"To point out that the staff at your local indie record store are about as tightly wound and implacable as the Taliban has already become a cliché. In contrast to that stalwart stance, Scram Magazine has become known for a distinct lack of smugness while digging through the dollar bins of history. Most pop-storians are obsessed with the failed, marginal and forgotten. Scram understands that the successful, populist and forgotten can be just as mysterious, and in this collection of reviews and essays, you'll never be scorned by a pale, weedy boy for liking Terence Trent D'arby. In fact, its writers (including star nerds Jim O'Rourke and Rick Moody) will encourage you on in your bold and (un)original taste.

If hipsterism is a temple built on Big Star and Stooges box sets, then Lost in the Grooves aims to tear down the walls with the clarion call of Kylie Minogue. Pop, after all, is about being popular, and if you want to understand popular culture, why waste time with Captain Beefheart when you can reassess Poco? Yes, the forgotten sons of California rock get multiple mentions here.

But calling for a Poco revival isn't the boldest thing in this book by far. Moody will have you reconsidering The Tubes, and Kris Kendall rights the wrongs dealt to the Dream Warriors by both industry and history. Unlike some music writing, these reviews are carefully written -- as opposed to sounding like rewritten press releases -- and recall Creem Magazine at its most prickly and acid. Should the comparison not be apparent to the reader, excerpts from Creem are reprinted, wink-and-nod-like, throughout its pages.

Walk away right now and go back to your mid-period Sonic Youth records if you think this is irony. Lost in the Grooves is as sincere as disco and just as satisfying, providing a final home for music -- from The Auteurs to Aaron Carter -- that only wanted to be loved. Maybe that's the pop difference; music that isn't too cool to say "I love you." Do you have the balls to say it back? (Brian Joseph Davis, Eye Weekly, 12/02/04)

*

For the ones that got away

IMAGINE the scene: a rock magazine is compiling the World’s Greatest Punk Records to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Slaughter and the Dogs’ first gig. The editor looks through his well-thumbed list — Anarchy in the UK? Check. Clash? White Riot will do. Somebody suggests Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited has a bit of a punky attitude.

The editor looks fidgety, beads of sweat appear on his brow. “And the Beatles?” he asks. “How are we going to fit them in?” This is not how pop writing was meant to be. What we deserve is the grand tradition of informed enthusiasm and unwarranted bile which stretches from Nik Cohn and Lester Bangs, through punk sage Jon Savage and sly brainbox Simon Reynolds. What we get is a cover-stars-by-rote version of pop history — people who rate Nirvana as slackers with one good idea and a pretty face are royally bored by twice-yearly definitive histories.

A giddy new book called Lost in the Grooves, on the other hand, is exemplary pop writing. “It’s always a treat to find something new that really blows your mind. I think that’s what every music freak is looking for,” explains editrix Kim Cooper. Lost in the Grooves is a collection that has grown out of her and co-editor David Smay’s Scram magazine, dedicated to digging deeper than the familiar Elvis/Beatles/Pistols/Nirvana saga. At the same time, the editors are no obscurants, placing albums by Paul McCartney, Prince, Pentangle, Lou Reed, OMD, the Kinks, the Bee Gees and the Beach Boys alongside the Dream Lake Ukelele Band’s one shot at fame. They just don’t pick the albums you read about on every other list.

Paul McCartney’s 1980 album McCartney II, for instance, came after a foolish drugs bust in Japan that effectively meant the end of Wings. He discovered synths and went all DIY and electronic. The juddering insanity of Temporary Secretary made it a hot Hoxton item 20 years on, Summer’s Day Song is warm honey, while Darkroom imagines Cabaret Voltaire re-jigged by Jonathan King. As for the bubbling Tomorrow’s World-ish instrumental Front Parlour, I’m proud to say I once played it at an electronica night and three people asked what it was.

Nobody has time to listen to everything, and this is where Lost in the Grooves becomes invaluable as a trigger. I’ve pored over the works of the Bee Gees and Beach Boys to the detriment of my soul and my social life but had still never heard either Mr Natural (the one before Jive Talking) or LA Light Album (the one with Lady Lynda), both LITG inclusions: they were officially uncool and I’d been conned. Now I’ve heard them both and I’d say the former’s Throw a Penny is a match for How Deep is Your Love, a natural-born guilty pleasure. Lost in the Grooves is written with such zip, enthusiasm and love of music that you can’t help but get sucked in.

For Cooper “it’s all about lauding the brilliant underdog and discovering unfamiliar glories. Part of the reason I love John Cale’s Paris 1919 so much is that I can still listen to it with fresh ears, where I overplayed my Velvet Underground albums to saturation point.”

Cooper and Smay first came to prominence with the groundbreaking book Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth four years ago. It revived the spirit and endless inquisitiveness of late Sixties/early Seventies fanzines such as Teenage Wasteland Gazette and the late Greg Shaw’s Who Put the Bomp with contributions from the originals (Shaw, cartoonist Peter Bagge) and the latterday pop-culture mavens.

The book was greeted with relief — essays penned with a mixture of gravitas and glee normally reserved for undiscovered Springsteen outtakes were on subjects such as the Monkees, the Sweet and the Archies. Roots and authenticity, touchstones of the musically bankrupt, counted for nought. Cooper describes the Archies as “masters at evoking the nervous excitement of adolescent sexuality . . . Sugar Sugar has one of the sexiest moments this side of Tim Buckley when vocalist Ron Dante explodes ‘like the summer sunshine, pour your sweetness over me’.”

The end result of this hoo-ha was the Bubblegum Achievement Awards in New York, the genre’s spiritual home. Such luminaries as Ron Dante, Toni Wine (fellow Archie and author of Groovy Kind of Love) and Mark Volman of the Turtles were awarded Gummies. Presented by Cooper, the Gummies are “beautiful custom trophies of a golden woman holding aloft a real pink bubblegum ball. This music has brought so much pleasure to people, it was really cool to give some of that back to the people who made it.”

Smay and Cooper describe Lost in the Grooves as “a capricious guide” that may not have a sequel. Neither says they want to declare war on the world of Q and other classic rock publications. “I don’t get angry,” says Smay, “I just shake my head that people choose Thriller over Off the Wall, or misunderstand Mick Taylor’s contribution to the Stones, or missed the Everly Brothers’ mid-Sixties career.”

Cooper tries “not to worry too much about what the canon holds. It seems to me that the canon is becoming less and less meaningful.” Her work means that the odds on the Archies making the cover of Q some time soon are still slim, but just a little less slim. (Bob Stanley, The Times of London, 1/28/05)

*

Serious music dweebs may very well adopt Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed (Routledge) as their rare vinyl-collecting bible. The lisping indie obsessive who gets teary-eyed at Belle & Sebastian concerts ... the thrift-store-foraging Napoleon Dynamite who smells of dust and rotting cardboard ... Steve Buscemi's character in Ghost World ... the Kermit the Frog-voiced fellow who knows the whole discography of bands he doesn't even like ... they're all guaranteed to bust a blood vessel over this one. It's a guidebook written by geeks, for geeks, that makes rock 'n' roll seem almost not cool, grouping fans alongside other nerd cliques who fixate on comic books or Star Trek.

That said, the average music enthusiast will also find Grooves an informative and pleasurable read. The book, edited by Scram editor Kim Cooper and contributor David Smay (also the authors of Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears) contains a wealth of far-out performers who never got their due, forgotten albums by big-time artists, and impassioned defenses of maligned records even the Salvation Army can't get rid of. The emphasis here is on vinyl, including many records that never even made it to CD. Writers here include Radio Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek, Angry Samoan Metal Mike Saunders, old-school rock critic Richard Meltzer, producer Jim O'Rourke, filmmaker Sean Carrillo, and a swap-meet-sized gang of freelance critics and music-zine whack-a-doos.

So what do they preach about? Kim Cooper tells the engaging story of the very obscure (and very short) musical career of Beverly Hills dental assistant and tripped-out songwriter Linda Perhacs, whose creative efforts didn't bloom until she fell in with the laid-back Los Angeles hippie crowd. One of her patients was film composer Leonard Rosenman, who in 1970 helped Perhacs record her only album, Parallelograms, which Cooper describes as "delicately layered love poems to the natural world and the charged erotics of youth."

Also forgotten in music history is the New Orleans piano-pummeling eccentric Esquerita, whom rockabilly singer Deke Dickerson hails as "the source for the bizarre/flamboyantly gay/mega-talented/hollerin'/screamin'/rhythm and blues archetype that Little Richard would take to the bank alone." Though signed to Capitol, Esquerita was too much for the general music-buying public of the time, and original copies of his 1958 self-titled debut are extremely difficult to find.

Epidemiologist and former radio DJ Max Hechter writes about blue-collar punks Cock Sparrer, a '70s act that almost hooked up with Malcolm McLaren, a deal that didn't work out reportedly because he failed to buy the band a round of drinks. McLaren, of course, went on to manage the Sex Pistols, while Cock Sparrer's catchy debut was released only in Spain after the band's label, Decca, went bankrupt.

Too obscure? David J. Schwartz focuses on a somewhat forgotten aspect of Johnny Cash's storied career. As a young ruffian, Cash wasn't afraid to piss people off. When country radio ignored the song "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" from his 1964 album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, Cash took out a full-page ad in Billboard indicting the music industry for its desire to "wallow in meaninglessness."

Still, the unknowns rule the roost here -- for hardcore record collecting freaks looking for new, obscure obsessions, Lost in the Grooves hails little-known acts such as voodoo shrieker Exuma, Wichita rock quartet the Embarrassment, the Italian wannabe Hawaiian act Nino Rejna and His Hawaiian Guitars, French ex-beatnik popster Michel Polnareff, '60s singing duo Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, and the Yiddish-sung American standards of the Barry Sisters. The book also champions traditional rock-critic favorites such as the Brit-pop Housemartins, the always-adored Mekons, the hardworking Poster Children, New York post-punkers the Feelies, the deathless avant-garde crew Pere Ubu, the beloved duo Sparks, Elephant 6 deities Neutral Milk Hotel, and snappy Seattlite pop-punkers the Fastbacks.

Lost in the Grooves doesn't have much to say about jazz or metal, and the few hip-hop write-ups appear to be penned by folks who hardly qualify as fanatics. Otherwise, most musical genres are well covered, though the writing is occasionally subpar and skippable. But most writers succeed at promoting their favorite obscurities, leaving you to wonder, "Should I really seek out a copy of Buckner & Garcia's Pac-Man Fever or the Bee Gees' Mr. Natural?" The answer, of course, is yes. (Adam Bregman, East Bay Express, 1/5/05)

*

Scram magazine, housed in Los Angeles, California..., pays homage to all the players too eccentric or obscure or off-beat to find a home in the Madison Avenue media machine. Scram is truly a resource for those musicians just outside the windows of top-forty-land, those songwriters and guitar slingers looking for an outlet for their own particular brand of art.

Accordingly, Lost in the Grooves takes up where Scram leaves off -- a compilation of ruminations from 75 critics and music aficionados detailing their favorite slices of the scene:

"Jadek is a flat-out weirdo. No one knows who he is, and the guy is either making up his own chords or just doesn’t care how his guitar is tuned. Jadek is like an alien trying to play music after hearing it described to him once. Blind Corpse is his masterpiece...His lyrics reveal a man suffering from a pain so oblique that the listener must simply allow him to revel in his misery. Jadek doesn’t need us for comfort..." (Hayden Childs -- Page 120)

These little known stories about the sometimes shadowy figures of the music world are a hoot to discover; more than anything, this book is like picking an old Rolling Stone and reading for the pure enjoyment of the ride.

However, Lost is important for another reason: as a diary of the hidden streets of the American Music scene, the pieces come together to give true historical perspective to the influences behind the echoes shedding light on the faces behind the old ghosts. Just as much as all the big-time dollar bands, these unknowns serve to bring shape and continuity to the history of our sound:

"Forget the hilarious GTOs. Forget even the mighty Shaggs. Suckdog captures adolescent female adrenaline-fueled angst and aggression like no recording artist I’ve heard before or since. This is not a record for the squeamish..." (Russ Foster -- Page 228)

Lost in the Grooves is not a book for fans mad about one band or one particular singer. Instead, this is a book for the serious music fan, for those serious students of the art form curious about who-influenced-who and what sound rose out of what region. Like turning on a radio station and listening to a feverish wounded-voiced DJ tell you the reason behind every record you never heard, there’s 20 new things to be learned on every page here.

Recommended to all libraries in the public sector and at the college level as general reference text. Also will appeal to serious music fans of all generations - there’s some new stuff here for all tastes. & thanks to Routledge for perhaps forsaking pure commercial motive and releasing an invaluable teaching tool. (John Aiello, The Electric Review, March/April 2005)

... A month or two after I finished Kill Your Idols, I discovered another recent book, Lost in the Grooves (edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay), almost by accident. If upending the rock canon is a worthy goal, this book has the approach I like: positive, off center, championing the underdog even when he turns out to be Paul McCartney. The book is a series of capsule reviews of uncelebrated favorites, and although the pick with which I agree most, Spirit's Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, isn't all that obscure (it went gold, after all), more than half of the book is stuff I've never heard of at all. There's a bit of the anti-canon thing – Jim O'Rourke writes that he'd rather hear about Sparks's Propaganda than Pet Sounds, but, to balance that out, I can't help being amused by O'Rourke's comment that "Propaganda is the standard to which I hold myself and everything else." (Imaginary dialogue: "Well, Jeff, I guess A Ghost Is Born is shaping up pretty well. But it's no Propaganda.")... (Patrick Buzby, Jambands.com)

*

One of the great things about collecting rock and roll music is that there is always an undiscovered gem lacking from your collection just waiting for you to discover. This year (2005) celebrates the 30th year that I have been such a music junkie. LOST IN THE GROOVES is a book that celebrates albums that fell through the cracks in the "classics" description. Included are albums that: might have sold well initially but are now pretty much ignored ("McCartney II"), works by artists that were not taken seriously at the time (Herman's Hermits, etc), obscure artists of merit, and generally lost gems that demand reevaluation.

I had quite a few of the discs mentioned such as: "Muswell Hillbillies", "No Dice", "Klaatu", "L.A. (Light Album)", "McCartney II", "Subterranean Jungle", "Face Dances", "Pacific Ocean Blue", "Hillbilly Deluxe" - just to name a few. But, I found many more that I now need to hear! I only take issue with one entry: Pink Floyds' "The Final Cut". I bought it when it first came out and 20+ years later still say its crap!

I've already given LOST IN THE GROOVES several readings and, armed with a yellow highlighter, have made note of which albums I need to add to my collection. This is the perfect book for the advanced record collector/music fan! (Ronnie, Ear Candy)

*

This could be considered both the anthology and encyclopedia of the not-so-popular music scene. Written in clever, whimsical, tongue in cheek style, the book is a wealth of trivia and facts about hundreds of albums and singles which never made the Top Ten or Hit Parade in the last forty-plus years, some by obscure artists and some non-hits by well-known artists. Because of the alphabetical arrangement of the numerous reviews the juxtaposition of the aritists, styles, and genre of the music is outrageously interesting in itself! For anyone who ever shoved nickles into a Juke Box, any music lover of any kind, and any pop-culture enthusiast, this book Rocks! Tom Neely's delightful cover design, illustrations, and caricatures of some of the artists will delight any reader. (Real Travel Adventures)

Lost-And Found: As countless new CDs continue to push existing music out of the racks and into the cutout bins, used stores and (gasp) even the trash, plenty of worthy albums get unjustly overlooked. In fact, pop-music history is littered with artists both famous and obscure whose work stands defiantly alone—too quirky, too unorthodox or just too demented to appeal to either a mainstream audience or even so-called fans.

Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed (Routledge), edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay, sets out to right those wrongs by spotlighting more than 100 musicians whose art—and in some cases, careers—simply don’t slot neatly into any one category. With pithy, smartly written essays by contributors to Scram magazine, a self-acclaimed quarterly “journal of unpopular culture,” Lost in the Grooves is structured alphabetically in an encyclopedic format. That makes finding the Dream Lake Ukulele Band’s self-titled 1976 album just as easy as locating Terence Trent D’Arby’s 1993 Symphony or Damn. The Beach Boys, John Cale, Glen Campbell, Marvin Gaye, the Hollies, Jefferson Airplane, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Prince and Dwight Yoakam all get nods here; and fans of lo-fi garage rock, French avant-garde, roots rock, psycho folk, proto-punk, ’80s soul and bubblegum pop will all find something to discover within these 304 pages.

Readers won’t, however, find many recent releases. Rather, Scram’s writers seem particularly partial to vintage children’s music (Flo & Eddie’s The World of Strawberry Shortcake and The Alvin Show by Alvin and the Chipmunks) and novelty records (Rock Fantasy, a concept album from K-Tel that explores animals’ psychological character traits; Chevrolet Sings of Safe Driving and You, a circa-1965 musical set of rules for new drivers performed by an outfit called the First Team; and The Wozard of Iz: An Electronic Odyssey by Mort Garson & Jacques Wilson).

Many featured titles are only available on vinyl; indeed, part of this collection’s charm is the way writers call these albums “records,” not CDs, and make references to Side One and Side Two. Still, it would have been helpful for editors Cooper (who also edits Scram) and Smay (co-author of Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears) to indicate which titles eventually did make it to disc—even if they’re currently out of print.

Interspersed throughout the book are intriguing sidebars that excerpt original record reviews from the likes of Creem and Flash, and compile such lists as the “Top 10 Non-Goth Albums Goths Listen To” (topped by Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around) and the “6 Greatest Midget Rock & Roll Records” (with Bushwick Bill’s Little Big Man topping the list).

The book’s contributors, although keen on putting any given album and its artist into some sort of context, have a tendency to knock well-known critics who panned these records upon their initial release or to go over the top with their effusive praise. That said, this book does what any good music journalism should do: It makes readers want to seek out—or maybe, at least in a few cases, rediscover— some of the records that people who love records truly care about. As contributor Brian Doherty writes in his assessment of Loudon Wainwright III’s 2001 album, Last Man on Earth: “Discovering it … makes you wonder what else everyone is missing.” (Michael Popke, Shepherd Express)

There will always be that cool kid who lives to drop the names of some unheard band on their friends, maybe set the needle down on a scratchy vinyl disc, and enlighten the world to a long forgotten track that's the epitome of rock, punk, soul or whatever. Lost in the Grooves is the Bible for that kid who's out to save, or at least educate, the world.

For the rest of us, though, Lost in the Grooves [Routledge] is just a good, fun read. In the introduction, called, Reconsider, Baby, we're introduced to a group of passionate zinesters that see Lost in the Grooves as “a collection of miniature love letters to albums.” And that's right-on. The voice of zines has always been one that's a little more personal and experiential than those high-fallutin', glossy, corporate publications. And face it, just like a rock and roll Stepford Wife, they look pretty--but without the rough edges, without the intensity and the feeling, they have no soul. Throughout the book, the Scram gang works hard to build amusing and solid cases to justify sometimes hard-to-believe albums, like Buckner and Garcia's 1982 release, Pac-Man Fever [CBS Records].

One of the best of more than 75 writer/critics includes editor, Kim Cooper, who always adds a personal touch--things like, “I was a teenage Velvets freak who overplayed their records until they sounded like dishwater sloshing around the room.” Among the 250-some entries, a lot of these writers, like Brian Doherty, will take you right into the song-it doesn't matter if you've heard it or not--because he gives it to you with full description, lyrics, and where and how to annunciate. It's amusing as all hell to read and really, just great writing. There are even a couple reviews [Pere Ubu and The Tubes] by the famous novelist, Rick Moody, who's been known to dabble in music from time to time.

Lost in the Grooves hits on all kinds of music across all genres, and the thing is that even if, say, you don't listen to country, you're going to want to read the review for its entertainment value alone. It's easy to pick up and put down without having to follow any story line, and hey, if you're that kid who needs to be The Enlightened One: well, here you go. (J. Gordon, Nighttimes.com)