Babylon Dance Band, "When I'm Home"/"Remains Of The Beat" (Babylon Dance Band, 1981)
This is what indie rock could have sounded like, damn: A lively rhythm that actually propels the music forward (basslines and handclaps leading the guitars—reminds me of early '80s Georgia band Pylon); a lively vocal that actually sounds engaged rather than detached (an exasperated male semi-Southern drawl that winds up stretching and twisting vowels and exclaiming "whoo!"—reminds me of early '80s Georgia band the Brains.) Still, despite their name, not really a dance band, and not reggae either. Four collegiate-looking young people from Louisville; three clean-cut guys, one bespectacled girl. Tim Harris and Tara Key later wound up in Antietam, and BDB reunited for an album on Matador in 1994 that hardly anybody noticed; their MySpace now lists them as a New York band. On the 45 sleeve, in the same picture that wound up on the cover of The Village Voice back then, they're loading their instruments into their car. A-side's about having cabin fever: "When I'm home, I just bitch and moan." "When I'm home, I could be on the road, in an empty room, with just a telephone." B-side is faster, more urgent, with a guitar part that could be a sax part. And yeah—what remains of the beat here is a lot more than what would remain of it in indie rock only a few years later.

The Black Halos, "Jane Doe"/"Russian Roulette" (Sub Pop, 2000)
Their leather-clad photo on the cover has "glam sleaze" written all over it, which ten years earlier would have still meant "post- G'nR hair metal" (it all dates back to Hanoi Rocks or Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers anyway), but sometime in the '90s (D Generation maybe?) the look shifted back to meaning "punk," somehow. Anyway, a decent sloppy churn; doesn't necessarily convince me these Vancouver boys are afflicted with the social diseases their subgenre implies, and doesn't necessarily have to. But they do better with the B-side's power ballad than the would-be rocker on the A; the singer calls himself "a late-night thriller" and tries to rhyme "Viet nam" with "Superman" and what sounds like "Russian ryall" with either "vial" or "vile," either of which seems appropriate. Inside my copy there's a subscription order card for the Sub Pop Singles Club, and the next two on the schedule are by Dead C and Death Cab For Cutie—similar names, but kind of far apart regardless.

Blumfeld, "Draußen Auf Kaution"/"Jet Set" (Big Cat, 1995)
One of the only songs in my collection with the old German "ettsett" letter (signifying a double "s") in its title, so it's no surprise when the A-side kicks off with some car ignition, like this reportedly Kafka-inspired Hamburg band is about to fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn. That evolves into repeating guitar drones, and what's unexpected is how pretty and exquisitely lonely the drones and German accents turn from there, prefiguring a mood the Notwist would catch a few years later. My high-school-and-Army-base Deutsch helps me catch a few phrases: "um den strassen," "ich nicht," "nicht forgessen." The Nasty Little Man press release still tucked inside the sleeve says they were one of Steve Albini's favorite bands at the time, and yeah, they're partaking in a precise and severe aesthetic you can imagine him admiring. "Jet Set" speeds things up, matching the forward motion of one of Sonic Youth's less lethargic songs circa Sister, with vocals working hard Teutonic consonants against the rhythm. Nothing sloppy or social diseased about these guys, that's for sure.

Bona Roba, "Cunningham Park"/"The Slip" (Sonico, 2004)
As much a garage band as Black Halos, but from Queens, hence more middle-class strivers than bohemian slummers; they sound like they've rehearsed more and they ingest better drugs—namely, beer. They also sound like they really like the Rolling Stones a lot. On the picture sleeve, they're playing in a basement rec room or a neighborhood dive bar, with Brooklyn Brewery logos on the wall and ice machines behind them. "Cunningham Park," about fighting and fucking in the summer, makes the public space in its title sound legendary even though I've never heard of the place before. "The Slip" is more muffled but still Stonesey, and still full-throated, and with some harmonies—an Exile move maybe, though seeing how it's "recorded live to 4-track," you can't be completely sure.

Born Bavarian, "Fucking In The Butt"/"White Blue Trash" (Steel Cage, 2001)
Based in Germany, like Blumfeld, but Germany's deep South part, and I get the idea they drink more beer than Bona Roba too. Probably also not a great band to start a fight with: The photo inside the 45 sleeve shows singer Andi Nauerz wearing a Klan hood and cape, but it's plaid; guitarist Klaus Pelz has a CCCP hammer-and-sickle T-shirt. On the back cover, there's a big ugly bearded biker-looking dude named Rolan Betonohr Holler, who "died alone in the second part of July 2001," and the record is dedicated to him since he "did us the honor of entering the stage and singing the backing vocals of 'White Blue Trash' every fucking time we played a live version of that song'." The band is apparently from Munich, and the non-song on the A-side (credited songwritingwise to David Allan Coe, though I've got a bunch of his albums and it's sure not on any of those) is ferociously obscene and half-assed Motörhead/G.G. Allin cowpunk in which they threaten to "fuck the shit out of you." But the rousing chorus of "White Blue Trash" is where you can absolutely envision soused louts in the crowd hoisting their steins in the air and breaking bar stools over each others' heads just for the jolly sport of it: "We are White!" "We are Blue!" "We Are White! Blue! Trash!" I don't know what that slogan means from a racial perspective, and to be honest I'm not sure I want to know; I'm just going to assume they're proud to be working class on the weekend and leave it at that. And yeah, the verses are incomprehensible, but I double-dare you to say that to these guys' faces. At the end, guitar chords turn into "Sweet Home Alabama," totally at home away from home.

Broken Bottles, "Suburban Dream"/"Broken Bottles" (TKO, 2006)
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, here in Status-Symbol Land: "Down the street/I'm in a band/We got the beat/The neighborhood watch is after us/White picket fence." Snide but poppish, the offspring of Green Day, from Southern California and they sound like it. Then, in Broken Bottles' theme song, Jess The Mess whines through his adenoids about how they got kicked out of an '80s bar and wound up drinking and breaking bottles in the street, and these kids thereby make their claim as true punks—skinny ones, and stupid ones maybe, but brave ones. "Like to dance to '80s [or 'ladies'?] music/Want to cause a problem." I wonder if the '80s bar is in the suburbs. I also bet they don't know how sad they sound.

So this new column is where I cash in on inevitable nostalgia for a more innocent analog time by digging out and spinning for myself all the mysterious indie vinyl 7-inches by forgotten no-names that have piled up on my shelf over the past decade or two, in hopes of figuring out why the heck I kept them in the first place. In alphabetical order, no less.

Action Suits, "Cancer Father"/"Visualize Ballard" (Man's Ruin, 1996)
First thing you notice about this is that the sleeve—a cartoon of a guy with his eyes bugging out in front of both a desolate hospital and a haunted forest—is clearly drawn by Peter Bagge, of Hate comics fame. (Who must be famous, seeing how I can probably count on one hand the number of graphic novelists whose drawing styles I could recognize on sight.) Turns out he also drums; the keyboard/Theremin player is Steve Fisk, of engineering-lots-of-indie-bands fame. Action Suits apparently recorded in Seattle, and their vinyl is a lovely translucent periwinkle. "Cancer Father" starts slow and piano-tinkly and gives its topic away with its title; otherwise, I'm not sure I'd figure out what all the disjunct lines about Kodak photos of Dear Old Dad and unfamiliar faces gathered around and how the singer could have used more compassion are meant to add up to. Still, it sounds emotional—in a, uh, proto-emo way—and I can relate to fathers' funerals. The B-side's the keeper, though, a more energized off-key jangle with a weird (is there any other kind?) Theremin solo in the middle and a tangible chorus: "I wanna quit my job/I wanna commit crime/I wanna steal your stuff/And I wanna take your life." Also stuff about blue collar workers in rusty Chevy trucks which—a pleasant surprise—doesn't sound entirely condescending.

The Action Suits [MySpace]

The Aislers Set, "Attraction Action Reaction"/"Clouds Will Clear" (Suicide Squeeze, 2001)
The A-side has a girl (one Amy Linton) opening up her non-extroverted indie-waif voice enough to make music-box time signatures (somewhere in the neighborhood of Swiss post-punks Kleenex/Liliput) quite pretty; words at least partially concern waiting by the phone for a crush to call. There's a good quasi-jazzy midsection break, and the music is given room to stretch out until it stops cold at the end. "Clouds Will Clear" ("AA side," sleeve and label say) has a more bored-sounding boy (one Wyatt Cusick) serenading his own unrequited secret admiree ("someday I'll find a way to make you notice me") and making it pretty as well, though in a less distinctive way. Guitar turns into a nice little rustic jangle for a couple bars, while rodents squeak in the background.

The Aislers Set [MySpace]

The All Golden "Velikovsky"/"This Guitar's Gone To Heaven" (Bubblegum Smile, 1999)
More modest and moody indie jangle. Sounds like it could've come from New Zealand, which I mean as a compliment, though Google informs me the band was from Kent, Ohio. But the label's motto is "a teenage symphony in every groove," and sure enough, "Velikovsky" (which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with Velikovksy) has pretty guitars criss-crossing pretty vocals and pretty windchimes or perhaps pretty altar-boy bells for four-and-a-half minutes, until eventually an off-key trumpet winds things down. The title of the B-side may or may not be a Pixies reference, not that I care much, and the vocal is less muffled but the folk-strum more average, somehow. Then a verse or two in there's a momentary yet welcome attempt at vocal harmony, and then eventually a pipe organ or whatever playing Sgt. Pepper's notes then going out on an extended line. So yeah, teenage symphonies indeed. Or okay, twentysomething symphonies at least.

The All Golden [Official Site]

Apocalypse Babys "Submarine Mary"/"999"/"Money To Burn" (F.U.G. Records, 2000)
Okay, now these guys look teenage. On the back-cover photo, they all have long unwashed hair and/or bad teeth, and the mini-EP's overall title is Full Metal Jacket, so no pencil-necked college geeks here! Nonetheless, amid the pushy attempts at hard rock riffs from excellently named guitarist John "Heavy Metal" Slater, excellently named singer Asterix The Brat sounds endearing anyway, popcorning around excitably about Submarine Mary goin' down (geddit?) after he sees her standing under the red light. Bon Scott wannabe bawdiness, in other words, and then "999" (also on the A side) is speedier poverty punk with spittle-gob mouthings climaxing in inevitable exclamations of "9-9-9 - emergency!" (See also: Girlschool's "Emergency," the Clash's "London's Burning," great early pop-punk Limeys 999.) "Money To Burn" is more or less a power ballad, sung clipped-vowel Joey Ramone style, possibly concerning an after-school job or lack thereof. Humorous press release quote, tucked inside the sleeve of my copy: "Grab your tea and crumpets and sattle up with the queen for some ass kicking punk rock, English style." The blokes hail from Derbyshire but their label's in Pensacola—how about that.

Apocalypse Babys [MySpace]

Arlo "Sittin' On the Aces"/"Skyscraper" (Sub Pop, 2000)
The A-side sounds way more fake grunge than I'd expect from something so late in Sub Pop's lifespan; drummer seems to be a bit of a fusion fan, and the strangulated way the singer threatens to move to Colorado has some Perry Farrell in it, but the guitar curdles are Nirvana nostalgia. The A-side's passable, but the B is the dullest and vaguest track on any of these singles: stunted tempo and groove, no hook or identifiable song, and it doesn't scrape the sky like the title promises. Strangely, Sub Pop's website calls them a "powerpop" band from L.A. So maybe Arlo's other songs are either more powerful or more poppy than this one is.

Arlo [Sub Pop]

A-Trak "Enter Ralph Wiggum"/"Live @ Tableturns" (Stones Throw, 1999)
Give or take Peter Bagge and maybe Steve Fisk, A-Trak is probably the biggest name in this installment; what I know about him, basically, is that he's a respected turntablist who put out a fun and crunky mix CD last year called Dirty South Dance, on graffiti entrepreneur Shepard Fairey's Obey imprint. Didn't know even that much in 1999, and I suspect I kept this then for the novelty: Simpsons reference in title—and on label: "The happiest day of my life is when the doctor told me I didn't have worms"—and damn near the only itchy and scratchy live turntable-improv workout I've ever owned on a 7-inch 45. At that, pretty damn obnoxious: The big beats at the start might be from "Walk This Way," but then we get a few collaged minutes of show-off wank as pointless as the most onanistic double-live-album drum or guitar solo and less musical. (You can hear people cheering, and you wonder why.) If you make it through, you're rewarded at the end with a vocal snippet from Steve Miller's "Take The Money And Run," probably another reason I hung onto my copy. Oops, that's the B-side, "produced by Miami-Bass-Trak, recorded live at Tableturns 2nd Anniversary 3/99, NYC." The A-side—"produced by A-Train, mixed by Ma$e-Trak, recorded at the Macklovitch Residence"—is spacier. Also better, in a sub-DJ Shadow kinda way, with a sampled voice at the end instructing us to "take a trip," thus lending the exploratory concept perspective. Sleeve features strutting California Raisin type cartoons in top hats; executive producer is backpack icon Peanut Butter Wolf. I'm a sucker, so I probably won't get rid of it, even now. But Arlo is out the door, I promise.

DJ A-Trak [MySpace]