Over at the Chicago Reader‘s blog, there’s a great piece about the Fems and the strange-but-true story of how WPRB DJ alum Ken Katkin may have been responsible for getting this slice of 80s-era Buffalo punk reissued on Drag City:

When I was still in high school, a long, long time ago, the only radio station I listened to regularly was WPRB, operated by students at Princeton University. I first heard a lot of great bands through the station, including some that eventually became standard-bearers–R.E.M., the Violent Femmes, the Minutemen, the Feelies, Mission of Burma–but to be honest I know I’ve forgotten the great majority. I learned about groups like the Neats and the Dream Syndicate, who didn’t quite get canonized but still mean just as much to me now as they did nearly two and a half decades ago. And I remember a handful of songs that earned a special place in the station’s rotation but were by bands that nobody really knew much about, even at the time.

Read on and if that post doesn’t have you convinced by the end that Ken Katkin is one of the greatest people to have graced the planet, well then, I don’t know what to tell ya.