SPECS HEX: Lisa Loeb left her glasses...

SPECS HEX: Lisa Loeb left her glasses in a cab recently--and you’d think she would have just said good riddance. Those funky, tortoise-shell frames were the object of a lot of spoofing after the New York-based singer-songwriter shot to fame with “Stay,” her song from the 1993 “Reality Bites” soundtrack.

Most brutal was the “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” TV show, on which the main characters were tormented by a Loeb look-alike dancing and singing in the manner of the Ethan Hawke-directed “Stay” video.

Truth be told, there wasn’t much else to focus on. “Stay” was Loeb’s only available song and, frankly, a lot of people got pretty sick of hearing it and seeing the video.

But rather than switch to contacts, Loeb pulled out her identical spare frames to keep her familiar look for the Sept. 12 launch of “Tails,” the debut album with her band Nine Stories. Loeb is confident the album, which contains a fairly wide range of folk-rock styles, will focus attention on her music rather than her appearance.

“Hopefully this will show that I’m not just a person with one song and a pair of glasses,” she says.

That’s tricky, admits Jim Barber, the Geffen Records A&R; executive who signed Loeb.

“This completely goes against the rhythm of how a record is given to the public,” Barber says of the long wait between the hit and the follow-up album. “But she has a real presence. With one-hit wonders, everyone loves the song but no one can place the artist. With this, it’s about her.”

The “MST3K” parody is proof, Barber and Loeb say.

“I’m a big fan of the show,” Loeb says. “If I saw something on TV and heard it on the radio a million times a day, I’d do [a spoof] too.”