SHIVVERS LP !!!

AVAILABLE NOW AT SING SING RECORDS

BUSTER, 'She Ain't My Baby' b/w 'Certain Kind Of Feeling' (RCA, 1978)

BUSTER, 'She Ain't My Baby' b/w 'Certain Kind Of Feeling' (RCA, 1978)

Liverpool's teeny-bop, Asian-export-only answers to the BAY CITY ROLLERS found here in Nippon on their fifth and final single for RCA.

When presented with BUSTER's oeuvre, most punters seem to plump for the glitter-rock 'Beautiful Child' as the band's masterpiece, however, they would be grieviously mistaken.

Slick, unmistakable and undeniable teen power-pop froth, 'She Ain't My Baby' enters into the same high echelon as the best of THE QUESTIONS, APOSTROPHE or even THE RUBINOOS while 'Certain Kind Of Feeling' is the perfect slow-dance, BEACH BOYS ballad come-down you'd need after dry-rutting yourself into frustration on the record's A.

They'd never sound better, though I still think 'Sunday' is a pretty marvy tune as well.

'SHE AIN'T MY BABY'



'CERTAIN KIND OF FEELING'

THE WINDOWS, 'Don't Hang Up' b/w 'My Dear' (no label, 1982)

THE WINDOWS, 'Don't Hang Up' b/w 'My Dear' (no label, 1982)

In yet another case of ignore the A-side!

Ignore the A-side and - in addition - any name association one might make with said group and the tepid dollar-bin-clogging LP ('Runnin' Alone') they would later issue in 1987.

Ignore it all!

Just not the B-side.

THE WINDOWS were a carpetbagging powerpop group with membership collected from across the lower midwest and upper south.  Led by Chicago-native Larry Brewer, the group were based in that great bastion of scallywag Yankee-dom - Western Tennessee - and played throughout the South; being particularly popular in the capital of my home state of Mississippi.

Five years before they poodle-permed-up their hair, however, THE WINDOWS issued what they probably figured was just their initial public entree into the world of commercial rock/AOR pop-air-wave-rotation-pandering.

And it was!  And it is!

However, 'My Dear' also just happens to inadvertently sparkle with that rare early CHRIS STAMEY & THE db's and TOMMY KEENE guitar slash brilliance, sweetened with ROY WOOD vocal homages, that is so rare/fleeting within 80s powerpop.  ...which is all the more reason that it should be celebrated.

Never issued with sleeve and hardly distributed - THE WINDOWS 45 debut offers up a perfect 'What-If' speculative scenario.  Had THE WINDOWS had proper distribution, an entire generation might have been spared R.E.M.

In any event, enjoy THE WINDOWS.

'DON'T HANG UP'



'MY DEAR'

Protex on Last Call with Carson Daly

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DAILY PLANET, 'Life' b/w 'Pay' (Riff Raf, 1980)

DAILY PLANET, 'LIFE' b/w 'PAY' (Riff Raf, 1980)

A cool uncomped breath of fresh air before hardcore idiocy-SLASH-Posh Boy mediocrity set in and made southern California safe for board shorts and Social Distortion tattoos forever.

Impossible to say and/or to recreate the exact climate of the times, but I find it highly doubtful that BOBBY SOXX or Gregg T. or Mike S. of the ANGRY SAMOANS would have found much with which to take issue (get it???) with the specific style und sound being mined by the DAILY PLANET. Recorded live on New Years' Eve at L.A.’s Club 88 (allegedly for some documentary called 'Transitions' which I'm not sure actually exists), both sides of thee D.P.’s lone single recall the Rickenbacker/high-energy spit-roast spirit of groups such as THE ROCKERS or maybe even THE NERVES if they had worn matching striped Telnyashka instead of three-piece loser suits.

Some of the band's membership originally hailed from Chicago and apparently soldiered on within the PLANET until at least ’82, at which point the writing was well and truly on the stall and it read in letters red-dripping-red:  DROP DEAD BABY.

Also, gotta love the mod-nod of the label name.  This, undoubtedly, was the DAILY PLANET's finest hour.

'Thank you and have a good Eighties.'

'LIFE'


'PAY'

THE UPTIGHTS, 'I'm Awake' b/w 'Promises (She Isn't In Love)' (Up, 1981)

THE UPTIGHTS, 'I'm Awake' b/w 'Promises (She Isn't In Love)' (Up, 1981)

I have no idea what lead singer CAROLYN ODELL is saying in the A-side's chorus.  Is it an entreatment to take the 'freeway?'  A seductive invitation to have a 'threeway?'  An exultation that she supports the Tulane University Green Wave?  In any event, it's OK, because the true action on the lone platter from these New Orleans power poppers is on the record's b-side.

'Promises, Promises' is not the familiar stupid show-tune.  In fact, it's moody, mod, femme-vox power pop in the mode of BONNIE HAYES, JOSIE COTTEN and/or - even at a stretch - THE SHIVVERS.

Back sleeve is total local - the band thanks a bunch of uptown radio stations and their guitar player, who also doubles as their photographer and de facto graphic designer.

A much better single than I'm probably making out and still available cheap.

...now if only they'd enunciate.  

'I'M AWAKE'


 'PROMISES (SHE ISN'T IN LOVE)'