The ’80s Man

Last week, when KC’s online music forum Argument Machine was taken down, I was reminded that it had introduced me to Little Hits, a local MP3 blog that’s linked to the site.

The man behind Little Hits is Jon Harrison, who used the blog to post singles by lesser-known indie-pop artists, frequently from the early ’80s. If it weren’t for Little Hits, I never would have heard NRC’s “Sally’s All Alone” — a deliciously inconsequential little song that I adore.

Harrison spent 14 years at Lawrence record store Love Garden, where he was the used-vinyl buyer until this past August. He had the record-store-employee gift of being able to connect the obscure musician on the obscure 45 you’re buying to some other obscure band. You won’t find that on iTunes.

His ability to dig up a forgotten tune has earned him loyal fans. When he revealed a couple of months ago that he had suffered from testicular cancer, his site was flooded with sympathetic comments. Now he’s gone back to school to become a teacher. Lucky kids.

Not long after Argument Machine mysteriously went down, it came back up and, with it, the link to Little Hits.

That’s why this week we love Jon Harrison.