I spent a lot of top hopscotching across different genres and subgenres as I solidified my music fandom during my teenage years. I attribute this, in part, to my first exposure to radio coming during the nineteen-seventies, when programmers were so perplexed by the rapidly evolving music scene that it seemed as though practically anything could climb to top of the singles chart. There was a certain aural wanderlust that defined my taste, as I took extended spins around the dance floor with local radio stations that specialized in country, Top 40 and even adult contemporary (the canvas can do miracles, dammit!) before settling on a favorite station that was a strange amalgam of classic rock and up-and-coming alternative, slotting R.E.M. next to Five Man Electrical Band like it was the most logical thing in the world. I was learning to love college radio mainstays, but I had vestiges of arena rock appreciations around the edges.

So it sometimes helped me–still does, now that I think about it–if a band cemented their musical sensibility in a sound that would have fit nicely onto one of the sides of the old Nuggets compilations of obscure crunching, warped guitar rock from the sixties. No matter how deep I was into the happy, trippy realm of college radio, I always liked to keep one eye trained back on the gateway that got me there, and I remained ready to zip back there for a moment of safety anytime some blast of assaultive disco or epic anti-music left me feeling a little unsettled. I knew where the albums that wallowed in the past resided in the station’s music stacks as assuredly as a skittish flier knows the clearest route to each emergency exit.

One of the albums that I turned to often–and which I believe was barely touched by any other DJ–was released fairly early in my tenure at the station. Entitled Cars, Flowers, Telephones, it was from a New Mexico band called The Strawberry Zots, which strikes me as about as perfect of a name as can be mustered for a band trafficking in psychedelia-tinged garage rock. They make their intentions clear with the very first track, a cover of “Get Me to the World on Time” by the Electric Prunes, and then proceed to burn through a batch of songs, any of which sound like they could have been the beloved b-side of the original recording. (The actual b-side is pretty cool, by the way.) It wasn’t an album that I held up as a favorite like certain efforts by The Replacements, Billy Bragg or XTC, but it was one that I grasped for fairly often, appreciating the reassurances that lived within its grooves.

The Strawberry Zots, “Waste of Time”

(Disclaimer: As best as I can tell, the sole album from The Strawberry Zots is out of print. In fact, it’s probably been out of print for ages, and it seems an unlikely candidate for a prestige reissue any time soon. This song is posted with the understanding that there’s no good way to purchase the music that will provide compensation to the artist. I mean no harm in admittedly playing loose and fast with copyright here, so if someone with a vested interest in the music in question contacts me and requests its removal, I will surely and promptly comply.)