my power pop addiction, no. 111 (183)

I heard tonight's song for the first time in 1984 over the CBGB PA System at a hardcore matinee featuring the Meat Puppets and the Bad Brains. I was slowly coming out of my hescher phase and a whole new world of music was opening up for me. The Only Ones. Television. Richard Hell and the Voidoids... And then there was the more mainstream stuff like the Jam, the Pretenders, Bowie, the Psychedelic Furs... Another Girl, Another Planet straddles the line separating punk and power pop and to this day continues to pack quite a nice wallop. It's not quite hooky enough for me to want to hear it repeatedly, and I generally don't go in for stuff that's played so fast anymore, but the song is at once tuneful and angsty, which is not an easy combination to pull off. Angst and alienation in music are often achieved at the expense of melody, but not in this case. The song also has some very interesting psychedelic sound effects in its intro, the sort of thing you'd expect to hear on a record from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators or early Electric Prunes. It reminds me that even though punk represented a break from the 60s on a number of levels, it's decisive incursion into the popular consciousness, around 1976-77, was only several years removed from hippies and beads and peace and love. This historical proximity, if you will, meant that otherwise outdated motifs and styles occasionally crept into the new music unexpectedly and would make for interesting moments of continuity with the past...