Christopher Arnott’s still spinning the 45s from his basement

1. Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde, A Summer Song. One of the cheesiest of the ‘60s male pop duos—Jan & Dean could mop the floor with ‘em. But yesterday was the last day of summer. C&J’s autumnal songs can be found on their dry, sarcastic psychedelic anomaly Of Cabbages & Kings.
2. Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Spelling Bee. I know there are cool Strawberry Shortcake collectibles aplenty—pop albums that’ve become the holy grail for fans of Flo & Eddie—but I when I find SS items in Salvation Armies it’s always record jackets with the wrong records in them, or skipped beyond repair, or later lesser eras of the still-ripe character… or trash like this—a read-along “turn the page when you hear the beep” story with no music whatsoever.
3. The 5.6.7.8’s, “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield.” I’ve never seen Kill Bill, which I understand the 5.6.7.8’s appear in, doing this song. I got the single when it came out in 1994 (nearly a decade before the movie), on Washington state’s Estrus label. The liner notes are all in Japanese. I feel the same way about this that I do about another thing I’d had for years that got unexpectedly Tarantinoized: a Krazy Kat T-shirt exactly like the one Samuel Jackson wears following the car hit in Pulp Fiction. Doesn’t kill my enjoyment of this stuff, but I keep it to myself more.
4. On the Road with The Goops. Not only contains a flat-out brilliant punk cover of “Build Me Up Buttercup” but a 12-page comic book about the foul-minded band, illustrated by indie comix great Pat Moriarty. I saw the band at the Tune Inn in New Haven, but the only T-shirts they had were too small. Years later, at the club’s going-out-of-business sale, there was still a small T-shirt on the rack for sale, and I couldn’t resist even though it’d never fit me. That shirt’s become sleepwear of choice for my daughters, even though the Moriarty drawing of the band in a van, running down squirrels and giving the finger to passersby, is pretty ghoulish for bedtime.
5. The Vagabonds, “Laugh or Cry”/”I’ve Heard It All Before.” There are only about a zillion bands called The Vagabonds. This is a Connecticut one from the 1980s and early ‘90s, pals of the equally fast, sleek and Britpop-primed Chopper. My memory of The Vagabonds live is that the guitars were overwhelming, but on this well-produced single everything’s balanced, the drums as prominent as the riffs and harmonies, all of it bracing and loud.