A fun flip-through despite memories of the sixth grade coat room, where forgotten lunchboxes with tuna sandwiches were frequently allowed to work their magic.

I amassed the whole collection circa 1974 by being good and waiting in the car while my mom went in to the grocery store to pick up a few things. (Shut up – everyone’s moms did this in the seventies.) They were available for purchase in a cookie jar by the cash register. I remember their distinct vinyl smell.

Here’s a slithering organ riff to creep into your skull. This aired on French TV in 1963 and I don’t think it ever saw official release until it showed up on a 2000 compilation. Gillian Hills was a British actress/singer who worked the Paris circuit during the early ’60s. Would a native French speaker pick up on her accent, I wonder, and would that give this particular clip starring the predatory Gainsbourg an edgy “lost girl” aura? Hills and future Gainsbourg duet partner Jane Birkin would later share a tumble with David Hemmings in Blow Up (1966).

This is the only Alice Cooper song I ever lived. Too young to have taken in his shock-rock heyday in real time (only through my friends’ big brothers’ record collections), “Clones” is the song that blasted irresistibly at the roller rink and circled around and around in my head until I’d finally drop allowance money on the 45. Outside Skateland, though, Alice was being run down for losing his balance in a disorienting new decade.

Alice Cooper – “Clones (We’re All)” (1980)

Bassist Pete Comita joined Cheap Trick in 1980 and was gone by early ’81, so he was in the group just long enough to (1) co-write and record “Reach Out” for the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack and (2) appear in the group’s historic view master photo shoot.

How is it that “Outside Chance,” written by Warren Zevon (going by his ’60s stage name Lyme), never charted at all? At least the White Whale label valued the recording enough to toughen up the Turtles’ 1967 Golden Hits with it. It’s otherwise tricky sorting through the group’s catalog, in which so many worthwhile outtakes show up alongside officially released tracks on post-breakup compilations. (In the Lloyd Thaxton Show clip below, lead singer Howard Kaylan here reminds me vaguely of the mid-sixties Wayne Newton.)

The Turtles – “Outside Chance” (from The Lloyd Thaxton Show, 1965)

The Hot Dogs were Ardent label mates with Big Star. But when I bought this in my teens from a used record bin, I hadn’t yet heard of Big Star, so I thought the album might sound like a lesser Brewer and Shipley. It ended up winning me over from the start with its opening title track – an epic pop rock ballad that you’d swear features some of the strings and woodwinds the liner notes credit to Memphis State University, even though the track doesn’t.

The Hot Dogs – “Say What You Mean” (1973)

And Soon the Darkness is a UK stalker film featuring two nurses who bicycle in France, snazzy colors, and an alternately moody and brassy theme song. When its horn section breaks in for the closing credits, it has a “ha ha, you thought you had it all figured out” effect. Laurie Johnson (male), one of the great British TV/movie composers, did this one.

From the Sun Ra archives.