Song Of The Day 9/5/2014: Spiny Norman's Mind Games - "Sorry About That, Chief"

Untitled Punk Week: Here's the extent of what we know about Spiny Norman's Mind Games: Brothers Doug and James "Setsuo" Nakakihara and drummer Roland Masheen were in it, and they were from Southern California. I don't even have a zip code for them. "Spiny Norman" was an unseen and likely imaginary hedgehog from the Monty Python sketch "Piranha Brothers." That I found out on my own. Their output consisted of one 7-inch, "Sorry About That, Chief" backed with "Don't Take the Car (You'll Kill Yourself)," in 1981. As recently as December 2012 this single was going for $853.00 on the Collector's Frenzy site. With that, I have just told you more about Spiny Norman's Mind Games than any other single site on the web. For all intents and purposes I am now the web's leading authority on Spiny Norman's Mind Games. I've just taken release date and biographical information from two separate sources, combined them, and just like that I have given you more comprehensive detail on this band than anyone else on this cyber-expressway. See how easy that was?

"Sorry About That, Chief" is one of the very few punk rock songs about Get Smart, the sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, with Don Adams as incompetent but still-standing CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. Feldon was our country's response to Britain's Diana Rigg. They're both pretty much the perfect woman except for Helen Mirren. "Sorry About That, Chief" was Maxwell Smart's tagline after committing one of his frequently disastrous mishaps, delivered to his long-suffering Chief (Edward Platt). We never knew Chief's actual name, or 99's. Yet that level of secrecy was never necessary for Maxwell Smart, whose code name "Agent 86" was merely used intermittently. Perhaps his reputation preceded him too much for it to make any difference. Anyway, hear this tribute to one of the seminal sitcoms of color TV now. If you want a personal copy it's going to set you back $853.00.