I don’t think a lot of folks remember Garland Jeffreys.
I have a friend from my days in Sacramento, Bob Schelen, and back in the 1980s Bob and I would get off a swing shift at work at head over to his place to play some Strat-O-Matic Baseball. If you don’t know what Strat-O-Matic is, that’s fine, it was for the nerdiest of baseball fans as they replayed previous MLB seasons as a tabletop game. It had a LOT of options and was very sophisticated with various charts and odds and you HAD to love baseball to play. Bob and I were part of a community that did.
Bob also collected music, as did I, and he had all these albums I had never listened to, and one night he through a Garland Jeffreys record on the turntable. First time I had listened to him. You *might* know Garland’s version of Wild in the Streets, or 96 Tears, but Mystery Kids was always my favorite, and it always takes me back to Davis, California, and getting ready to play Strat-O-Matic at midnight on a card table in Bob’s apartment.
Bob has since passed away, but I’ll raise a glass to him and ask, Who are the Mystery Kids?