three o'clock: sixteen tambourines

i hated rubiks cube, donkey kong cereal, and most things non music in 1983. well maybe i thought the juice box was cool. however, i did love the paisley underground but that was a couple of years later for me. let us rejoice in this marvelous reissue and attempt to read this press release: The Three O'Clock were a key member of L.A.'s Paisley Underground movement and Sixteen Tambourines is one of the great lost pop gems of the 1980s. The band will reunite for the first time since 1988 to play at the Coachella Festival in April 2013. Although Michael Quercio, The Three O'Clock's singer, came up with the term "Paisley Underground" to refer to the Los Angeles music scene that included bands such as Rain Parade, The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate, and Green On Red, his band's story is not nearly as well-known as that of their contemporaries. Formed in 1981 as The Salvation Army, their first recordings bore a clear psych-pop/garage influence and overtones of their home city's punk legacy. After changing their name due to legal reasons, the band released the Baroque Hoedown EP in 1982, where they started to shift towards a more polished pop sound, without abandoning their Nuggets origins. Sixteen Tambourines, from 1983, was the culmination of that evolution, helped by Earl Mankey's sleek production. The LP is a work of perfect pop music that draws from '60s beat, power-pop, psychedelia, bubblegum, baroque pop, etc. It contains a splendid version of the Bee Gees' "In My Own Time," which is matched and even surpassed by the band's own compositions. There would be other albums after they left Frontier and signed with IRS and Prince's (he was a fan) Paisley Park Records, but Sixteen Tambourines is the shimmering LP that should have given The Three O'Clock the same success-level as their friends The Bangles, and deserves to be rediscovered by anyone who loves pop music. On 180 gram vinyl with insert.