I always come back from trips home to
Colorado with something interesting, but this time the souvenir wasn’t a
postcard or a bag of green‑chile pretzels — it was a 45 plucked from a bin of
unsleeved orphans in a Florence Colorado antique store. Four for a buck, the kind of
deal that promises disappointment with a wink. But record digging is a
faith-based sport: you endure 999 cracked polka singles so that number 1,000
can walk up, tap you on the shoulder, and whisper, hey…I’m the one.
This one absolutely was. I didn’t know it was collectible, and I had zero clue who the
band was, but I got that little brain‑zap — the collector’s sixth sense that says, nope, this isn’t trash; pay attention. The hook was immediate: a cover of one of my all-time favorite Left Banke songs, “She May Call You Up Tonight,” and this version doesn’t just do it justice — it floats. Pure bliss, like someone bottled the exact moment a summer evening turns golden.
Then came the kicker. California Spectrum wasn’t just some mystery group; tucked inside
were Danny and Shaun Harris, born just down the road in Colorado Springs, long before they drifted west and plugged into The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. That’s the kind of résumé that deserves to be printed on linen paper and framed above a turntable.
The B‑side sounds like Sputnik didn’t just fall out of orbit — it showed up drunk, skidded across the atmosphere, and belly‑flopped into Earth.
A quarter well spent. A universe well played.
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