The Rockers "Don't Leave Me Tonight" ep, The Finders "Finders Keepers"

(Cheap Rewards) I have never heard the 1980 Rockers release, lovingly reissued by Cheap Rewards, but if you were to tell me that discerning Power Poppers consider this the purest, most uncut, example of the artform, so potent  that a Power Pop junkies risk O.D. by mainlining it, I wouldn't argue. This is so perfect that if you told me it was a fake, and that Nick Lowe in a white lab coat had been in a secret studio with 1,000 I.P.O. band members for the last ten years scientifically concocting these four sugar soaked masterpieces I'd believe that, too. But evidence to the contrary comes in the form of the real but imaginary Finders LP. The Rockers became the Finders (after using a lit cigarette to find a record in the dark, then shortening their new band name, the Record Finders, to the more succinct F-word), and they continued to make some P.P. purities, including the slinky, amazing "Don't Let It," a previously lost demo. The LP is real in that it exists now and you can, and really must, get it. It's fake in that despite the design indicating this is a reissue of a 1983 obscurity, this is a new creation culled from mostly unreleased material recorded from 1980-83. The exception is their not unknown, not-Iggy related Stooges tribute "Calling Dr. Howard" which even as a Chicagoan I can admit puts "The Curly Shuffle" to shame. While fate may have been cruelly correct in accessing that that all 14 of these tracks may not have demanded a full length LP be released at the time, most of these tracks are really good, a few of these are genuinely great, and Shemp is mentioned by name on this LP...which is something the Beatles, Beegees, Stones, and ABBA cannot claim of their catalogues.