***1/2

COME AND GET IT: A TRIBUTE TO BADFINGER

(Copper)

This is less a tribute album than a cult hero's convention: participants 20/20, Dwight Twilley, Bill Lloyd, and the Loud Family are all beloved by power-pop diehards. And so are Badfinger, thanks to their Beatles connection (they were the first band signed to Apple), their tragic history (neither main songwriter is still alive), and a handful of early-'70s albums that rank with more-renowned work by Big Star and the Raspberries.

Nobody here takes major liberties with the material, and you can hear the affection in Aimee Mann's "Baby Blue" (which comes off warmer than anything she'd write herself) and Adrian Belew's "Come and Get It" (surprisingly faithful). But the standouts are the obscure tracks: LA's Plimsouls, on their first new track in a decade, make a bar-band rave-up out of "Suitcase," and the Softeens (with the Posies' Ken Stringfellow) do a sweetly psychedelicized version of Badfinger's greatest non-hit, "Know One Knows." Closing it out are two surprises: veteran artist/producer (and current Bostonian) Al Kooper throws a soul spin on "Maybe Tomorrow," and the band's gripe about their label, "Apple of My Eye," is done by Lon & Derek von Eaton, a one-time Apple act who had even worse commercial luck than Badfinger.

-- Brett Milano