my power pop addiction, no. 53 (125)

One important detail I neglected to mention yesterday is that the Scruffs are from Memphis, meaning that the city known as the Home of the Blues was, at least for a short sliver of time in the 70s, also a power pop hot bed, giving rise to Big Star, Tommy Hoehn, Van Duren, the Scruffs, and probably a bunch of others I either can't think of off hand or have yet to discover. What's especially interesting about all these Memphis power pop guys is the way they show up on each other's records to lend backing vocals, guitar playing, tambourine shaking, and whatever else. Together they formed a tight ring of collaborators, a little insular and incestuous, but not in a bad way at all. ...Today's song is another one of my favorites from Wanna Meet the Scruffs? Sadly, it's also one of only a small handful of Scruffs songs available on Youtube, further emphasizing my point that the band has never really gotten the recognition it deserves. An interesting question to examine would be why Big Star, who were not commercially successful over the course of their few rocky years together, eventually became canonized as the greatest thing since the Rickenbaker guitar, while the Scruffs have remained hopelessly obscure amongst everyone save for a few ornery record store clerks scattered throughout America's college towns. Is it that Alex Chilton was in the Box Tops or something as simple as that, or is Big Star's music just better or more accessible? I don't think so, but who knows? It's often the case that success is simply the result of life's random rolls of the dice. Life can be so cruel, you know? But I think you'll really enjoy Tragedy. The words I would use to describe the song's arrangement are hurried, slapdash and perhaps even slipshod. And yet, along with the passionate, almost unhinged singing, the roughness of the sound lends the song a satisfyingly raucous feel. Much of it seems like it was done spontaneously, in the moment, and in one take, which is always something I appreciate (even if I also think Steely Dan-esque anal retentive perfectionism also has its place). ...One other bit of coolness I'd like to point out is that in the final verse the line 'it's just a teenage dream when you're old' becomes it's just a teenage dream then you're old. This might just be a mistake, the result of doing a lot of the song in one take, but I doubt it. I think it's a purposeful and subtle bit wisdom that Stephen Burns somehow managed to squeeze into a song that clocks in at not much more than two minutes...