my power pop addiction, no. 139 (211)

Marshall Crenshaw was one of a handful of artists in the late 70s and early 80s who threw a monkey wrench into heavily focus grouped FM radio playlists. My station of choice at the time was WNEW FM in New York, and it was not unusual to hear a track from Steely Dan, followed by a track from Pink Floyd, followed by a track from Marshall Crenshaw, followed by a track from Led Zeppelin. It was similar to that Sesame Street song, one of these things just doesn’t belong here. …Crenshaw’s best songs have a lovely melodic feel, one part Buddy Holly, one part Beatles, and his hooks tend to stay with you for awhile. Today’s song is a perfect example of this. After playing it once this morning, I’ve been singing the refrain to myself all day long. Crenshaw never became a huge star, but he injected some freshness into an increasingly stale environment when he arrived on the scene. It’s also gratifying to see that his stature seems to have grown over the years. His talents as a songwriter and performer deserve a lot of recognition.

my power pop addiction, no. 138 (210)

Today's song comes from Rockpile's exquisite (and exquisitely titled) album, Seconds of Pleasure. For a long time now, the record's become one of my default options, something I reach for when I can't think of anything else I wanna hear. I'm not a big fan of Rockpile's pub rock stuff, and there's maybe one or three too many of those types of songs on Seconds of Pleasure, but the good pop songs are fantastic and always put me in a great frame of mind. Teacher Teacher, which opens the album, is one of my favorite Rockpile songs. The audio quality from the video of the clip I've posted is suboptimal, but it's not so bad that you won't be marveling at how so much warmth and pop life goodness could possibly be crammed into three minutes...

my power pop addiction, no. 137 (209)

I have it in mind sometime in the near future to write a series of posts on the roots of power pop, perhaps looking at 10 or 15 songs from the 60s that provided the basic blueprint. Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds are interesting to consider in that conversation because of the way they used their formative experiences in the 60s to craft a distinctly revivalist sound a decade later. They became pioneering simulators, which is something of a paradox, and because they were a bit older than a lot of their contemporaries, they were also ideally suited to resuscitate the three-minute pop song in the wake of the era of rock. I found some great 1978 footage of Rockpile for tonight's song. Lowe and Edmunds are in peak form and you really get a flavor for how refreshing and exciting their stuff felt and sounded at the time. Enjoy it, and enjoy your Saturday...

my power pop addiction, no. 136 (208)

Clovis Roblaine is yet another pop lifer from Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plane. Roblaine's stuff is a bit quirky for my taste, but his love for pop definitely comes across with his tuneful, catchy songs and the attention he pays to succinct songcraft. The Clovis Roblaine Story is definitely worth adding to you collection. It's not a record I'll ever fall in love with, but I marvel at the guy's talent and wonder why he's remained such a marginal figure. Seems to me there should be a huge market for this stuff, but then again I've never been a good evaluator of what is and isn't salable in music. Suffice it to say that if the world conformed to my marketing instincts, Clovis Roblaine would be an international pop icon...

my power pop addiction, no. 135 (207)

I need a little break today from Deep Thoughts, so I thought I’d post a fun song from Holly and the Italians. Power pop is dominated by men, though the frequent appearance of guys with androgynous singing voices complicates the picture a bit. But as is the case with Glam, androgyny in power pop tends to have the paradoxical effect of bolstering the masculinity of the music as opposed to weakening it. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is Nick Gilder, who sounds like a girl in every respect except that the words he sings in that high register of his are frequently drenched in lascivious male sexuality…And here I was thinking I could avoid Deep Thoughts for a day. Back to Holly and the Italians. It’s a nice change of pace when the singer is female and the song addresses boy-girl dynamics from the girl’s perspective. Holly Beth Vincent sounds like a tough cookie in tonight’s song with a style that’s in the same vein as the Runaways and Debbie Harry. I dig her rough and ready spirit, and the song is nice ‘n catchy…

my power pop addiction, no. 134 (206)

The Wondermints are utterly derivative, but they’re so good at what they do that it doesn’t matter. They take their deep love and knowledge of every little Beach Boys nuance – from the primitively recorded early surf tunes to that last gasp of greatness during the mid 70s – and add a bit of contemporary sheen in an effort to make the music more accessible to a younger generation of listeners while also appealing to guys like me who worship at the altar of Brian Wilson. It’s a neat trick, and it works. I’ve said this on numerous occasions already but the thing with copy cat music of this sort is that, as long as it’s really good, and as long as it feeds my insatiable pop jones, even if only for one day, then the fact that I’ve heard it all before doesn’t bother me one bit. Some listeners yearn for originality, for uniqueness, and for continual dosages of the new. And it’s admirable to want this. I don’t wanna be dismissive of it because it’s indicative of an open mind and of adventurousness. But it’s also not particularly realistic any longer, at least not where pop is concerned. There’s nothing left to do that hasn’t been done. The best we can hope for now is short bursts of all-too-familiar pleasure. This will only change when pop as we know it is finally abandoned as an artistic category people care about, and though it may sound a little conservative to say this, I kinda hope we never get to that point…

my power pop addiction, no. 133 (205)

Although Brad Jones is known mostly as a producer and engineer, his Gilt Flake is not to be missed. The album, recommended to me by a friend here in LA, is a stylistically varied, under-the-radar pop feast from the mid 90s, and I’m very impressed with its sound and vibe. The unpredictable melodies are very much in the spirit of the British Invasion, with great guitars, plenty of tambourine, and lovely harmonies, yet the song structures are also unpredictable and keep you on your toes. The uniqueness of Jones’ high singing voice also adds a welcome element of surprise. The thing I’ve come to realize with this power pop addiction of mine is that after you’ve peeled away the more obvious outside layers – the Cars, the Knack, the Raspberries, Dwight Twilley, Todd Rundgren, Cheap Trick, etc. – and once you start to go deep, you discover that there’s a seemingly inexhaustible supply of music available to you. Gilt Flake is yet another brilliant vista point along the path of infinite pop, and Brad Jones is another pop lifer whose songs leave you with nothing so much as the desire to hear more…

my power pop addiction, no. 132 (204)

The Posies have their moments even if they occasionally absorb the grungy tenor of their hometown. Today's song is a perfect example. I love the fulsome guitars, the harmonies, and the underlying melody, but its sound also has a weighted-down and resigned quality that I find a little off putting. It's definitely not a song I need to hear more than once every six months or so at most. A lot of music from the 90s has that same feel of resignation. Maybe it comes from a growing and generalized recognition of the exhaustion of the possibility of innovation. The era of simulation had already been in full swing for several decades, but for a time simulation itself could paradoxically be packaged and presented as something unique and different. Trying to sound like the Beatles - call it Beatles Revivalism or British Invasion Revivalism - was something new in the early 70s. But trying to sound like the Beatles 25 years later is another thing altogether, a rehashing of a rehashing of Beatles revivalism. So maybe the feel of resignation in some of the music is really an expression of artistic frustration with not being able to do something that hasn't already been heard over and over again. All of this is a long winded way of saying that I like today's song even though it seems to express a certain exhaustion and unfulfillment...

my power pop addiction, no. 131 (203)

I've never been a huge Plimsouls fan. Peter Case's tortured rock star voice sounds a little too 'authentic' for my taste. But the band had a few nice moments, and their guitars have always been front and center, so I don't wanna completely overlook them, especially in light of yesterday's post on the Nerves. Today's song is about the break up of the Nerves, from Case's perspective, and the Jack in question here is Jack Lee, whom I guess had some emotional problems in the aftermath of the band dissolving. "Since the Nerves broke up all he does is brood." OK, well for some people that first band, like that first love, holds a deeply primal and formative place in the psyche. Jack Lee actually has a very difficult-to-find 1985 solo album I'd like to get my hands on at some point, though obtaining it for less than a small fortune seems only a remote possibility. In any case (no pun intended), here's one from the Plimsouls that I like to hear every now and then...

my power pop addiction, no. 130 (202)

The Nerves are another band that emerged out of the fertile LA pop scene as it began to take shape in the mid 70s as a reaction against the FM radio rock monolith. They're significant not only for their seminal influence but also for the way all three members went on to do good things after the band dissolved (the Breakaways, the Beat, the Plimsouls). The songs on their one and only eponymous EP, released on Greg Shaw's Bomp Records in 1976, are somewhat poorly recorded, but charmingly so, with a satisfying anti-corporate DIY spirit. I don't mind lo-fi recordings when the lo-fi-ness comes out of necessity as opposed to being a pretentious affect or the result of laziness... The Nerves will always be best known for having written and recorded the first version of Hangin' on the Telephone, which later became a hit for Blondie, but I'd have to say that tonight's selection is my favorite song they did. I dig the way it effortlessly throws one hook on top of another. For some reason, whenever I hear it I think it sounds like something on Van Morrison's Moondance or Tupelo Honey. But that's just me. Mostly, though, I just groove on its bouncy, stripped-down tunefulness. It's the sound of a band trying to change the rules of the game...

my power pop addiction, no. 129 (201)

Dwight Twilley is my muse. There’s a documentary about him coming out soon and I can’t wait to see it. To the extent that he’s known at all outside his relatively small but feverishly devoted following, it’s for his first three albums, Sincerely, Twilley Don’t Mind, and Twilley. But his later records, including 47 Moons, should not be overlooked. Tonight’s song, the title track from 47 Moons, is somewhat atypical in that Twilley is a consummate master of pop, yet here he does the ultimate anti-pop thing and lets the song stretch out for almost seven minutes. There’s almost no pop song that needs to go on for that long. Under three minutes is ideal, and I might tolerate four minutes or so if the song really knocks me out. But when you start getting into five, six and seven-minute songs, then we’re no longer really talking about pop, at least not in the sense that I think of it. But I make an exception for 47 Moons. The song feels like Twilley’s attempt to do something akin to Strawberry Fields Forever, and the added length might be a function of the helplessness he expresses in the face of the passage of time, almost as if he’s trying with his music to slow life down. ‘Jupiter has 47 moons, we only have one.’ This is just my interpretation and I might be way off. But the song is pretty damn emotional either way. You have to be in the right mood to really appreciate it. Then again, I’m pretty much always in the right mood for Dwight Twilley, even when his songs go on for longer than they probably should…

my power pop addiction, no. 128 (200)

You may remember the Rembrandts as a throwaway band that scored a low-level hit when their song Rollin’ Down the Hill was featured in the highly cerebral Jim Carrey vehicle, Dumb and Dumber. But I associate them with exceedingly strange harmonies. If you listen to tonight’s song with a headset and pay close attention, you’ll ask yourself how the hell they came up with such a whacky blend of voices. It’s not weird all the way through, but at certain points those harmonies really take you by surprise. I’ve always thought the Everly Brothers had the most unusual harmonies I’ve ever heard, but the Rembrandts give them a run for their money, at least in Rollin’ Down the Hill. The song is otherwise very pleasing, breezy, and easygoing, perfect for a leisurely Sunday drive with the top down, the ocean to one side, and the mountains to the other. The music’s warm and gentle vibes are enough to put you in a lovely meditative trance...