wife Diane and his friends.

-Stewart Mason

2006-07-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

Sport Of Kings - This City In Darkness

From the EP "On a Tall Building," 1981

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."

2006-07-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Close Lobsters - Just Too Bloody Stupid

From Foxheads Stalk This Land, Fire/Enigma LP, 1987

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

2006-07-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Association - Goodbye Columbus

From the LP Goodbye Columbus (original motion picture soundtrack), Warner Brothers Records, 1969

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

2006-07-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Cryan Shames - Ben Franklin's Almanac

Destination Records 45, 1966

The Blue Things - Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind

RCA Records 45, 1967

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.

2006-06-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Love Circus – Live Forever
(s/t ep, Broken Records, 1984)

The Velvet Monkeys – It’s All the Same
(Rotting Corpse A-Go Go lp, Shimmy Disc, 1989)

The Watermelon Men – Autumn Girl
(Past, Present, and Future lp, Trax on Wax,1985)

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

2006-06-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Suburbs - Tape Your Wife To The Ceiling

From the LP Credit In Heaven (Twin/Tone Records, 1981)

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

Song Of the Day: June 16, 2006

2006-06-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Heard – Stop It Baby

from the LP Pebbles Vol. 7, BFD Records, 1979)

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

Song Of the Day: June 10, 2006

2006-06-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Colourbox - The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme

4AD Records 45, 1986

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

Song Of the Day: June 8, 2006

2006-06-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

Band Of Outsiders - Dutch Girl Concern

From the EP "Up the River,"
Flicknife Records (UK), 1984

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.

Attention!

2006-06-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Song of the Day: June 3, 2006

2006-06-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

The Action - Icaurus

From the LP Rolled Gold, Reaction Records, 2002

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

Song Of the Day, May 26, 2006

2006-05-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Assembly - Never Never (extended version)

Sire/Mute Records 45, 1984

The Assembly ended up being a one-off idea, which is a shame, because this turned out to be one of the very last great singles of the synth-pop era. The idea behind the Assembly was that Vince Clarke was going to work with a revolving door of singers performing his own material. It made perfect sense, since his brief tenure in Depeche Mode (writing nearly all of their debut album Speak and Spell but leaving before the band managed to record its followup) and the short-lived duo Yazoo (with the underrated powerhouse singer Alison Moyet, who never again sounded as good as she did on their two albums Upstairs At Eric's and You and Me Both) suggested that maybe he wasn't the easiest guy to work with. But the Assembly only managed this one single with singer Feargal Sharkey before being consigned to the scrapheap of ideas. Sharkey, fresh from the recently dissolved Undertones, sings the song in the same Northern Irish Soul Man mode that he's used on The Sin of Pride, but it's a better fit here than it had been on that album. This song also easily beats the crap out of anything on Sharkey's two utterly wretched solo albums. While Sharkey went on to the ignominy of those albums, Clarke hooked up with an unknown singer named Andy Bell with whom he formed a new duo called Erasure; improbably, considering the instability of Clarke's earlier career, they're still releasing albums today.

I bought this 12" single from the cheap bins at University Records in Lubbock around 1986, to go with my U.K. 7" import copy of same. Black Images was local college station KTXT's soul and R&B show. That Sire's promo department pitched the single there instead of to the late-night new wave show The Outer Limits is probably a big hint as to why this single stiffed.

-Stewart Mason

Song Of the Day: May 20, 2006

2006-05-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Keepers - In the Meantime

1987 Recording; available on the
Hyped2Death CD In the Meantime, 2003

While most people who weren't there will never perceive of it as a Golden Age of Pop Music (and I'm not sayin' it was either), it will nevertheless take years to track down all of the worthwhile stuff that came out of the "college rock" explosion that started when REM, Burma, The Replacements, The Dream Syndicate, etc. etc. inspired kids around the country to pick up guitars. Of the hundreds of bands that sprung up, there were plenty who were never able to secure significant distribution for their records. There were even more that never had the wherewithal to press up vinyl in the first place. Their legends survive on well-worn cassette tape stored in boxes in closets or in the memories of middle-aging former scenesters. (Here in my neighborhood there were some pretty damned terrific outfits like the Moving Van Goghs and Klyde Konnor who recorded minor masterpieces that exist only on cassette.)

The Keepers, from Boston by way of my wife's college town of Oxford, Ohio, are just another story of "Local Band Makes Beer Money, Not Much More" (the liners have all of the whys and wherefores of their lack of success), but fortunately Chuck Warner has issued this CD which compiles live stuff, radio tapes, and demos (as well as four tracks from an early vinyl release), that we might have a chance to hear an exceptional band that would have sounded great on a bill with the Dangtrippers or Wishniaks. And yeah, I think that's worth preserving.

Trivia: Band member Craig Stevens was the brother of the Cavedogs' Brian. Figures.

Band members: Do you know where the master tapes of your old band are? Maybe you should check on that.

Song Of the Day: May 19, 2006

2006-05-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

The Mekons - Teeth

Virgin Records double-45, 1980

I believe this was the Mekons' last release for Virgin, a pair of 7" singles featuring four songs, including the terrific "Teeth," a manic post-punk rocker with a killer fiddle line that's an early indicator of the country-influenced direction the group would take during their mid-'80s renaissance. I tracked this set down on eBay last year as a gift for my wife, who heard "Teeth" on her favorite radio show, exactly once, some 18-20 years ago, and had neither forgotten the song nor been able to locate this version of it. (An alternate take, "Another Set of Teeth," is a bonus track on some reissues of the Mekons' second album, Devils Rats and Piggies A Special Message From Godzilla.) That show, incidentally, is Little Hits reader and occasional commenter Jon Bernhardt's Friday morning indie-rock showcase Breakfast of Champions, on WMBR, Cambridge, 8-10 a.m. Eastern, archives and podcasts available at www.wmbr.org/shows/boc.html and highly recommended to anyone who's spent more than 10 minutes at this site.

My own extremely minor Mekons connection: for several years at an old freelance gig, Mekons/Rumour drummer Steve Goulding was one of my bosses. Steve would no doubt be the first to tell you that this barely even qualifies as name-dropping.

-Stewart Mason

Song Of the Day: May 16, 2006

2006-05-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Virginia Astley - It's Too Hot To Sleep

From the LP From Gardens Where We Feel Secure,
Rough Trade Records, 1981

People forget this these days, when ambient instrumental music tends to be disdainfully lumped in the "new age" bin and forgotten (and rightfully so, since much of it is genuinely awful), but in the late '70s and early '80s, this type of music was considered positively cutting-edge. It wasn't, of course -- see "Satie, Erik" -- but after Eno's early experiments in ambient music, many interesting post-post-punk albums (almost all of them in the UK and northern Europe) included those influences. One of my favorites is Virginia Astley's 1981 album From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.

The daughter of British film composer Edwin Astley, Astley was all but unknown when she recorded this album, having only been part of the never-recorded cult trio the Ravishing Beauties (whose other two members, Kate St. John and Nicky Holland, went to some success as members of the Dream Academy and Tears For Fears, respectively, plus Nicky did a couple of pretty good AAA solo records) and doing some session work with her brother-in-law, some dude named Pete Townshend. That's Virginia's piano all over "Slit Skirts," for example. Supposedly originally written as demos for the Ravishing Beauties, the 10 songs on From Gardens Where We Feel Secure are piano solos with occasional woodwinds, backed with tapes of the sounds of the pastoral English countryside. "It's Too Hot To Sleep" is the closing song, fading out to the sound of insects cheeping through the night. Astley's classical training (and, perhaps, her father's cinematic influence) is obvious here: it's subtle, but there's a logical progression to this tune as opposed to the aimless meandering that so many similar records feature. Astley has maintained an extremely low-key career since her brief moment in the British indie spotlight, but this remains by far my favorite of her albums.

-Stewart Mason

Song Of the Day: May 13, 2006

2006-05-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

NRC – Sally's All Alone (After The End)

Official Records 45, 1982

Ah the early 80s, when the only cloud in the sky was the dark threat of nuclear holocaust. My tribute set would include "World Destruction" from the Afrika Bambaataa/John Lydon collaboration Timezone, "Party at Ground Zero" from Fishbone and... "Sally."

"Sally" is the record most emblematic of the Little Hits ethos for me – bought with nothing to go on besides its DIY cover art, but this radio-station reject turned out to be a rather worthy purchase. It's a new wave mash of ska rhythms and sassy female pop vocals, No Doubt decades early.

Hard to find out much about NRC, who also give their name spelled out as Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What info is there on the web indicates they were from Tennessee and earlier released an album and another single. Songwriting for Sally is credited on the label to "V. Kadavr."

-Zach Coleman

Song Of the Day: May 12, 2006

2006-05-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Human Sexual Response - Pound (Dance Version)

Don't Fall Off The Mountain Records 45, 1982

Personally, I tend to run hot and cold on Human Sexual Response, but they're one of my wife's absolute favorite bands. (One of her fonder concert memories is a show at the Paradise, our neighborhood rock club, where they gave away a dish drainer set from Woolworth's as a door prize.) Even as a fan of odd voices, I find Larry Bangor's affected, theatrical vocals kind of irritating on some of their songs, and I don't find the lyrics as transgressive as I think they were supposed to be, but then, it's been a quarter century and writing a song called "Buttfuck" maybe doesn't have quite the same zing these days. "Pound" is one of the several HSR tracks I really like, though, because it works up a good post-punk dance groove that showcases what a great drummer Malcolm Travis was. "Pound" is from their second album, 1982's In A Roman Mood, which for some reason has STILL never been reissued on CD, but this is an extended dance mix taken from the b-side of the UK single of "Andy Fell."

-Stewart Mason