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'