What follows is the information I’ve been able to glean about the band Ten Speed Summer. It may be flagrantly incorrect.

By some accounts, Ten Speed Summer was a pop-punk band based in Santa Barbara and led by bassist Dave Ehrlich. When he recorded the song “Pantera Fans in Love” for the second volume of the Happy Meals compilation series put out by indie label My Records, he recruited several members of the band Nerf Herder to help him out. According to comments by Nerf Herder band leader Parry Gripp at the time, they liked both Ehrlich and his song so much that they recruited him to join the roster in time for the group’s sophomore release, How to Meet Girls. A version of “Pantera Fans in Love” appears on that album, presumably, given the story shared at the time, a cover version of the Ten Speed Summer song.

However, all the online sources like the writing credit for “Pantera Fans in Love” as solely going to Gripp, which is the case with most Nerf Herder songs. Similarly, there are a few sources that refer to Ten Speed Summer not as a band that Gripp poached from to enhance the membership of his own outfit, but instead a “supergroup” brought together as a lark, featuring members of both Nerf Herder and Sugarcult. In that scenario, “Pantera Fans in Love” is presumably a song Gripp was tinkering around with for his main concern and brought it into the sessions meant for goofing around.

Here’s what I know for sure (or at least as sure as my faulty memory allows): the first time I heard “Pantera Fans in Love,” it was the version credited to Ten Speed Summer. It was played on Madison, Wisconsin’s community radio station, WORT-FM. While I often have an aversion to songs that I dismissively refer to as comedy rock (such as practically everything I’ve heard from Nerf Herder), this song was crazily catchy and had a sense of humor that was both cheeky and sneakily smart, building in the details of the heavy metal fans awash in romance with wickedly observant charm. I found the song irresistible, a sensation that was only compounded when I discovered that I couldn’t find the CD that contained it anywhere. I looked through the bins at various local record stores and even asked a couple clerks about it, receiving nothing but perplexed looks in response.

So Happy Meals, Vol. 2 became the first music I ever ordered through the swelling wonders of the interweb. About the only mention of the album I could find online at the time was at the label’s highly rudimentary website (to be fair, they were all fairly rudimentary around that point in time). Without an especially significant amount of faith in a positive outcome in which I actually received what I tried to purchase, I went ahead and ordered the CD. It arrived a few weeks later in, as I remember, notably unadorned packaging. I didn’t exactly wear out that CD, but I enjoyed it a great deal (another highlight is a typically great Me First and the Gimme Gimmes cover. And that song landed on quite a few mix tapes at the time, one of the most dependable measures of my affection for a song.

If I can’t quite sort out the song’s genealogy, it doesn’t matter all that much. It still sounds good whenever I play it.

Ten Speed Summer, “Pantera Fans in Love”

(Disclaimer: The Happy Meals compilations seem to be well out of print, and I’m suspicious about whether or not My Records is even still a going concern. Actually, it even looks like the Nerf Herder album that is home to the different version of this song is also unavailable for new purchase as a physical item. It can be acquired digitally, but it’s sort of hard to put money in the register of your favorite local, independently-owned records store using that method. Regardless, I don’t believe the Ten Speed Summer version is available at all, so the track is posted here with that understanding. In other words, diverting viable funds from the artist is not the intent of sharing this song. Even so, if I’m contacted by someone with an honest claim on the song who demands or requests its removal from the interweb, I will gladly and promptly comply.)