8 Indie 45s From the ’00s

Written in retrospective hindsight, as explained in more detail here. Cococoma “6 ¼ – 125”/”Take My Time” (2006) Recorded December 2005 in their hometown Chicago, so my release-year guess can’t be too far off. Either way, this speedy, muffled nugget is the sort of revisionist garage punk that genre addicts pretend rocks harder than it does…

Two Salt-N-Pepa singles, 1988

Have been wanting to post this for quite a while now, but my hard copy is too blurry to be legible. Now that the Boston Phoenix archives are on line, though — problem solved! I hope. As for Salt-N-Pepa, one single I write about here became their first pop hit — and, let’s be honest,…

35 Best Singles of 2021

I tend to live in my own bubble, if not on my own planet, when it comes to singles these days. Well, maybe I always did (you might be saying), but at least I used to not go through entire years without writing about any of them, or really talking to anybody about them at…

3 Broklyn Beats 45s

From a column called “Singles Again” (explained here), obscure little vinyl records picked off my shelf and decoded, with years of hindsight. Broklyn Beast: “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (2002) Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W.…

4 Indie 45s From the ’90s

Excerpts from a short-lived monthly column called “Singles Again” (should’ve been “Singles Again Again,” since I’d previously used the same title at the Village Voice) in the online magazine Blurt (after two installments on the Idolator website) in which I started to comb alphabetically (as you can see, I didn’t get very far) through my…

3 Indie Rock single reviews, 2004

Grandaddy: “The Rugged and Splintered Entertainment Center” Over repeated Casio tinkles playing an organ-grinder/boombah-stick oompah, and opening appropriately enough with a fake warp (unless that’s just my own worn-out turntable belt fucking up), a lonely where-oh-where-are-you-tonight campfire hymn to man’s best friend—namely, the trusty cabinet containing your TV, VCR, crappy receivers, eyesore knickknacks, and gallons…

A Bubblegum Top 40

Reprinted in the 2001 Kim Cooper and David Smay-edited anthology Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth; possibly excerpted and/or cannibalized in scores of things I’ve written since. But this is how the original version looked on the page. A year later or decades later — after Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, the Spice Girls, Radio Disney, Aqua,…

Lou Gramm single review, 1987

When I interviewed him for Creem a month or two later, Lou Gramm told me he appreciated this review, but wondered why I ended it calling him a “hack.” I told him, “But Lou, you sing for Foreigner!” As for suggesting they’re “the greatest postpunk 45-rpm band,” I was partly being provocative no doubt (they…

Helen Darling single review, 1995

That rarest of birds, probably one of a kind: A single review. Of a country song. By a basically unknown artist. In Rolling Stone. And they gave me three times as much space as they wound up giving full albums by name entities a few years later. For all I know, this might be the…

Singles reviews, 1988

A very short-lived (only one installment, if my memory serves me) Creem column. Good variety. Some parts wound up in a couple of my books, but most parts didn’t. The editors carelessly shuffled the order somewhat — I clearly mean to end with the Spagna blurb. Creem, 1988