I received a very polite phone call today from a former band member/label owner whose projects have appeared on Little Hits.  I think he was appreciative of what I was trying to do, but he was concerned that other parties were picking up his compositions and distributing them as ringtones.

I realize now, belatedly, that once I put an MP3 on our server, anyone else might use it in any way they wish.  I am quite concerned that the next person who finds one of their old tunes being used as a ringtone will not be so cool.

It is probably a good time to stop doing this. I’ve probably been lucky to get away with it as long as I have, and while I always assumed that my motives for doing this blog were fairly pure, I find myself second-guessing now.

To everyone who wrote an entry, or passed along their best wishes, or otherwise dropped a note to say “hi,” I’m very grateful.  I’m sorry I wasn’t more responsive.

Best wishes to all,

Jon

From the 2008 CD Carrot Atlas, Wooden Man Records.

A recent night out at one of Lawrence’s finest establishments found me gazing stageward upon three unassuming young men (with an equally unassuming young lady tucked away behind a Farfisa) who were said to be “good” by mutual friends.  Presently, these nascent sots commenced flailing about in a most ungainly fashion, creating a din that, while interesting, had me wondering exactly what the hell distinguished them from any number of neo-Killed By Death bands that seem to be breeding like rabbits across our great land, occasionally releasing a 45 of interest.

Gradually I began picking out elements that made it seem something interesting was afoot.  An ear-opening chord progression here, a catchy chorus there.  As their set progressed, the songs seemed more assured, and the vocals came up in the mix, revealing an admirable sense of twisted-heart melody.  Eventually they began to remind me of Sorry Ma-era Replacements (complete with a fair amount of mike-stand abuse and other buffoonery), albeit with chord changes more derived from the Beatles than the Stones.  So basically, they sounded kinda like Flop.  This feeling was given additional credence by the set closer, a swift cover of “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

Sad, decrepit old fossil that I am, I was embarrassed to learn that this combo had already released a CD on Wooden Man Records.  Where the hell have I been?  Zach (guitar, bass) handed a copy over as we drank shots and he and Oscar (bass, guitar) went on and on about the Kinks.  Took it home.  Love it.  Inscrutable song titles are neither here nor there, but packing 16 songs into 28 minutes?  Well you know how we feel about that sort of thing. Turns out this idiotic punk rock thing is still viable.

I’m not sure if this is the best song on the CD.  But shit, it’s 2:30 in the morning, and Kit’s in bed, and Mickey’s asleep on the sofa, and it’s all I can do not to bounce around the living room and wake the whole damn house up, for which there would be dire fucking consequences.  The Rooftop Vigilantes, man.  Zach, Oscar, Hannah, Sean. Thanks.  I mean it.

-Jon Harrison

B- side of “Doin’ It Again” promo 12″, A&M Records, 1991

I’m like a Deadhead, except the band I follow around is the Feelies.  Since they don’t play around here much, this necessitates occasional trips to the East Coast.  I saw them for the third time in the past nine months at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on July 4.  Another triumph.

The set opened with “When Company Comes,” one of my favorite tracks from The Good Earth, and one I never dreamed they’d trot out live.  “Sunday Morning,” “Egyptian Reggae,” and “The Undertow” followed, none of which I’d seen at the earlier shows.  The first set was pretty heavy on material from The Good Earth, including “Let’s Go,” “On the Roof,” and the title track.

I guess they’re planning to play Crazy Rhythms in its entirety at All Tomorrow’s Parties in September, so they’ve clearly been whipping that material into shape.   Between the second set and the encores, all the tracks were accounted for except “Forces at Work” and Loveless Love.”  Particularly spectacular was “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except Me and My Monkey),” with Dave Weckerman wailing away on some pipe-type contraption.

Encores (there were four of them, two songs apiece) included a couple of very interesting surprises:  REM’s “Carnival of Sorts,” and The Doors “Take It as It Comes.”  Also present were “She Said, She Said,” “Paint It Black,” “Outdoor Miner,” and the Jonathan Richman tune heard here.

This is not a “reunion” tour.  This is a great, great American Rock ‘n’ Roll Band, as tight and powerful as anything I’ve ever seen.

-Jon Harrison

From the Pop Cassettes 12″ EP “My Love Is Like a Gift You Can’t Return,” 1989

This past St. Patrick’s Day, I was standing around talking to a couple of members of a local Thin Lizzy tribute act (Lawrence possibly has more Thin Lizzy tribute bands than Dublin)  about local musicians we admire, and Mike West’s name came up.  Mike is known and respected as a local producer as well as a fine songwriter, and with his wife, half of Truckstop Honeymoon, New Orleans refugees who settled in Lawrence a few years back.  Anyway, Eric Mardis (of Splitlip Rayfield fame) says “Yeah, he was in this band when he lived in England called ‘The Man From DelMonte’.”  My jaw dropped.  I think Eric was surprised that I knew what he was talking about.  Eric said “Yeah, I saw the video on YouTube.  He had floppy hair and the whole bit.”  So basically, Mike was doing in the early 90s exactly what I wanted to be doing at that time.

The studio works of The Man From DelMonte were rounded up on the now-defunct Vinyl Japan in 2000 or so (2 LPs or 1 CD).  Besides their debut 45 “Drive Drive Drive,” which appeared on one of those Leamington Spa comps, this song, from the aforementioned video, is my favorite.  It’s a fine example of post-C86 indie pop, breezy and witty with that familiar Motown rhythm.  While it might seem long ago and far away, it is nevertheless driven with a similar spark and attention to detail that fire Mr. West’s current endeavors.

-Jon Harrison

Sire Records 45, 1969

Are you guys familiar with these compilations called Bubblegum Motherfucker?  There are a whole bunch of them making their way around the Internet, and it’s unclear to me whether or not they ever actually existed on CD; my intuition is “no,” as I’ve never seen any of them offered for sale.  Anyway, it looks like there are 40+ volumes, and the compiler or compilers are clearly banana splits for this much-maligned genre. I’ve made it through about six, and it’s taken a couple of months.  It’s not really something I can sit through for an extended period, as some of it is proof that “catchiness” alone does not equate to listenability.  Really, some of the tracks could cause cavities, but others do the damage by inducing gnashing.
Like many cultily-adored sub-genres, however, there are enough gems and surprises that the effort is well-rewarded.  This single by Ohio’s Jordan Parker Review was an immediate favorite.  It fits within the parameters of bubblegum, but has an almost garagey sensibility that is seldom found on these things.  Nice organ solo, too…

Jon Harrison

From C86’s less celebrated but arguably more awesome predecessor C81 comes this original version of one of my favorite tracks from Aztec Camera’s debut album. You can hear the outlines of the bigger-sounding, more ornate later arrangement here, but what I find interesting about this take is the way it doesn’t really sound much like anything else that was going on in the Scottish post-punk scene at the time. If anything, it sounds more like one of Bryan McLean’s Love songs or something. Dunno what’s up with the drummer, though: he definitely has it in for that crash cymbal. Other bands on C81 include the Television Personalities, The Gist (Stuart Moxham’s post-Young Marble Giants outfit), the Red Krayola, Robert Wyatt and Josef K. It’s around, if you look for it.

–Stewart Mason

Mighty Boy Records 45 1989

Australian indie-pop gem, first heard on one of Brian Kirk’s long-lost mixtapes.  I love the vocal, which sounds kind of hushed and desperate at the same time and the contrapuntal trumpets on the chorus.  Also, the drummer’s name is Felicity Dear, but I’m pretty sure that’s made up.  They had an earlier 45, “Big Letdown” on Easter in ‘86, which is also worth hearing.  I’m thinking that there was also a CD release in the early 90s, although I’ve never seen a copy.

-Jon Harrison

Contrapoint Records 45, 1966

Seeing the contribution from Aaron Milenski a while back reminded me that I’ve been meaning to rave on Patrick Lundborg’s The Acid Archives book for some time now.  The Acid Archives, which was co-authored by Mr. Milenski, spelunks in our nation’s thrift stores and Goodwills to uncover a mess of small-press curios, many of which barely exist.  The most appealing thing about the book is that Lundborg, Milenski, et al. manage to write knowledgeably, and often passionately about these artifacts, but they never seem to slip off the cliff and plunge into the hyperbolic abyss of eBay sellers and rare-record dealers (”Forget that fake psych like the Beatles. This is the REAL SHIT!”).  An excellent volume to have lying around.

Among the hundreds of listings of records you will never actually hold an original copy of in your hands is a New England LP by the Ones, a bunch of teenagers who were probably among the first casualties of the British Invasion.  The album came out in ‘66, and as it was mostly a covers job, I won’t be searching frantically.  However, in his review, Aaron mentioned that one original track from the LP, the one heard here, was a) issued as a single and b) excellent beat pop.  We were, of course, interested in hearing this track at what we felt would be a more appropriate RPM-age.  The single was scored and we present it here for your consideration.  I think Aaron got it right.

Now if someone could e-mail a couple of sample tracks from John Scoggin’s album on Tiger Lily, that’d be great.

The Acid Archives is out of print, but the content is accessible at the website.
-Jon Harrison

When I knew Cecil Castellucci, she was a grown woman who still slept on Star Wars sheets. (Not that I ever saw them, mind, but she told me about them.) A native of Montreal who went by the nom de twee-pop of Cecil Seaskull, she more or less was Nerdy Girl, who released a handful of records in the mid-’90s. This song about her childhood Star Wars fixation was her signature tune, but my other favorite was always “Single Bed,” from Nerdy Girl’s sole full-length, 1996’s Twist Her. After she dropped the Nerdy Girl moniker, Cecil released an album around 1998 called Whoever, and then we pretty much fell out of contact. (Frankly, I fell out of contact with a lot of people around 1998 — it was a really bad year.) I googled her just now out of curiosity, and I learned that she lives in Los Angeles now, where she’s had several young adult novels published. People tended to have extreme reactions about Nerdy Girl: I knew some people who found both the diary-entry quality of Cecil’s lyrics and her undeniably polarizing voice just the height of preciousness. Me, I have to admire someone who starts a project with a very specific aesthetic, stays true to it for as long as it’s viable and then retires it when she’s taken it as far as it can go.

–Stewart Mason

From The Bob #33 Flexidisk, outtake from “Wives, Weddings & Roses,” 1988

My last big break up fueled what became the first mixtape I circulated beyond the particular girl I was after at the moment. Of course the original mix was for myself, but then it seemed good enough to share with another friend or two (and stubbornly, the originator of the heartbreak too). A year or two later, I kicked off making annual mixes for friends….

“The Heart Broken Soda Fountain” kicked off with “You Say You Don’t Love Me” and went on from there in some predictable and some more eclectic directions. More than a decade later, I set about reconstructing the mix the other day to pass to a bud after a beery evening of hearing his tale of recent heartbreak. A fair bit I already had in digital form naturally and blog surfing was surprisingly productive, turning up all but one track from the old 90-minute tape.

“Hanging on Threads” was the one track I could turn barely even a reference to anywhere via Google, which is astonishing. I’m not terribly familiar with Mr Kusworth’s work, but this is as penetrating a bitter pill as I’ve heard anywhere, yet it doesn’t seem to even be included as one of the bonus tracks on reissues of the album it’s an outtake from.

-Zach Coleman