songs for broken hearts, no. 72

When you hear something as crunchy and hard and heavy and loose and phallic as the One-Eyed Trouser-Snake Rumba, it’s easy to forget that Steve Marriott, only five years or so earlier, was writing and performing neat and clean little pop songs with the Small Faces. The effect on me when I listen to Humble Pie at their heaviest is two-fold and contradictory. On the one hand, the sonic power of the riffs energizes me and gives me a feeling of being invincible. But on the other hand, I feel wistfully nostalgic for the era of tight, carefully crafted pop. I love Humble Pie, but in some ways their music represents a kind of devolution. I’m not alone in thinking this. I think it was the Humble Pie/Grand Funk/Foghat approach to music that gave rise to power pop in the 70s. It’s a case of an action causing a reaction. Thesis -Antithesis -Synthesis. I have to think about this more, but I’ve had power pop on my mind for quite some time now…