Ray Columbus and The Art Collection - Kick Me 7" USA Colstar 67-1001, 1967

Take yourself back to the first time you heard this monster. For most of us it was probably on Ugly Things 2 in 1983, or maybe Off The Wall in 1981, or maybe you held an original copy prior to that. Whenever, I hope your memory is similar to mine - that is being sat flat on your arse by the song. And for me, ignoring the previous 19 songs on that Ugly Things (no slouches amongst them) to play Kick Me over and over again.


Fast forward to this millenium and a copy appears on eBay circa 2005, in a lot with some other Ray Columbus 7"s on the same label. From memory that first lot went for about $500. Straight away another went up and we saw the start of the classic exponential decay of price curve that accompanies quantity finds. I think I got the fourth or fifth one by which time it had dropped to $150 or so. There haven't been too many times since then that copies haven't been up, usually from that same seller. A copy will set you back somewhere between $75-125. What are you waiting for?


There was a quantity find - the seller bought out the back stock of the label. Which reminds me of my favourite part of the legend (since I'm a record collector): the only copy of this found in the wild in NZ was at an Op Shop under the office of Ray Columbus's manager. For the rest of the story perhaps head to Andrew Schmidt's account of Ray's time in San Francisco - and at the bottom there's a clip of the song itself.


What hasn't been touched on too much elsewhere is the re-recording of She's A Mod. While enthusiastic, I've always found the original version with the Invaders to be sappy and twee. Here it is somewhat updated - the major improvement is two 12-string tinged guitar breaks and a mild freakout replacing the well known crescendo at the end. The mid-song scream is definitely better on the earlier version though.