*BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED

*Batteries Not Included is the only band I can think of whose name is a footnote; what that's symbolic of, I have no idea, but it still makes me laugh. Its founders, Marc Roulier and Steve Dockery, were Rutgers students, and *BNI played Central Jersey clubs for much of the 1980s. They were polished and catchy even by power pop standards, but like so many bands during this time, a lack of disposable income meant not much got professionally recorded. What they did record went unreleased and/or got lost — and yet we get so sentimental about the analogue age. Their legacy, then, is a demo cassette, which at least got airplay: I definitely recall their "Camera Lies" being played often on WRSU. A shame, in any case: I rank their recordings with any of the local pop made at the time.

This 1988 computer-generated flyer was so primitive, I was thinking it was the product of a Commodore 64 or something, but Mr. Dockery set me straight with this note:

"I did that flyer myself. Some of our stuff was done in CricketDraw, but this looks like it was done in MacDraw or possibly MacPaint. The fish was an image that was included in the old Macs in a clipboard images library as an example. The letters were drawn by me in the program (they weren't a font). Makes me want to fire up the old Mac 512k and play with it (I still have it, and it works)."

MacPaint on a Mac 512k. Awesome.

[CLICK ON FLYER TO ENLARGE]