Not to upset any lingering, devoted fan base the band might have, but I feel obligated to admit that the main reason I have affection for the band the Buck Pets is that I once knew a lovely young woman who appropriated their band name so she would have something to call me. She just liked the way it sounded, I think. When she was on the air, she’d play a song from the album and backsell it by sharing, “That one goes out to my little Buck Pet.” We never figured out what “Buck Pet” really meant, what the derivation of the band’s name was (even with the boundless resources of the internet, I still can’t figure it out), but that didn’t really matter. It was simply part of our own secret code of college flirtation and romance.

To be fair, there’s a decent chance I would have played the Buck Pets plenty, even without the swoony inspiration to do so. They were exactly the sort of band that hit the sweet spot for our particular college radio station, clearly emulating the brash, straight-ahead, raw, unapologetic rock ‘n’ roll of the Replacements, our flannel-wearing brethren in the Upper Midwest. Certainly a song like “Little Murder,” easily the best track of the band’s 1989 self-titled debut, was likely to grab my attention. Still, I have very little memory of playing any individual song back then. I think my mind was elsewhere when the Buck Pets were on.

Listen or download –> Buck Pets, “A Little Murder”

(Disclaimer: The debut album from the Buck Pets looks to me like it is out of print as a physical object, the sort of thing you could march down to your favorite local, independently-owned record store and purchase in a way that provides due compensation to both the artist and the proprietor of the shop in question. I certainly mean no harm in sharing this song. It’s done with the understanding that I am not getting in the way of any viable commerce. That noted, I will gladly and promptly remove the track from this little corner of the interweb if I’m contacted by a person or entity making such a request, assuming that person or entity has due authority to make such a request.)