The Vault: Scruffing It Up With Sneakers

North Carolina’s Sneakers had a fairly limited run: The group released only two albums in the late ’70s, neither of which made a big splash outside the typical music-nerd circles. But the band members went on to bigger and better things, with Mitch Easter forming Let’s Active (and producing R.E.M.’s Murmur, among other albums) and Chris Stamey launching the beloved Db’s. Collectors’ Choice issued the career-surveying Nonsequitur of Silenceearlier this year, and while it’s a bit spotty at times–after all, the guys were barely out of college when recording most of these tracks–it’s a solid blueprint for the jangle-pop boom of the ’80s:

Sneakers – Ruby [MP3, link expired]
Sneakers – What I Dig [MP3, link expired]