Little Hits

The Bee Gees — Claustrophobia

(Festival Records 45, 1964; since reissued many, many times)

Saturday afternoon, I picked up Rhino’s recent expanded reissues of the Bee Gees’ first three albums, all of which are pretty much essential, and spent all day yesterday lounging in a haze of ornate, vaguely psychedelic chamber pop.  There are worse ways to spend a weekend.  (One would be finally going out to see Waitress, which we did Saturday night: I loved Adrienne Shelly as an actress, and I’m still upset by the utter pointlessness of her murder, but I walked out of this movie about 20 minutes into it, making it about the third movie I’ve ever walked out of in my life, not counting film festival screenings where you learn to cut your losses pretty quick.  It wasn’t how flimsy and stylized it was — Shelly was a protégée of Hal Hartley, the man who turned flimsy and stylized into an art form — it was the pointless decision to make all of the characters talk in atrocious fake southern accents.  Drove me up the fucking wall.  Charity’s the same way about movies with fake Boston accents, but this wasn’t bothering her, so she stayed and I went and read a book in a coffee shop for 90 minutes. But we did have a nice meal at an Indian restaurant we’d never been to in Davis Square afterwards, so we salvaged the evening.)

Anyway, Bee Gees.  Listening to six discs’ worth of ‘67-’68 Bee Gees wasn’t quite enough, apparently, because this morning, I got an urge to hear some of their mid-’60s Australian sessions.  The LP pictured below is one of three I bought out of the cutout bins of my dad’s store circa 1978/79, courtesy of the reliably skeevy Pickwick label: note that although there’s a prominent shield noting that these are “circa 1964″ sessions, the remarkably poor drawing of the brothers is the then-current Saturday Night Fever incarnation.  The rights to the Bee Gees’ Australian material are extremely fluid, and these tracks seem to get reissued by somebody new every couple years. So it’s kind of like the Beatles’ Tony Sheridan sessions, with the major difference that much of the Bee Gees’ Australian material is really very good. Even with the remarkably dorky lyrics (so dorky, in fact, that I’ve long suspected that they were meant to be as funny as they are), this is as outstanding a pastiche of A Hard Day’s Night-era Beatles as I’ve ever heard.  Don’t let the always cheesy and usually misleading cover art for these reissues fool you: if the Bee Gees hadn’t gone on to superstardom, they would rule the world of obscurantist ’60s collector geeks.

–Stewart Mason

I have often alluded to a bunch of cassettes my older brother made of KJHK broadcasts in the early 80s. The initial batch of them has disappeared completely. There was however, a second batch made in 1982-83 that not only survives, but has the benefit of much better sound quality. In the process of digitizing these tapes, I ran across a number of songs I could not identify. So here is the first baker’s dozen in a series of song snippets I will post, hoping you folks out there can assist me. You can e-mail me or leave your replies in the comments. In return you will receive my gratitude and whatever else I can reasonably do for you.
Please note that in many, if not most cases, my interest stems from 20+ years of curiosity, rather than the quality of the songs per se. Note further that I understand that I damn well should probably know a number of these, and that I fully expect at least of couple of times on discovering the identity of one of these songs to say to myself “Wait a minute…I HAVE that record.”

There will be at least one more bunch of these at some point in the near future. I also have plans to drag out the four-track machine and try to replicate the little bits of songs that are still floating around in my head from the missing tapes. We’ll see. I am genuinely grateful for your assistance and your time.

best,
Jon

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Feargal Sharkey - Listen To Your Father

Zarjazz/Virgin Records 45, 1984

Despite the easily-verified talents of singer (the Undertones’ Feargal Sharkey) and backing band (Madness), I’m not sure how this will go down with my beloved Little Hits friends.  In the hierarchy of Sharkey’s post-Undertones work, I place this one below “Never Never” by the Assembly (previously featured on Little Hits), but above his solo smash “A Good Heart” (never to be featured on Little Hits).  I must confess the following, however:  Unlike Stewart, I do have a soft spot for the aforementioned worldwide hit single. I also really like some of those later Madness singles like “Wings of a Dove” and “Sun and the Rain” (which sounds a lot like Peter and Gordon).  And y’know what?  I think this is a pretty good little pop 45 too.  Sharkey’s warble seems well-suited to that “I believe in love at first sight…” bridge.  At any rate, the song is better than the Spandau Ballet mullet Sharkey is sporting on the sleeve.
This was the first of very few singles on the Madness-owned Zarjazz label (I’m not sure many Americans understand how popular Madness were in their native England), and was scored for 50 cents at Second Time Around Records in Wichita, which was one of the coolest records stores that ever lived, in the early 80s whilst David Ring and I were sniffing around for the latest Mitch Easter-produced jangly Southern pop records.

-Jon Harrison

Peter Dayton Band – Perfect Wave
Love At First Sight 12” EP, Shoo Bop 101 Records, 1981

The Sid Presley Experience – Public Enemy Number One
12” single, ID Records, 1981

More summer sounds, this time in the surf department. Peter Dayton was the leader of La Peste, a band which those who argue about such things claim was the best punk band out of Boston in the late 70’s. A bit before my time, so I have no dog in that fight, except to say that their best known tune, “Better off Dead” rocks mightily. That tune and their reputation as a crack live act probably kept their name from disappearing into total obscurity. Apparently Mr. Dayton was tiring of punk at the dawn of the 80’s and wanted to try out some new (as in new wave) sounds. While in grad school, he hooked up with members of the Cars, of all people, for some demo recording, a move which would certainly have been seen as hitching yourself to the new wave wagon. Most of those recordings have only very recently seen the light of day, but four of them were released on a Rick Ockasek-produced ep. The production was rather sterile, the playing a bit too studio cat (some Cars actually played on the tracks) and careful, and the artwork laughably atrocious. How I wound up buying a copy was for the rollicking instrumental, “Perfect Wave”, which I just couldn’t get enough of. Especially the snare rolls in the solo section. It does everything a Surf instrumental should do: produce momentum, be smartly stupid, slightly menacing, have great sounds, and be wacky surf-y fun.

Same year, other side of the pond: The Sid Presley Experience were the pre-Godfathers vehicle of Peter and Chris Coyne, brothers who in both bands dressed and play acted the parts of the brother Kray, England’s notorious 1960’s mobsters, and fancied themselves living inside John Barry soundtracks. As with the Godfathers, the sound is updated Surf, only with added muscle and attitude of English punk disaffection. Tommy gun and siren sound effects pile-on the mobster-surf insanity.

-Andrew Chalfen

Burning Sensations — Belly of the Whale

(from the LP Burning Sensations, Capitol Records 1983)

At first I was reluctant to post this, since it actually was more than just a little hit; it’s more of a one-hit wonder, and can be found floating around the net, as well as on one of the Living in Oblivion comps. The LA band was short-lived, a creation of Tim McGovern, a one-time guitarist in the Motels (and Martha Davis boyfriend), and an early example of combining crack LA studio rock with world music tropes. Way goofy fun video of this song on YouTube. Anyway, the reason I post this is because it sounds like the epitome of summer, which it is currently in full swing here in the northern hemisphere. The calypso/Latin infusion, the gentle digital reverbed synths and guitars floating out over the bay where the sea and sky melt together in a silvery thrum, the big-fish story of the lyric, it’s all there, man. You can practically taste the umbrella drink beneath the thatched roof as you sway gently in your hammock. Back in 1986, my pal Dean and me, at height of our punk rock years, used to secretly worship this song (along with Tom Petty’s “Shadow of a Doubt”) even though it was pretty much the polar opposite of, oh, I don’t know, Husker Du and Das Damen. It’s slick major label big production over-the-top stuff, and we loved it. Amazing sounds, melody lines, and hooks, and an absolutely killer chorus. We’d play it over and over in our dank West Philly basement apartment. It was sand and ice cream, cruising in the breeze, sun and giant volumes of shimmering distance. It was summer.

– Andrew Chalfen

The Adverts — The Adverts

(from the LP Cast of Thousands, RCA Records (UK), 1979)

For the life of me, I don’t know why the Adverts have never been properly appreciated to the extent they should be. Their initial string of singles and first album Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts bears a string of classics that’s undeniable: “One Chord Wonders,” “Bored Teenagers,” “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes,” “Safety In Numbers,” “We Who Wait,” “New Church”…seriously, you can make a strong argument that the Adverts were a better band than the Sex Pistols. (I said better, not more important.) But for some reason, their records were never actually released in the states, and I think that has a lot to do with their overall lack of appreciation.

Even more so than their early work, though, the Adverts’ second album Cast of Thousands is unjustly ignored and/or dismissed. In fact, it’s a textbook example of the early post-punk era, when it was suddenly nearly as uncool to sound like 1977 as it was to sound like 1974, but no one seemed quite sure what they were meant to do instead. T.V. Smith and cohorts pretty much just added a piano player (piano, not synth — in 1979, this was already a radically out of the box move) and dared to work with the guy who had produced Tubular Bells, Tom Newman. (Newman, incidentally, made a terrific solo album in the mid-’70s, Fine Old Tom, that has a potential Little Hit in its first track, “Sad Sings.”) The resulting album is considerably less muddy and unfocused than many bands’ second albums around this same time, although Smith’s lyrics throughout are filled with such withering contempt for…well, pretty much everyone and everything…that it’s no wonder the Adverts broke up after this album was unreasonably duffed up in the British music press, apparently for the crime of not sounding like their previous work. Sounds like Smith already expected this reaction: “People come up and they say to me/Sell me something cheap/Sell me something good/Sell me something easily understood.” In this context, the way Smith drawls out the key line “I am your friend” in the chorus sounds bracingly insincere.

–Stewart Mason

Fischer-Z - So Long

United Artists (UK) 45, 1980

I don’t know what this says about me as a mate, but I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for songs where the singer has the honesty to come off as a bit of a jerk, like the ineffectual dweeb in Belle and Sebastian’s “Waking Up to Us” and the threatening coward in Robbie Fulks’s “I Just Want to Meet the Man.” Seems like it takes a certain courage to be a prick in song (other than for explicitly humorous effect). A record I’ve been pulling out of the drawer quite a bit lately is this new-wave weeper from Fischer-Z. You can tell by the carefully laid-out details that the narrator is obsessive and clingy, and doesn’t allow much space. He seems to blame his partner entirely for fleeing the relationship although he seems to have more than a carry-on’s worth of baggage himself. As whiny and neurotic as he is, however, we can’t help but feel a little sorry for him, because he does seem genuinely hurt. A neat trick.

–Jon Harrison

Tiger Lily — Die Laughing

(from the compilation LP The Girls Can’t Help It, Rhino Records 1984)

Ever since I first bought this album at Ralph’s Records in Lubbock in 1985, the chorus of this song has been popping into my head at random moments. “Die Laughing” is a bit harder edged than the rest of the tunes on The Girls Can’t Help It, sounding more like “Interior Hearts” era Legal Weapon than the Bangles or the Go-Go’s. For more information about the band, check out lead singer Laura Molina’s amusingly snarky page about her former cohorts.  Let’s just say that apparently relations have been strained.

–Stewart Mason

Native Tongue - Speaking in Captions
(from the EP Native Tongue, Modern Method Records 1981)

I was a bit young to be much aware of the first wave of punk.  I attempted to fill in my knowledge gaps with helpful offerings from various college stations in the Boston area.  I probably heard Boston’s Native Tongue on WMBR’s Late Risers Club show.  Indeed, yearly best-of lists from that show are one of the few places where Native Tongue is mentioned on the web.  The band was most certainly following the lead of Wire and Gang of Four, bands which probably entered my head at around the same time.  Their debut ep’s lead-off track”Speaking in Captions” is definitely the poppiest of the lot, rollicking along short and to-the-point, almost in an early Feelies-esque way, but with more terse guitar lines, including a short dissonant freakout solo section.  The other cuts are much spookier and sparse, but in that same clipped, taut manner, like unfinished math equations nervously hovering about desolate streetscapes.  It’s a neat little record.  Live they were a tight, machine-like power trio, with the drummer/lead vocalist up front and center on stage, pouring sweat and energy in a torrent of cartoon-like beads.  They released a full album in 1983, Yowl, but in my deteriorating memory of that period I don’t recall it getting much notice or airplay (or even hearing it, to be honest).  Perhaps there wasn’t a hooky track like “Speaking in Captions” on it?  For sheer curiosity sake, there are two reviews of Yowl on the web: a very short and grumpy take by Ira Robbins on Trowser Press and a more upbeat assessment by Robert Christgau at his site.

–Andrew Chalfen

The Martinlutherkinks - Seasonal Reign

(From the EP Hit Parade, Wernher Brothers Records 1994)

Some bands are born into obscurity, while others have obscurity thrust upon them. I’m not sure which applies to the Sex Clark 5, but consider:

1) They released three LPs between ‘87 and ‘93, all of which were in the record racks of indie stores worth their salt, as well as a couple of 7″ EPs. Their first album was re-issued with the EP tracks in the early 90s, and was available through the standard mail-order outlets (Parasol, Not Lame, etc.) Obscure? Yes. But findable.
2) All of their records, especially the first LP, Strum and Drum, garnered a quite respectable amount of critical praise, and most of the worthy ‘zines at least mentioned them. (I think the first one I saw was the “Underground” column in the surprisingly-hep-at-that-point Spin.) They were given kudos in Art Black’s Away From the Pulsebeat, The Bob, and the Trouser Press Record Guide, to name three of many.
3) The band was championed by John Peel, and did a session for his show. I mean, sure, everybody else did too, but still, that should count for something.

In spite of the above, it is difficult indeed to hop onto the vast Internets and root out any hard information or even speculation about the band. For instance, they allegedly released a fourth album a few years back, entitled Crimson Panzer. I don’t know anybody who has heard it, let alone actually held a copy in their hands. The band’s website(s), while not un-entertaining, are obtuse and presumably outdated. (It is not entirely clear whether the band exists at this point.) As for the short-lived side project presented here, The Martinlutherkinks, 90%+ of the Google search results for the band name result in lists of…wacky band names.

I’m not going to blather on about the injustice of the universe, or suggest that the popular music industry is (or should be) merit based. However, when there are geeks on the WWW from every global here and there tapping away about their most-adored obscurities, it does seem a little strange to me that one of the most enjoyable (if eccentric) indie-pop footnotes of their time should remain such an enigma. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that fans of the band who saw The Martinlutherkinks 7″ while browsing through several hundred 45s by bands who sounded like the Jesus Lizard or Butterglory didn’t even realize the connection. They probably just said “Huh! That’s a wacky band name,” and kept moving. But just so you know, “Hit Parade,” besides having a neato 60s-style EP sleeve, does contain four charming miniatures written by other guitarist Rick Storey, and arranged and recorded in such a fashion that you’d have to be an even bigger geek than Stewart or I to enumerate any truly significant differences between the MLKs and the SC5. It is unclear how many members of the latter are present; I’d say somewhere between 2 and 3.

-Jon Harrison