Letter #1 —

Andy may have listened to Aoxomoxoa once too often…

I have a quick question for James. Have you listened to Dicks Picks Volume 7? If so, How about that Morning Dew? Phil was really on that night. That’s all.

Well, how about it, James?

Wish we got more questions like these. Mostly it’s all, “When are you playing _____” or “Why aren’t you playing _____,” or “How dare you _____.” Sometimes it’s ones like “How come you never play ______” or “Where does Gene Holder _______.” One time somebody wrote saying he had known me back in ___________, but I had no idea who that guy was. You can never really be sure with emails, especially these days. Well, thanks for writing.

James

Letter #2 —

Jared may have seen Beach Blanket Bingo once too often. Then again, so have we…

With no disrespect to Georgia’s gorgeous voice, it’s become impossible for me to listen to “If It’s True” without picturing a duet between Ira and Annette Funicello.

A big fan of both of you, I have to say that you wrote this song PERFECT for Annette’s vocal range, and the current version as it is leaves the door open for Annette to overstate the song’s perkiness (which is what she does best, isn’t it?)

What I haven’t resolved in this daydream, though, is whether I would prefer Ira or Frankie Avalon on the male part. I think I’d stick with Ira, but I would probably like to hear both versions before deciding for sure.

Will admit that this thought never occurred to us, perhaps due to supermarket-checkout research that suggests that Annette’s recording career is behind her. On the other hand, we will not let the small matter of his passing in 1982 dissuade us from fantasizing about a Harvey Lembeck cover of “Periodically Double or Triple.”

Letter #3 —

And finally, tying up some loose ends from a previous installment, comes this message from someone who mysteriously identifies himself (herself?) only as “Morningside Heights Fan”…

To whom it may concern:

In your Letters section, someone writes in to ask which Yo La Tengo song ends with the lyric “and the party never ends.” It’s very uncommon that I know the answers to such things (although my daughter did once correctly answer a Film Forum trivia question and won a pair of coconut shells at a showing of Monty Python & the Holy Grail), but in this case I believe the song in question to be “Spy in the House of Love” by the dB’s. Save yourself the expense of coconuts. I’ll settle for the mere gratification of getting something out of reading really old mail.