The Thanes "She's Coming Back To Me" (State)

Just a few weeks ago I was looking at the picture of the young Lenny Helsing in Sam Knee's "A Scene In Between" (Cicada) envying his ace garage band 'do and then he goes and releases the ALIVE, in-the-moment blast of The Thanes' "She's Coming Back To Me" (State Records) and now I'm envying him all over again.  Just listen to that burst of scrambled, post-McGuinn jazziness at around 1 minute and 27 seconds and tell me that it doesn't make you want to punch the air with sheer delight; so unexpected, so wild, so vital.  The Thanes have cut hit after hit in their two and a bit decades and "She's Coming Back To Me" ranks alongside the best of them.  For some reason the riff reminds me of the start of the Crossroads theme which is no bad thing - it just adds period colour.  I hope The Thanes play somewhere in the Central Belt (of Scotland) real soon so that I can go a little bit loopy - inside, of course - nobody really wants to see a middle-aged man pogoing about like a loon! - when they play it.

The most unexpected reissue of 2012?

In an unexpected move, Spain's Munster Records has sneaked out a new 7" issue of the first of Edinburgh's garage legends The Green Telescope's two singles from the garage revival of the mid-80s, "Two By Two".  It's a single I've lost out on a couple of times in ebay auctions in recent years so it'll be great to finally have it on vinyl. Hopefully copies will actually show up soon in Scottish 7" racks!  By coincidence, I just bought this brooding toe-tapper by the group that sprung from the ashes of The Green Telescope, The Thanes:

All hail Lenny Helsing!