Becky & The Lollipops- My Boyfriend/I Don't Care

I've thought quite a bit about the historic election results. Seeing traditionally "red" states elect "blue" candidates in places like North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Kansas, and possibly even Mississippi was astounding. What makes it even more remarkable is that some states spent years redrawing congressional maps to create advantages, only to watch those efforts backfire at the ballot box.

To me, the message from voters wasn't all that complicated. People are tired of feeling squeezed. The war, tariffs, the cost of living, gas prices, energy costs, insurance premiums, shrinking Medicaid coverage for those who need it, and legislation that seemed to benefit wealthy Americans more than working families all played a role. Add in the endless divisive rhetoric, the casual dishonesty that has become commonplace in politics, and voters eventually do what voters do: they render a verdict.

What I hope comes next is not revenge, investigations, and political theater. Certainly, genuine corruption should be investigated and prosecuted. If there was financial fraud, hold people accountable. If there are unanswered questions, get answers. If unqualified officials were promoted because of loyalty rather than competence, replace them with experts who know what they're doing. That's just good government.

But while doing that, get to work. I want to see Congress rediscover the lost art of bipartisanship. I want elected officials who understand that solving problems is more important than scoring points on cable news. Lower costs. Improve healthcare. Strengthen the economy. Help the people who need help.

And speaking of that, I recently saw someone suggest mandatory drug testing for people receiving Medicaid or welfare benefits. Really? Of all the challenges facing America, that's what keeps you up at night? Maybe before we start asking struggling families to pee in a cup, we should ask the same of some of the wealthy and influential people making those demands. I suspect a few surprises might emerge.

The lesson from this election may not be ideological at all. It may simply be that Americans are tired of being angry all the time and would prefer a government that focuses on making life more affordable and a little less difficult. If Congress spends the next two years obsessed with investigations instead of solutions, don't be surprised if voters deliver another course correction. Now, enough politics.

Back to Thursday girl-group sounds with an early-'60s promo from Becky and the Lollipops featuring "My Boyfriend" and "I Don't Care." You know how I love those girl groups. Sometimes two-and-a-half minutes of harmony makes more sense than two years of political analysis.

The Dukes Of Stratosphere- Vanishing Girl

My roof is currently in full replacement mode. The crew started Monday and, as of this morning, they're still hammering away. Cooper has spent the week convinced civilization is ending while the cats have discovered hiding places so well concealed I'm half expecting them to emerge sometime around Christmas.  If all goes according to plan, the roof gets finished tomorrow and I get the privilege of writing a check large enough to make a grown man cry.

Let's talk about records that disappeared and somehow found their way home. This 12" could have easily been called "Vanishing 12" instead of "Vanishing Girl". The story of my missing records has been told so many times it's become part of my personal collector lore. Thankfully, I found this copy cheap a few months ago. Even better, another formerly "stol... er... lost" 12" showed up in today's mail. That one will get its own post in a few weeks since it's actually the record that made me realize I was missing a disturbing number of records in the first place. Nothing quite like attempting to pull a record and discovering you've accidentally curated an exhibit called The Mystery of the Missing Vinyl.

As for today's entry, The Dukes of Stratosphear were XTC operating incognito, and they were clearly having the time of their lives. By the mid-'80s, XTC had already evolved from nervous new-wave oddballs into one of the smartest pop bands on the planet. The problem was nobody was handing out major-label budgets for albums that sounded like obscure British psychedelia from 1967. So XTC essentially put on fake mustaches, adopted ridiculous pseudonyms- Andy Partridge (Sir John Johns), Colin Moulding (The Red Curtain), Dave Gregory (Lord Cornelius Plum), Ian Gregory (E.I.E.I. Owen), and created The Dukes of Stratosphere. Freed from expectations and armed with a deep love of late-'60s psych, they stuffed their record full of obscure references, glorious harmonies, backwards-looking experimentation. 

The joke was supposed to be that they would make a loving parody of psychedelic records. The problem was they were too good at it. What started as a novelty project became one of the best psychedelic records of the 1980s. And if you're wondering how much affection they had for the project, just look at the songs and these aren't songs written by a band chasing trends. They're songs written by record nerds who finally got permission to turn their record collections into an album. Every groove is packed with references. You can hear echoes of Pet Sounds, Sgt. Peppers, The Kinks, The Creation, Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett era, The Pretty Things, Kaleidoscope and just about every obscure psych 45 you can think of. Instead of winking at the audience, they recreated the sound so convincingly that some listeners thought they'd uncovered a lost relic from the Summer of Love. It was basically XTC geeking out over the records they loved and somehow making one of the best psychedelic "tribute" albums ever recorded.

The funniest part is that the Dukes wound up selling so well and becoming so beloved that the "fake band" eventually became almost as legendary as the real one. That's a very XTC thing to accomplish. Normal groups struggle to make one successful band. XTC accidentally made two.

Honestly, the Dukes LP deserve a post of its own. There is enough XTC lore packed into these grooves to fill a notebook, and unlike my missing records, this copy has thankfully stopped vanishing.

Game Theory - Throwing The Election

I voted Saturday. This election matters. In fact, every election matters if you happen to enjoy things like democracy, accountability, and not having your tax dollars treated like someone else's casino bankroll.

I don't care whether you're a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or a member of the "Leave Me Alone, I'm Organizing My 45s" party. No politician is above the law, and elected officials work for us, not for their political parties. If you're a crooked politician, you should be shown the door. If you're buying votes, you should be escorted through that door at high speed. Integrity shouldn't be a campaign slogan; it should be a job requirement.

So that's my public service announcement: Vote. More importantly, vote for integrity and not fabricated issues to distract us from the real issues being dumped on us. Now, back to another subject that inspires fierce loyalty and occasional heartbreak: records.

I recently wrote about how much I love Game Theory. I bought this LP brand new when it came out and was genuinely bummed when the band called it quits. "Throwing the Election" was always one of the standout tracks for me, though honestly the entire album is fantastic from start to finish.

Fortunately, Scott Miller went on to form The Loud Family, and I happily followed along and became a devoted fan of that chapter as well.

When Omnivore reissued the Game Theory catalog, I purchased this release with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever. Because that's what collector geeks do. We spend years hunting down original pressings, then happily buy the reissue anyway, just in case there might be one bonus track, a slightly different liner note, or a photo we've never seen before. It's not a hobby. It's a highly specialized form of rationalized madness.

The Citations - Moon Race/Slippin' and Slidin'

The Space Race was in full throttle during the surf era, and apparently you didn't need to live anywhere near an ocean to catch the wave. The Citations prove the point, blasting off from Wisconsin and aiming straight for the Moon with all the enthusiasm of a garage band armed with reverb and big dreams.

Like a lot of surf bands from the heartland, they understood that geography was merely a suggestion. No beach? No problem. Just crank up the Fender and imagine Lake Michigan is the Pacific Ocean.

They even dusted off the vocals for a run through "Slippin' and Slidin'," showing they were capable of more than instrumental lunar exploration. Unfortunately, their recording career was brief, producing just two 45s before vanishing into the great record-collector mystery file in the sky.

But the story has one final twist. The guitarist eventually resurfaced in a Wisconsin disco band, proving that while surf music may have launched him toward the stars, polyester and a mirror ball ultimately pulled him back to Earth.

The Palace Brothers - Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings

Back when I lived in Denver, I worked nights at a group home and met my friend Craig, another employee whose musical rabbit holes seemed to have no bottom. If there was an obscure label worth knowing, chances are Craig already owned everything they'd ever released. Sub Pop, Drag City, Scat Records, Estrus... he was my unofficial graduate school in underground music.

Craig didn't just collect records, he lived them. He even started his own label, Honeyman, released a Bassholes 45, and at one point owned one of only two known copies of an unreleased Jim Sheppard (V3) 45. A few years ago he sold it for serious collector money, proving once again that sometimes the weirdest records become the most valuable.

I'd spend entire days at his house listening to records, borrowing stacks to take home, and having my musical horizons stretched far beyond where they ever would have gone on their own. One day he put on this Palace Brothers LP he had just picked up. By the time it was over, I was heading straight to Wax Trax with my wallet already surrendering. My record collection is infinitely deeper, stranger, and better because of Craig.

These days I'm in North Carolina and Craig's in Maryland, but we still talk at least once a week. The last time we met up was in Norfolk about four years ago. That feels less like "recently" and more like a warning label that says: Road Trip Required.

As for Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playthings, the title still holds up. These days it's hard enough keeping your mind on the straight and narrow without the nonstop circus of news, social media, and general world chaos doing its best to drag your attention in twelve directions at once. Sometimes the best antidote is simple: put on a good record, drop the needle, and let the rest of the world wait its turn.

The Detergents - Igor's Cellar

I end Halloweenie week with The Detergents, one of those odd weird footnotes in pop history. Most people know Ron Dante as the voice behind a parade of fictional hitmakers like The Archies and The Cuff Links, and later as one of the people helping steer Barry Manilow toward superstardom. Yet here he is lurking in a parody group whose shelf life somehow stretched for two years, several TV appearances, and one delightfully unexpected B-side. While Ron Dante is known as the voice in those other fictional groups, the voice on this particular slab of vinyl wasn't Ron at all, but Danny Jordan, who sadly left us in 2024. Danny's name rang a bell because he was also a member of The Court Jesters, whose two excellent 45s on Roulette I posted years ago. Naturally, that realization triggered the familiar collector's curse: "I should really re-upload those MP3s, take better photos, and repost them." Just what I needed... another project. My growing pile of projects now has projects of its own.

Igor's Cellar was the B-side of the second-to-last Detergents 45 and, it’s part novelty record and part garage-rock basement experiment. It rattles around like something that escaped from a mad scientist's basement laboratory, complete with breaking beakers, flickering Tesla coils, and poor Igor dutifully sweeping up after another monster mishap. The song has enough raw garage energy to stand on its own, even if it arrives wrapped in the group's trademark sense of absurdity.

As for Igors’ Cellar, it's a reminder that sometimes the best surprises are hiding on the flip side of a novelty record, waiting in the shadows while Igor throws the switch and hopes this experiment works out better than the last one.

Hot Blood - Soul Dracula

I wrote that I’d invite Dracula in for coffee, but that’s not entirely true. The only coffee he’d be getting is the blood flowing through my veins, and I’m not exactly in a sharing mood.

I’ve never been much of a vampire fan. My wife, on the other hand, treats vampires as a year-round hobby. October just kicks things into overdrive. If it involves fangs, capes, ancient curses, or mysterious castles, she's watching it.

I picked this up last year and figured, why not? If Dracula is going to show up on my turntable, he might as well arrive aboard the Disco Soul Train. Somewhere between Transylvania and Studio 54, the Count apparently traded his coffin for platform shoes and decided eternal life needed a better dance beat. Maybe immortality isn't a curse. Maybe spending eternity promoting novelty disco records is.

Personally, if I’m inviting any vampire over for breakfast, it’s Count Chocula. At least he leaves cereal instead of bite marks and doesn't spend 400 years trying to launch a disco career.

One record! Ah-ah-ah! Two records! Ah-ah-ah!