So the other day I slapped on an old 45 of "A Must To Avoid" by Herman's Hermits, and was amazed all over again at what a great guitar pop record it was. Then I spent some time listening to the Rhino LP of Emitt Rhodes's Merry-Go Round. It kind of started me thinking about how many obscure fuzzy punk singles are compiled by the hundreds, for which I'm grateful. But what of the flop major label 45s by purely pop bands who were more influenced by the Searchers or the Hollies than the Stones or Kinks. Surely there must be hundreds of those as well? It seems an under-explored angle from which to attack the garage band phenomenon. Surely for every Left Banke and Turtles there must have been many failures, and I'm sure I've heard plenty of them but it seems like there must be many more out there.

I guess this is only tangentially related to the song in question here. This track by New Zealand's Avengers, while lovely and inspirational enough to have been covered by David Kilgour and Martin Phillipps's Pop Art Toasters, is just the sort of thing that tends not to appear on compilations of "trans-world punk" or "freakbeat" because it isn't deemed "wild" enough. Nevertheless, it's a great pop record, and one worth hearing again and again.