VA - Lessons From Little Hits, Part 3

Little Hits was an unrelated music blog that preceded mine, which largely dealt with left-off-the-dial indie rock obscurities circa the 1980s.  It left a substantial impression on me, so much so that I decided to throw my hat in the ring with Wilfully Obscure.  During the past two months I've shared self-curated compilations of some of the music I absorbed (or more accurately, downloaded) during Little Hits 2005-2009 lifespan.  I originally promised three installments in this mini-series.  Here is the third, and I may extend it to four, since the response has been better than I expected.

There are actually a few relatively well known entities here, including the Feelies, whose cover of Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" is nearly as captivating as the original.  It was initially released on a flexi-disk, and later appeared as a b-side on a promo single.  East River Pipe also make an appearance with a superb early ep track, "Make a Deal With the City," and 415 Records all-stars Red Rockers dish out their nascent, punky single "Voice of America."  Scruffy the Cat are also represented, a band who I never got around to mentioning on these pages, and sadly their frontman Charlie Chesterman is recently deceased.  Little Hits were spot-on when it came to distilling an artist down to one key single or signature song, and the robust power pop of Scruffy's "You Dirty Rat" is a sheer hole-in-one.  

As for some of the more unknown quantities, New Zealand's Alpaca Brothers made my shortlist, as did a couple of Midwestern bands from the States that weren't quite destine for bigger things, namely The Dangtrippers and Bangtails.  North Carolina's Glass Moon should have scored a monster hit with "Simon," a narrative slice of new wave entailing an Albert Einstein theme.  Rick Rock is actually power pop maestro Parthenon Huxley incognito, whose "Sputnik" is thrown into the mix as well.  Klyde Konner fleshes out this compilations pub-rock quotient, and I would have been remiss if I neglected to include one of my coolest LH discoveries, New York's little known Bandables, who only managed to eke out a single during their lifespan.  "Levitation" however isn't from that 45, rather it remains unreleased to this day.

Bandables - Levitation
East River Pipe - Make A Deal With The City
Erratic Sculpture - Cholera
Glass Moon - Simon
Klyde Konnor - Suit For All Occasions
Los Popularos - Working Girls
Red Rockers - Voice of America
Rick Rock (aka Parthenon Huxley) - Sputnik
Scruffy the Cat - You Dirty Rat
Shake Appeal - My Danger
The Alpaca Brothers - The Lie
The Bangtails - While Laughing
The Dangtrippers - Masquerade
The Feelies - Dancing Barefoot
The Group Image - Anything You Feel

Hear