my power pop addiction, no. 77 (149)

A friend informs me that the correct spelling is hescher, not hesher, which means I’ve been misspelling it for about 25 years, unless she (my friend) is wrong, in which case… Perhaps I should hedge my bets and alternate. The problem with heschers, even us former heshers, is that we’re backwards looking and resistant to change. Nick Lowe, and really the whole stable of artists and bands recording on the Stiff Records label in the late 70s, symbolize change and pose a threat to heschers everywhere. But the dynamic is complicated because there’s an element of New Wave power pop that’s every bit as regressive as the hesher worldview. The distinction to be made is that power popsters primarily refer back to the mid 60s, say 1962-1966, while the heschers refer back to the late 60s and early 70s, something like 1967-1974. Nick Lowe is one of the key guys precipitating the identity crisis at FM rock stations. I was very sensitive to the way Lowe, and Graham Parker, and Elvis Costello, and Marshall Crenshaw, and Dave Edmunds, and Rockpile, and etc. all got mixed into FM playlists with the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Stones, the Doors, Clapton… I wanted to live in a black and white world, but the mixing of old and new made for a shade of grey I found disorienting. And yet, there was something very compelling about the new stuff. It was familiar, yet really different from the dinosaur sounds, fresher, not as weighty, more nimble. Of all the new music to hit the airwaves, Cruel to be Kind is the song that has the biggest impact on me. The song has a certain benevolence about it that has me rooting for the upstarts. I bought the single and adored it. I mean, who can deny its relentless catchiness, the wistful words, and the plainspoken world weariness with which those words are delivered? It’s a down song that creates an up mood, taking a page right out of the Gene Clark book of happy/sad. Or is that sad/happy? …Cruel to be Kind crosses over into so many different worlds. Let’s call it something like revivalist New Wave pub pop. With the song’s lovely and distinct charms chiming from this hesher’s phonograph over and over and over again, something previously inconceivable happens: I begin to embrace change and to look to the future with hope and anticipation…