my power pop addiction, no. 10 (82)

I came relatively late to the bands of LA’s paisley underground, a 60s-revivialist scene that had about one year of real juice in the early 80s. One of those bands, the Bangles, made the leap into pop stardom. Others, like Rain Parade, Long Ryders, Dream Syndicate and the Three O’clock, had sporadic and moderate successes but never really broke out big. I had the Long Ryders’ State of Our Union, a pretty good cow punk/neo-country rock record, when I was in high school, and I liked Dream Syndicate’s Days of Wine and Roses when a hip friend played it for me during my sophomore year in college. But I didn’t approach the paisley underground bands as a singular, somewhat coherent movement until about 15 years ago, after reading Waiting for the Sun, Barney Hoskyns’ great book on Los Angeles music. For anyone who loves LA, loves pop, and is obsessed with the intersection between the two, Waiting for the Sun, along with its sequel, Hotel California, are must-reads. Hoskyns especially gave me a real appreciation for the Three O’Clock’s fantastic brand of punchy psychedelic pop. The band’s debut EP, Baroque Hoedown, and their first full-length album, the excellently titled Sixteen Tambourines, were both produced by Earle Mankey, a legend of sorts in the LA pop world who, among other things, was in Sparks and produced 20/20. …When I first heard tonight’s song, I didn’t know whether it was supposed to be played at 45 or 33 RPM. (Answer: 45). What a great testament to the delightfully strange sound of Michael Quercio’s elfin voice. The clip is from MV3, a local LA MTV-replica show that used to air after school. Remember the days when there was actually local programming other than news about stabbings and car jackings? The band’s syncing is a bit off, but the music is great and manages inexplicably to be at once very unique sounding and a simulation of a simulation…

PS - I'd like to extend my warm thanks to those of you who wrote asking about Polly. She's doing much better. She's spending one more night tonight at the hospital, and then I'll pick her up and bring her home tomorrow. It's been a tough few days, much more so for her than me, but I suspect we'll both be having liberal dosages of catnip tomorrow.

my power pop addiction, no. 8 (80)

Boy, today was a bad day for me. My work is really stressful right now and, what's worse, my feline guardian angel is sick again and has to go back to the animal hospital first thing in the morning. So my nerves are frayed. Not a lot of time today to think about power pop. It's too bad because the song I selected for tonight is one of my favorites. 20/20's second album, Lookout!, is not nearly as epic as the first, but I seem to like it a little more than most of the pop geeks I know. I think what happened was that the record company wanted another commercial powerhouse like the Cars or the Police, both of whom were quite a bit more commercially successful than bands like 20/20 and Shoes. Don't get me wrong. I love me my Cars (the Police not so much), but usually the attempt to replicate a winning sound for strictly commercial purposes turns the sound into formula and ends up creating a watered down and inferior version of the original. Not always, but definitely more often than not. And so it was with 20/20's middling 1981 follow up to their stellar debut. But like I said, it's got some nice moments, including Nuclear Boy, which might be the best thing they ever did. I really dig the way the song sounds so completely fueled by yellow pills but also somehow has a bit of a teenybopperish vibe to it. This is a very common tension in the New Wave incarnation of power pop, it seems. I'm thinking in particular of Rick Springfield, Phil Seymour, the Cars, the Records... The only other thing I would say about Nuclear Boy is that the slashing guitar solo is guaranteed to have you bouncing off the walls. If it doesn't, well then I really don't know what else to say except that you and I probably can't be friends...

my power pop addiction, no. 7 (79)

20/20 are everything I love most in music. Their songs are catchy as hell, and they’re hard, but not too hard, and never heavy. There’s a subtle but essential difference between hard and heavy and 20/20 is the very best example of a band that’s at once hard and light. But it’s not a lightness in the sense of hearing Baby I’m-a Want You wafting from the receptionist's radio at your doctor’s office. The lightness is a kind of fast-twitch deftness, a punchiness, perkiness, suppleness, ease of movement, the notes seeming to bounce effortlessly into each other, and yet the music maintains a satisfying, guitar-fueled edge at the same time. I can’t get enough of this sort of thing. I need it every day, more so as I get older, which is interesting because the music is so youthful in its passion and energy, not at all weighed down by the harsh realities of life. I think my midlife crisis has manifested itself in this growing addiction to poppy hooks... Last night I was hanging out with Vito, my beloved cat, drinking some Maker’s Mark, and listening to 20/20’s first album, when I came to the realization that great pop songs are intrinsically tragic, no matter how joyful they may be. They seduce you, put you in touch with so many great sensations, with the best parts of your humanity, but then they end just as quickly. And you know going into it that they’re going to end soon enough, that their ending will send you crashing back to your mundane existence, with a million different things to worry about and unreliable people who are base and mean and don’t give you any of the validation you got for those three minutes when you were in thrall to the power of pop. But if pop is tragic, it also offers redemption. There’s always another great song, another hook, more guitars and tambourines and lush harmonies, more hearrbreaking snapshots of first kisses and romantic infatuation. Remember the lightning. There's always more and it never gets old. Never.

my power pop addiction, no. 6 (78)

I have mixed feelings about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for reasons I alluded to a few days ago. Damn the Torpedoes, released in 1979, is a fairly decisive move towards arena rock after the nice flashes of power pop we get with their first two records. Petty came onto the scene at a transitional time in the mid 70s and didn’t develop a consistent musical identity until he embraced corporate rock and its FM radio-driven retrenchment and ossification in the 80s. But if you consider the man separately from his context, there’s a lot to like. He loves the Byrds and 60s music more generally. He’s yet another one of those guys who's not a native Angeleno but has nevertheless made Los Angeles an essential part of who he is. He’s written some pretty damn good songs. I even like some of the hesher tunes like Here Comes My Girl, You Don’t Know How it Feels, and Last Dance with Mary Jane. He’s worked with a lot of great people, including George Harrison and all the guys in the Travelling Willburys, as well as Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour, among others. And as I was saying the other night, American Girl is an archetypal power pop tune. I’ve posted a live version from 1978 tonight because everybody’s heard the studio version a billion times. It’s a pretty cool clip even though we don’t get to hear the great part where Phil Seymour sings make it last all night. The band performs the song well and the clip makes you appreciate Petty’s taste in guitars and guitarists…

my power pop addiction, no. 5 (77)

Tonight's song is an all-time power pop classic. It's as close to a perfectly constructed pop song as you'll ever hear and should have been a top-ten hit when it came out. It's weird that it wasn't even selected as a single. Consider all the things the song has going for it: 1) It's punchy and perky and has plenty of teenybopper appeal. I picture 14-year-old girls having a slumber party and squealing as the song chimes in the background. 2) The melody is so irresistible and addictive, so utterly and completely catchy, that you can listen to the song ten times in a row and still want to hear it one more time, and then one more time after that, and then... 3) The song captures the very essence of teenage romantic fixation. All I know is I can't live without you / I'd try to give you the world if you wanted me to. I'm 43, with multiple deep psychic wounds, skeptical about the possibility of loving and being loved, but when I listen to this song I'm transported back to my 13-year-old self, when the thing that mattered to me most was the huge crush I had Carolyn, a piercingly cute, pale-skinned girl in my 7th grade home room. When she flashed a smile my way, everything in my world was right... 4) The drumming is deceptively awesome. Listen to this one with some cans on if you can. Going back to his days in the Dwight Twilley Band, Phil Seymour was a really good drummer, injecting driving power into the music without ever being overbearing. The closed high hat in the verses of tonight's song sounds phenomenal. Also check out the deep reverberation of the tom-toms in the break from the verses. Maybe we could meet tonight, underneath the pale-lit moon light. I'm powerless against this stuff, and it feels fucking great. 5) Seymour had a great voice. He was among a number of power popsters who had semi-androgynous voices, or at least voices in unusually high registers, which I like because it makes the music more poppy and gives things that teenybopper vibe I was talking about just now. 6) Speaking of Seymour's singing, add him to the list of those who harmonize with themselves. Common and give this romance a chance, 'cause baby it's you. 7) The line, that's when I tell you I love you becomes that's when I whisper I want you the second time around. The innocence of the romantic crush spills over briefly into slightly naughty anticipation, with a nice little keyboard sound giving the line just enough in-passing emphasis. 8) The song is New Wave without being arty. It's not that I dislike artiness, but I tend to like my power pop sans experimentation or pretension. Give it to me pure and sweet. 9) The music evokes the sublime incandescence of LA's neon nights. When I hear it, the sensation is akin to the electricity that crackles through my body when I take an after-hours drive up over Laurel Canyon from the Valley, catching the first glimpse of the city's shimmering expansiveness as the car traverses Mulholland. There are very few things in life that give me that particular feeling, but Baby It's You is one of them. 10) Like all great power pop tunes, this one seems to pick up energy as it moves along. I'm so pumped up by the end of the song. I'm ready to fall in love. I'm ready to forget my troubles. And most of all, I'm ready to hear the song again...

my power pop addiction, no. 4 (76)

I love the story of how Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour first met in 1967 at a screening of A Hard Day's Night in Tulsa. That's just exactly how I would have wanted them to meet... There must be some kind of magic power pop potion in Oklahoma's water supply because Bill Pitcock IV and the guys from 20/20 are from the Sooner State as well. And the interesting thing about all these folks is that they transplanted themselves to Los Angeles to pursue careers in music and made the California sound their own... The Phil Seymour story is pretty tragic from what I've been able to piece together. There seems to have been some struggles with alcohol, and then he died of lymphoma at the tender age of 41. He was so damn talented, and the new wavey striped shirt thing was really cool, but all the youtube clips I've watched of him - including the one I've posted tonight - suggest to me that he was not comfortable on camera or even on stage. In a way it's too bad because his self-titled first solo album is just one infectiously catchy tune after another, and who knows how popular he could have been if he had had a little more stage charisma. On the other hand, I completely identify with people who are not so well adjusted, and Seymour becomes even more appealing to me when I imagine him as a guy who came alive in the studio, away from the numbers... Precious to Me reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1981. Don't let the lip synching in the clip fool you, Seymour is doing all the harmonies with that great Everly Brothersish voice of his. ...God bless you, Phil Seymour. Your music makes me feel like I'm gliding on air...

my power pop addiction, no. 3 (75)

A fair bit of the credit for the greatness of the two Dwight Twilley Band albums, Sincerely and Twilley Don't Mind, belongs to the late Phil Seymour, an excellent drummer and even more excellent backing vocalist. He co-wrote a lot of the songs with Twilley and was largely responsible for the beautiful harmonies that are such a distinct part of the music the two of them made together. Seymour was very much a co-equal with Twilley, but his profile was diminished because he was 'merely' the backing vocalist for the handsome lead singer. It also didn't help that they called themselves the Dwight Twilley Band. The late guitarist Bill Pitcock IV also deserves a lot of credit. His hooky, twangy, riff-o-rama playing style contributed mightily to the excellence of those first two records. Tonight's song comes from Twilley's self-titled third album, recorded after he and Seymour had parted company. The song sounds like it could be an outtake from Exile on Main Street (not a bad thing really). Which reminds me: My sister asked me today where the term power pop comes from. I didn't know, but my friend Jim Green, who used to be one of the influential tastemakers at the Trouser Press back in the day, informed us that the term was first coined by Pete Townshend in 1967, referring to the Who's music. I've never really thought of the Who as a power pop band, probably because they ended up embracing rock so forcefully, and power pop to me represents a reaction against the heaviness of rock. But certainly the Who's pre-Tommy stuff can be thought of as prototypical power pop. I think I'll end up talking myself into circles if I try to elaborate any further right now... Back to Twilley. His first record as a solo artist suffers from Seymour's departure, I think. Still, each album he's released sporadically over the past 35 years is good for about three or four gems each. Some of these albums are a bit hard to find due to their limited distribution, but the search is well worth it for those gems. Discovering them is like finding a $20 bill in a pair of jeans you haven't worn in a few months, unexpected treats that solidify Twilley's central place in the power pop pantheon...

my power pop addiction, no. 2 (74)

Power pop was initially a plaintive cry for help from artists who refused to accept the collapse of the 60s dream. So it was backwards looking in some respects, recalling the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Hollies… And yet, as the genre evolved from the late 60s onwards, contemporary motifs were assimilated into the music. The skinny tie thing you get with, say, the Cars and the Knack, signaled the malleability of power pop, some room for growth, and the potential for the music to be at once somewhat regressive but also part of the New Wave. The historical fragmentation of the 70s created a musical landscape rife with these kinds of mixed messages and pastiche. Don’t forget that when Tom Petty first broke onto the scene, the suits didn’t really know how to market the guy and tried for awhile to sell him as both a skinny tied New Waver and a 70s-style arena rocker. Only later did he become an unambiguous staple of the hesher crowd. But try listening to American Girl without any preconceived notions of what Tom Petty became at the height of his popularity and I think you’ll agree it’s one of the greatest power pop songs ever recorded, a throwback that also manages to bring elements of harder 70s rock into the fold. It puts the power in power pop. The same can be said for My Sharona. There’s so many great examples, actually, and I’ll try to get to the ones I love the most in the coming weeks. Tonight’s song is one of my favorites, from the Dwight Twilley Band’s first album, Sincerely, an absolute must-have for anybody who joneses perpetually for tight, punchy hooks. The song yearns for a return to 60s pop with its dazzling California-style harmonies and the rich resonance of the hollow-body guitar playing, but the organ leaves no doubt that the music is a product of the 70s. I actually don’t care much for that organ, subtle though it is, probably because I don’t like to be reminded that the dream is dead and long gone…

my power pop addiction, no. 1 (73)

I belong in Power Popaholics Anonymous, the only trouble being that the higher power I'd give myself over to would be Dwight Twilley. When his perfect melodies wash over my body, like warm ocean waves on a glorious summer day, I know that he gets me. We’ve never met, but he definitely understands who I am, understands all of us who live for heavenly pop hooks. You know how it goes when you listen to a Beatles song and suddenly, from out of thin air, there’s a chord change that just seems so weird and unexpected but so right at the same time? This happens with Twilley as well, those amazing, life-affirming moments when some little quirk in the melody hits you smack dab in the heart of your aural g-spot. ...Twilley loves all the things I love -- great harmonies, fuzzy-buzzy guitars, shakers, tambourines... And even though he's a native Oklahoman, his sound and vibe have always struck me as being very Los Angeles. I picture late nights in a Hollywood recording studio, on the corner of Gower and Yucca, Dwight huddled around a microphone with Phil Seymour, the two of them wearing cans and harmonizing gorgeously as a small piece of the 101 freeway shimmers through the window with neon brilliance...Tonight’s ridiculously catchy song has a slightly hard edge that eases the music just barely into the domain of rock. But it never loses its pop bearings and serves as a mission statement for those of us who are lovingly devoted to power pop. We’re all eternally looking for the magic, and in Dwight Twilley we find it in spades...

PS – Yes, that is indeed a young Tom Petty pretending to play bass…

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…

songs for broken hearts, no. 71

I’ve been talking a lot lately in these posts about the shift from pop to rock, its meaning, and my preference for the former over the latter. But I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like rock. My feeling is that if you’re gonna play rock you might as well play it verrrrrrrrry heavy, and no band in the late 60s and early 70s played things heavier than the world’s finest, Humble Pie. Keep in mind that heaviness doesn’t just mean loud, hard and crunchy, though even here Humble Pie would give Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple a run for their money. I have a good a friend, about 15 years older than me, who got to see Humble Pie at the Fillmore East a few times, and he told me that they completely blew the damn doors off the place. You certainly get this impression from their live albums as well. But heaviness is also about a vibe. It's music that has its balls hanging low, smelling of whiskey, weed and women. Heaviness is where the guitar becomes a phallic symbol. Don’t cock block the cock rock. Let the Pie give it to you, hard and slow, with their loose, rootsy, sweaty, primal heaviness. It’s so fucking good…

songs for broken hearts, no. 69

When I think about how I grew up loving Rod Stewart, the first thing that occurs to me is that his singing has always made me feel so good inside. He's got one of those once-in-a-lifetime voices, completely distinctive in the way that it comes both from his heart and from his cock, at the same time. He's so manly, and yet there's a bit of androgyny going on as well. This was something you could pull off in the 70s, gender bending as a way of reenforcing masculinity. It made guys like Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, Paul Stanley and Freddie Mercury seem a little naughty to me as a kid, and naughtiness was what I craved... In tonight's song, Stewart offers up a truly inspired interpretation of Macca's first great song as a solo artist. It's a shame that the only version of Maybe I'm Amazed we ever hear anymore is the one on Wings Over America. The studio version on McCartney is far superior, and when Rod and the Faces take it and make it their own, the music transports me to a place where everything is beautiful and romance is just around the corner...

songs for broken hearts, no. 68

Tonight’s song is a lovely late-period Small Faces tune that feels to me like Steve Marriott working more or less as a solo artist. The youtube clip I found has some really nice grainy footage of the band. It’s not synched up with the music, but that's ok. I don’t know if the footage was part of a promotional film for the song or what. …Autumn Stone is definitely transitional. Its rootsy vibe hints at the the blooze boogie thing Marriott would embrace in Humble Pie. The one thing I don’t like about it is the harmonica. As a general rule, harmonica should never be used in music. Period. With rare exceptions, a harp always makes songs worse than they would otherwise be. It’s why I don’t care for a lot of Dylan's 60s stuff. Blonde on Blonde is a tragedy because the songs are fantastic and they're all ruined by the unrelenting honk of Dylan’s fucking harmonica. I know this is a gratuitous digression, but it’s something I needed to get off my chest. Autumn Stone is beautifully moving in spite of the harmonica and in spite of the movement away from pop that it represents. The Small Faces transition actually begins with their classic 1968 concept album, Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, which is much heavier than most of what they’d done before. It’s easy now to bemoan this shift from the tight deftness of mid-60s Mod to the sloppy heaviness of late-60s Hippy, but rock is what was in the air in the late 60s, and it’s not fair or realistic to ask artists to step outside the flow of the cultural current. And the other thing is this: Had Marriott and the Small Faces not moved in an increasingly heavy direction, there may never have been Humble Pie. And the thought of life without Humble Pie is more than I can bear…

the 1 - 2 punch...

The Angels have gotten off to a predictably mediocre start to this season, 6-5 after 11 games. It’s a long season and a lot can happen over the course of six months and 162 games, but I predict the Halos will more or less tread water from here and finish the season a few games over .500. Vernon Wells, the guy earning $23 million this year alone and $86 million over the next four years, has started his Angel career in fine fashion (.091/.149/.114), with four hits in his first 44 at bats, including no homers and 2 huge ribeye steaks. He's no Shea Hillenbrand, put it that way. My math may be off, but I calculated that Wells earned approximately $141,000 riding the pine during last night's Angel win over the Cleveland Indians after Mike Scioscia scratched the outfielder from the lineup out of concern that he may be "pressing." It’s good work if you can get it. Meanwhile, Mike Napoli, who was needlessly traded to Toronto in exchange for Wells before getting flipped to the Texas Rangers in a salary dump, is lighting up the sky with a torrid start to his 2011 (.429/.579/1.071). Napoli will regress, of course, but I’d be willing to wager that he’ll have considerably better offensive numbers than Wells at the end of the season. And he’s making about a quarter of what Wells makes. And he’s not eligible for free agency for another few years. And… Oh what’s the difference at this point? It’s not my money, and I don’t wanna be too much of a downer with over 90 percent of the season to go. I’ve actually seen some things I like from the Angels so far. Howie Kendrick is hitting (.341/.431/.682) and already has four bombs. (Do they have an HGH test in place yet?)Alberto Callaspo has also played well on both sides of the ball. And I really like Peter Bourjos’ game. The guy looks like he's 12 and his numbers aren’t great right now, but you can tell that he has a lot of potential, and the importance of speed in baseball should never be underestimated. Bourjos can fly. One scout called him the fastest white guy in the game. It’s what makes him a great defender and such a dangerous weapon on the basepaths. Now it’s just a question of him getting on base. His current .300 OBP is not gonna get it done. …The bullpen has been inconsistent, but I like Scioscia’s decisiveness in taking the closer’s role away from Fernando Rodney and handing it over to the young fireballer, Jordan Walden.

But by far the best part about the season so far has been watching the incredible 1-2 punch of co-aces Jered Weaver and Dan Haren. I love the image of two So-Cal stoners – Haren from Monterey Park, Weave from Simi Valley – pitching in Disneyland. It’s fantastically weird and refreshing, the kind of thing you’d expect in the 70s, much less so in this era of soulless millionaire athletes. I have an image in my mind of Weave and Haren doing bong rips and playing video games together. Maybe Tim Lincecum even drops in for a taste of some OG Kush. ...More importantly, Weave and Haren have both been amazing on the mound this year. They account for all six Angels wins so far this season, and this includes a victory Haren earned in relief during last week’s 14-inning marathon against the Blue Jays. Last night, Haren threw a one-hitter against the Indians, ending the Tribe’s eight-game winning streak. His 0.73 ERA and 0.53 WHIP are utterly dominating. And two days prior to Haren’s one-hit gem, Weave struck out 15 batters over 7 2/3 innings pitched in a victory over the Blue Jays. Weave's numbers (3-0, 0.87 ERA, 0.87 WHIP) are also just incredible. I know it’s early, and I know that there’s talk that Scioscia might be overusing these guys to the point where they could break down by the All Star break, but I can’t help thinking that either one of them could win the Cy Young if they’re able to stay healthy. …I fear it’s gonna be a long and frustrating season in the OC, but it’s so much fun watching Weave and Haren work, and their excellence alone could at least keep us in the running so that we’re playing meaningful games in August and September…