Pop Life Unlimited

occasional dream, five

2012-03-01T10:02:00.009-08:00

The version of Queen Bitch I’ve posted this evening is not nearly as good as what you get on Hunky Dory, but the Ziggy-era footage of Bowie, with Ronno slashing away at his Les Paul in the background, is incredible. One of the things you’ll notice from the first few Bowie albums, all the way up to Ziggy, is that the rhythm guitar is almost always a 12-string acoustic. And it sounds absolutely magnificent. Even Hunky Dory, which is largely a piano album (with Rick Wakeman elevating the music into the realm of the sublime), features some of the richest acoustic rhythm guitar playing you’ll ever hear. Our crack research staff here at PLU has also discovered that the 12-string on Hunky Dory is often double, triple and even quadruple tracked. This new Wall of Sound, if you will, is a huge part of why the album sounds so amazing. The songs just leap out of the speakers, fill the room, and give you…aural pleasure. Sorry. …Tonight’s live performance doesn’t afford any of Bowie’s studio based inventiveness and ingenuity, but his sexually ambiguous charisma is on full display. At this time in California, hippie singer songwriters were gazing into their navels, whining and moaning about their confusion and unrealized dreams. Bowie, on the other hand, welcomes the confusion and, perhaps more than any other artist, moves the transition farther along. What makes him so distinctive is that, with the exception of Pin Ups, an album I never reach for anyway, he refuses to look backwards or stand still. He chooses instead to sharpen the leading edge, creating a new cultural currency in which alienation, ambivalence, and perpetual transition come together to fuel aesthetic creativity of the highest order…

diamonds...and dust

2012-02-29T10:21:00.004-08:00

A good drummer can make an otherwise good band great, and a great band superb. Without Phil Rudd, AC/DC would have been good some of the time and great on a handful of tracks, but they never would have been the consistently excellent band they were up to For Those About to Rock… I came of age musically at a strange time in the history of rock and pop, from the mid 70s through the mid 80s. Hescher rock still had momentum and corporate power behind it, but Punk, New Wave and power pop were increasingly asserting themselves as upstart alternatives to the dinosaur mindset that dominated FM airwaves. I think this more than anything else is why my taste is all over the map. But in my early formative years, I skewed towards the hescher thing, and my idea of a good drummer was Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, Carl Palmer, Bill Bruford, Phil Collins, Neil Peart… These are all great drummers with somewhat varying styles, but they all share a similar philosophy of the drummer’s role, which is to get the drums noticed, to have the drums essentially be an additional lead guitar. The thing is, though, that I’m a guitar nut and don’t want my attention diverted like this. I really don’t want the drums to be the main focus or something I notice more than the guitars. Drums should enhance songs, not dominate them. My ideal drummer is one who provides a rhythm that brings me into the music without taking it over. And this is the very essence of what Phil Rudd does. He is known among drum aficionados as No Phil Rudd because he almost never plays a fill. He doesn’t have to. The sound he gets from his drums is so great that all he has to do is provide a simple, stripped-down beat. It’s the sound he gets from his drums more than anything else that makes him distinctive in spite of the conscious effort he makes to not be ostentatious. I’ve heard his style described as ‘unselfish,’ and I think that’s pretty apt. His job, as he sees it, is to make the song swing, and the one thing you can say about the Golden Age of AC/DC is that the songs really fuckin’ swing. They might be the swingingest band ever, and Phil Rudd is a huge factor in giving the band its jackhammer-like power. …I’ve spoken a bit over the past few posts about bands and their secret weapons. Michael Anthony’s backing vocals were Van Halen’s secret weapon. Malcolm Young was one of AC/DC’s secret weapons, Phil Rudd being the other. Maybe it was inevitable that the two of them would eventually, and literally, come to blows. Sometimes there’s only room for one secret weapon. Bon and Angus are what you notice most when you listen to AC/DC, but Phil and Malcolm turn great music into something really special…

PS – I know I’ve said this before but tonight’s footage reinforces my belief that youtube is the greatest fucking invention since the wheel. Tomorrow I will cut the sleeves off my jeans jacket and get me a balls-out anchor tattoo…

high voltage rock 'n roll

2012-02-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

I was surprised a few years ago to learn that AC/DC played CBGB in 1977, right at the highpoint of the punk explosion in New York. This was probably right around the time of Let There Be Rock. They also opened a few shows for Kiss in the same year. I saw Kiss in 1977, on the tour for Alive II, but sadly AC/DC wasn’t the opening act. I have a feeling it’d be really difficult to open for Kiss given the spectacle of their shows, but I’m sure AC/DC would be up to the task just on the basis of the sheer power of the music. Can you imagine a double bill of Kiss and AC/DC? Holy mother of god! …I’m wondering, though, how AC/DC were received by the punk scenesters on the lower East Side of Manhattan. I’ll have to see what I can dig up on the internet. In some ways, AC/DC and punk seem like an uneasy pairing because, even when the punks played at being completely apolitical, the movement represented a critique of the failure of the 60s to achieve a fundamental change in society. So much of punk is about disillusionment with the 60s, whereas AC/DC is about givin’ the dog a bone. But in another way AC/DC fits nicely with bands like the Ramones and the Dictators, the unpretentious side of punk as opposed to Wire, Pere Ubu, the Clash, and Television, among others, each of whom had either artistic or political aspirations, if not both. AC/DC is a throwback to Chuck Berry and the golden age of rock ‘n roll, where the music is nothing more than the soundtrack to having fun and getting laid. The song structures are always very simple and stripped down, but they have unrelenting force and guitars as crunchy as the shattered glass under your boots after a teenage rampage. Problem Child, which features the unforgettable throwaway line, ‘and my mother hates me,’ is archetypal AC/DC. The song’s incredible three-chord riff is quite possibly one of the greatest riffs ever. It’s so great, in fact, that the version of the song on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap has a little 30-second coda just to emphasize the utter perfection of those three chords. I don’t know why they didn’t include this little nugget on the otherwise identical version of the song that appears on High Voltage. It’s one of those little things that takes a great song and makes it transcendent…

they said up, i said down...

2012-02-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

I think AC/DC is the band that comes closest to the spirit if not the sound of classic David Lee Roth-era Van Halen. Each was, in essence, a blues based hard rock band, but AC/DC was more elemental and rootsy, making their biggest impact not with flaming guitar solos, though Angus Young could certainly shred a solo when he wanted to, but rather with bone crushing riffs based on simple, immediate power chords. Yet in spite of this basic difference, AC/DC shared the Van Halen worldview (or perhaps it’s the other way around): Sex; violence; aggression; male hormones run amok; the kind of thing that synchs up perfectly with the adolescent male mindset… David Lee Roth’s persona made Van Halen’s sexual preoccupation a little more complicated than what AC/DC’s traditional Australian ladishness would allow. There was always a vague gay subtext with Diamond Dave, yet I’m convinced the guy was completely straight. I guess it’s just that when you dress a pretty boy up in assless leather chaps and get him prancing around the stage, almost like a Chippendales stripper, it’s gonna seem a little gay sometimes. Bon Scott was, by contrast, a tattooed mutt, back when tats were still badass, and he had bad teeth and not an ounce of sexual ambiguity. …I’d be really torn if you held a gun to my head and asked me to choose between the two bands, but I think I’d have to go with AC/DC. What puts them over the top for me is that there’s two guitarists. I always like my guitar-driven music to have a rhythm guitar. And Malcolm Young is one of the great rhythm guitarists of all time. If Michael Anthony’s backing vocals are the secret to Van Halen’s excellence, the same can be said for Malcolm Young’s rhythm guitar playing with AC/DC, which adds so much to the band’s absolutely devastating sound. Angus and Malcolm often do this thing, like in tonight’s song, where the song opens with a simple three or four chord riff, amd then the second guitar comes in after a few measures. But rather than play a lead, the second guitar simply replicates the opening riff, with the chords maybe voiced differently, so that the two guitars are playing the same thing. You might think doing this is duplicative, but you’d be dead wrong. It makes the riff sound so much ballsier and impactful… On Van Halen records, Eddie plays the rhythm riff and then the lead gets played separately on another track. This sounds incredible in the studio but can’t be replicated live, and I think it’s why, for all the showmanship and spectacle of a Van Halen concert, the band’s live sound was never that good. Eddie had to hold the whole thing together without the benefit of a second guitarist. This was never a problem with AC/DC. As great as their records were, the bricks-and-bats energy of their live sound took their power and forcefulness to a completely different level. I saw them with my brother in 1980 at the Nassau Coliseum. This was probably less than a year after Bonn Scott died. I didn’t own any of their records at the time, but I became a hugely devoted fan after seeing Angus and Malcolm do their thing that night. Again, as was the case with Van Halen, they were so loud, so nasty, so against everything that dogged me in my life at the time – rules, manners and uptight, repressed people – and they did it with such cocksure swagger and flair. It’s no overstatement to say that that concert was a pivotal for me. It opened me up to a completely different way of thinking about things...

it's love in the first degree

2012-02-15T10:29:00.001-08:00

I was reminiscing over email earlier today with a friend of mine from back East about how much we loved and worshipped Van Halen when we were kids. I think what I really latched onto, in addition to the killer riffs and great songs, was the sleazy spectacle of it all. They were randy, dirty guys from Southern California, and they reveled in their filthiness. For me there was a forbidden fruit element to it because I was raised in such a proper household. My parents never discussed sex with my sister and me, and they placed a very high premium on manners, propriety, and all that uptight, upper crust shit I hate so much but have had burned into my consciousness forever. And then along comes Van Halen, and they’re just puerile and loud as fuck, but they also have David Lee Roth’s jewy cleverness working for them. Eddie and Alex have never seemed to me like the sharpest tools in the shed, but Diamond Dave more than filled the void with his obnoxiously larger than life rude boy humor and smarts. So yeah, it’s the meeting of aggressive hard rock and sophomoric (yet also deceptively thoughtful) humor that made Van Halen so appealing to me. And what I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen these last few days is that the allure of Van Halen’s particular brand of sleaze is greatly bolstered by Michael Anthony’s backing vocals. He was the band’s secret weapon. He made everything sound so wonderfully dirty. And his look only added to the band’s unclean veneer. Interviews I’ve seen with Anthony on youtube leave me with the impression that he’s a very sweet, somewhat soft-spoken teddy bear, quite possibly the most reasonable dude in the band, though the bar is admittedly set pretty low. But if you ran into Michael Anthony on the street and didn’t know who he was, you might think he’s a pornographer or a guy who owns a titty bar. And this is good thing. Van Halen are the titty bar of rock ‘n roll. Before you enter, make sure you have plenty of fives and ones on your person. You’re gonna need ‘em…

turns you from hunted into hunter...

2012-02-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about Eddie Van Halen. Like most guys of my generation, I worshipped his unmistakably ferocious style of guitar playing when I was a ‘tween. Fair Warning, which I think of as Van Halen at their creative apex, was a huge album for me when I was 13. There’s two things that occur to me with Eddie’s playing. On the one hand, it’s the sound of the adolescent male id, at once confused and excited by a world in which sex is suddenly the prism through which all of life is refracted. But then, on the other hand, his playing also conveys violent aggression and rage. Hearing him play makes you wanna break shit. It’s a cathartic sensation, a purging of destructive impulses that cleanses your soul of all the dark, repressed stuff you walk around with all day long. Eddie’s onstage persona was always happy-go-lucky, more or less, but my impression of him from the admittedly little I know is that he’s a troubled dude, not real well adjusted, maybe even a little trashy in a very particular Pasadena via Holland kind of way. I get the same vibe from his brother, Alex, but you see less of Alex because he’s hidden behind that gynormous drum kit he plays. …Whatever demons haunt Eddie, they definitely come through in his playing. It’s simultaneously beautiful, ugly, ecstatic, painful, pleasing, scary… I was reflecting on this today and decided that an EVH riff is like the ‘go get your fuckin’ shine box’ scene in Goodfellas, the one where Billy Batts gets beaten to a pulp to the music of Donovan and then stuffed into the trunk Henry Hill’s car. Like the scene, the riffs tend to be jaw droppingly dramatic and even operatic. The violence is sublime. You can’t avert your attention even though what you’re hearing is utterly terrifying. If somewhere in the universe there’s a fine line separating sensuality and smoldering anger, Eddie Van Halen straddles it. He almost always tunes his guitar down by a half tone, and often plays in drop D tuning, so the low E string is as low and weighted down as a 15-yr-old’s ballsack. It’s gives him that filthy, nasty, sexy, wet dream sound. For a long time, as my taste supposedly got more sophisticated and refined, I dismissed Eddie as a mere guitar tech, vulgar by comparison with my guitar heroes, guys like Roger McGuinn and Clarence White, Johnny Marr and Peter Buck, Mick Ronson and Bill Nelson. But I’ve reassessed Eddie’s body of work and come to realize that he is one of the most emotionally affecting guitarists I’ve ever heard. I’m not gonna reach for a Van Halen album every day, and I’m never gonna reach for anything after 1984, but when I’m feeling beaten down by life, pissed off, and undersexed, I know Eddie’s playing will lift me up and set me free…

occasional dream, four

2012-02-08T13:16:00.000-08:00

Somebody famous, I can’t remember who, once said that if you want to know about the 60s you should listen to the Beatles. I think there’s a lot of truth to this. I also think it’s true that if you want to know about the 70s you should listen to David Bowie. Both the Beatles and Bowie, each in their own time and place, created works characterized by repeated leaps that redefined the era. I’m thinking about this right now in connection with Hunky Dory, which is a huge advance beyond The Man Who Sold the World, one in which Bowie plants an initial stake in the heady and strange moral landscape of the early 70s. Hunky Dory also readies the terrain for what comes next with Ziggy Stardust, though the two records are very different. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that, in more than just chronological terms, Hunky Dory is to Ziggy Stardust what Revolver is to Sgt. Pepper’s. Starting with Changes as the opening track, Bowie offers one of the first real attempts in music to define the 70s as being post 60s. If I had to pick the one moment on the album that most perfectly crystallizes the transition, it’s in Bewlay Brothers when Bowie sings,

And we were gone
Hanging out with your dwarf men
We were so turned on
By your lack of conclusions

Something about the double tracked vocals makes things sound so spacey and weird, and the lines seem to invoke a new era of ambiguity and deconstructed meaning. ‘Weird’ is actually a good word to describe all of Hunky Dory. It is one of the weirdest albums you’ll ever hear. It’s a good weird, to be sure, possibly the greatest, most brilliant weird ever, but it’s also the kind of weird that tends to emerge out of transformative periods when the shape of things to come can only be viewed through a glass darkly…

gimme moore

2012-02-06T15:40:00.006-08:00

It’s been almost exactly a year now since Gary Moore was found dead in a hotel room in Spain. The news made me quite sad as he was not only a gifted guitarist but also seemed like a very sweet guy. I never got much into his solo work, not because it’s bad necessarily, more because I simply didn’t get around to checking it out. Maybe some day I will. But he really brought a new and fresh energy to Thin Lizzy after Robbo left the group. Black Rose, released at the doorstep of the 80s, suffers from the creeping atmospheric murkiness typical of the way records sounded at the time. But Moore’s lightning fast playing cuts through the heavy fog like a knife through buttah. Speed guitar is usually not my thing when it’s done as a dick swinging end in itself, but Moore is tasteful and imaginative in his playing and gets an incredible tone out of his Les Paul. His sound has such an incredible bite to it, hard enough to chip a tooth on, yet also intricate and tuneful. They should sell the Gary Moore guitar sound in powdered form. Just add water, drink it down, and presto, you’re able to shred out jaw dropping guitar solos. If only it were that easy. …I remember seeing the ‘Liz perform on The Midnight Special when I was a kid. I had a small black-and-white t.v. in my room, and as the band broke into Waiting for an Alibi with a huge set of dice towering behind them as a stage prop, I was absolutely rapt, on my way to becoming hooked for life. The song struck that perfect balance between being dark and sinister but also irresistibly catchy. It’s also just flat-out ballsy sounding. For me at that age, the dark, catchy, ballsy thing was utterly addictive, offering a kind of rebelliousness by proxy. Hearing the song now fills me with joy, but it’s bittersweet because the perfection of Gary Moore’s playing serves as a reminder that the man left us too soon...

a riff on riffs...

2012-02-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

I’ve got just a couple more Thin Lizzy songs I wanna lay on you. The ‘Liz have completely revived my faith in the redemptive power of the perfect riff. Someday soon I think I might do an extended series on the best riffs in the history of rock ‘n roll, from the early days of the Golden Age onwards. As I’ve started to take up the guitar myself over the past three or four months, I’ve become obsessed with the question of what it is that constitutes a great riff. What chords work well together, and what groupings of chords create this or that emotional landscape? But at the most basic level I find myself asking what it is that makes a riff a riff? Is it merely a grouping of chords or notes that have a kind of stickiness about them in the sense that they stay in your brain long after the needle has passed over the grooves? No, a riff is so much more than that, though catchiness is not something to be dismissed. A riff has to be catchy in order to be a riff, but it’s also a very definite statement. When you hear AC/DC’s Problem Child or Van Halen’s Mean Streets, for example, you experience the catharsis of unrestrained fury, and you come to realize how potent it can be, but also how rare. The riff in each case is an instance of pure id and represents a gap in society’s repressive mechanisms, moments in which the workings of the superego haven’t kicked in. …Contrast this unbridled pleasure principle with songs by U2, Coldplay, the Dave Matthews Band, or any other kind of grim corporate sounding music. The mere sound of Bono’s voice is an encapsulation of the reality principle, offering a depressing reminder that we don’t live in a world without rules, restraints, worries, and coercion. Mind you, not all riffs straddle the Angus and Malcolm Young/Eddie Van Halen divide between pleasure and violence, sex and death, but a riff is essentially a catchy, recurrent statement made with a guitar or guitars as the messenger. Sometimes the guitar is both the message and the messenger, a la Marshall McLuhan. Smoke on the Water and More than a Feeling come to mind immediately. But for me the most affecting riffs are ones that transcend the guitar itself and create a narrative, or make a philosophical statement, or engender some kind of deep primal feeling in the listener. And that’s what makes tonight’s riff so fantastic. It does everything a riff can do. It says something about the guitar itself, its metaphysics of pain and pleasure and its ability to transform the former into the latter; it sets a scene, one of danger, and destruction, and tragedy; but the riff doesn’t bum you out because it also lets you know that the protagonist in this story may go down in a ball of flames, but at least he’ll do it in a way that honors his manhood. He’s a loser this one final time, just as he’s been all his life, but he’s a beautiful one at that, and so he’s really a winner in the grand scheme of things…

birch hill music

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

A reader named 'Lee' called the truth of my friend's Robbo story - the one where Robbo was working in shipping at a guitar shop in Boston - into question. I know Lee might very well just be a troll sitting around in her bathrobe, eating Bon Bons, with nothing better to do than be a loser troll. But given that I wasn't there and that the story could be untrue (though I have no reason to think my friend would lie), I've decided to take my previous post down out of respect for Robbo (whose nickname I had admittedly misspelled). ...Thin Lizzy is about five or six obsessions ago for me at this point, but I figured that just this once I should finish what I started... While Nightlife is a transitional album, Fighting is the record where Thin Lizzy really goes for it for the first time with the hard rocking dual lead guitar sound that would ultimately propel them to their commercial peak. The music reminds me of Birch Hill, a ski resort (if you could call such a rinky dink place a 'resort') in upstate New York where my family would go skiing on the weekends when I was a kid. The place was crawling with pimply teenage heschers back then, in their ripped jeans jackets and Blue Oyster Cult t-shirts, smoking doobies and drinking So Co from flasks on the chair lift. These were Dairy Queen Saturday Night types, dead end locals who had no inkling that punk and New Wave were happening downstate in the City. The world was so different before the internet, more culturally uneven. …But while the Thin Lizzy you get starting with Fighting is undeniably Birch Hill music, my favorite track on the album is a cover of an old Bob Seger tune, and it’s the least Hescher-ish track on the record. Check out the how-low-can-you-go guitars that answer the line, ‘she knows music, I know music too, you see… It’s enough to make me wanna put on a pair of skis and have my face break out in zits...

don't let the song title scare 'ya

2012-01-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

Vagabonds of the Western World is viewed by many hardcore fans as Thin Lizzy’s finest album. I think the album is pretty patchy myself, though it’s worth the price of admission for tonight’s song alone. But let’s get something out of the way immediately: Little Girl in Bloom is an absolutely awful title for a song and an awful refrain in a song. It sounds like 70s porn, the kind starring Jamie Gillis and set in a girl’s summer camp. Don’t ask me how I’m able to come up with such a specific evocation. I have a certain amount of familiarity with the genre and let’s just leave it at that. Back to the song. The whole thing strikes me as being Irish Catholic in the extreme. See if you agree with me. It’s also pretty haunting stuff, sort of uncomfortable listening in some ways, even though the girl at the center of the narrative is overjoyed with her situation and sees it as ‘something sacred.’ And Eric Bell’s guitar playing, and especially the sound he coaxes from his instrument, are as superb as ever. He seems to drift slightly off key in spots, but this only gives his weepy solo more urgency. This is music that’s really hard to categorize. I’ve been referring to it as progressive rock but it’s only kinda sorta prog. It doesn’t have the same delusions of grandeur as, say, Genesis, nor does it make a fetish of technical virtuosity in the manner of King Crimson or Yes. The Liz were really very unique during their early period. They became much more conventional after Vagabonds, not in a bad way, but definitely in a way that would eventually get them stadium gigs, co-headlining summer tours with the likes of ZZ Top. Ah, to have been a beer drinking and hell raising hesher in the mid 70s…

Tone Tone Tone

2012-01-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend intensively studying the Thin Lizzy catalogue. Most folks when they think of the ‘Liz remember them for their more commercially successful, riff-laden heavy rock from the mid 70s, the first shades of which come on Nightlife before finding full throated expression on Fighting. There’s a lot to love about the band in this crunchy incarnation, but their early, stylistically elusive records – I suppose you could say they’re somewhat proggy - are actually definitely worth your time, though you should know that they are very different from the more well-known material. Try to imagine what Astral Weeks would sound like if it were performed by a power trio and you’ll have a sense of what you can expect with Thin Lizzy’s debut album. The record’s first three tracks in particular are quite stunning. Eric Bell’s guitar is perfect for this type of material. He’s not necessarily the most technically accomplished guitarist you’ll ever hear, but he creates a lovely atmosphere with playing that’s subtle and pleasing, tasteful without ever being tasty. And he gets a tone out of his guitar that has me licking my chops. It’s the tone I dream about when I think about how I want my electric guitar to sound. Bell’s intuitive feel for the intricate melodies, at once free-form and tight, is a lovely complement to Phil Lynot’s warm and soulful vocals. …The first three Thin Lizzy albums were commercial disappointments and Bell departed after Vagabonds of the Western World. But he left behind a really nice body of work with the band. His sound gets in your blood and stays for awhile. …An interesting side note about Bell: In the mid 60s he spent some time playing in Them. I believe he might even be the guy who adds the lovely electric guitar accompaniment to Here Comes the Night. This may go some distance towards explaining why the first Thin Lizzy album evokes such a strong Van Morrison association…

breakout!

2012-01-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Thin Lizzy made music that was hard and heavy yet also pleasingly tuneful. They evolved from an obscure quasi-progressive rock band in the early 70s to a juggernaut hard arena rock band with twin lead guitarists who made their axes sound like bagpipes. The late Phil Lynott remains one of the ultimate front men in the history of rock ‘n roll, a tough black Irishman with a heart of gold beneath the bad ass rocker persona he played up so excitingly. When I was eight years old, The Boys Are Back in Town was one of those songs that made me stop whatever I was doing when it came on the radio. I just wanted to drink it all in. I loved the low, bellowing, dangerous sound of the guitars and the way they’d rise up to an ecstatic crescendo. Drink will flow and blood will spill is still a line that gives me goose bumps today. The thing that gives so many Thin Lizzy songs their weight, from what I can tell, is that they were not afraid to tune their instruments down a few tones, giving the intrerplay between the guitars and the rhythm section an instantly recognizable sledge-hammer heaviness. And yet the songs almost always remain super melodic and the guitar playing is actually deceptively intricate. Check out the opening chord in tonight’s song. It reminds me of the famous opener in A Hard Day’s Night., not because it’s the same chord or combination of chords (it’s not), but rather because it serves as a prelude that puts you on notice: You are about to hear something that’s gonna rip the lips right off your fucking face. And sure enough, the riff that follows is one of the nastiest, bad motherfuckingest, most beautiful and pleasing things you’ll ever hear. It makes you curl your lower lip and snarl like a tough...

Like the game, if you lose, go to jail...

hair!

2012-01-11T15:33:00.001-08:00

80s hair metal is not a style of music I ever connected with. Granted, Bon Jovi have a few songs that sound ok when they’re blaring from a dive bar juke box and you have a few drinks in ‘ya. Guns ‘N Roses are pretty good, too, but they’re not hair metal in the manner of Whitesnake. Skid Row, Winger, Poison, etc. Most of the stuff is too undifferentiated, unimaginative, and just plain stoopid, the rare exceptions proving the rule. So I was surprised to find that Enuff Z Nuff is a favorite band among some power pop geeks lurking on the internet. Until now I’ve always thought of ‘nuff Z as just another dumb hair band. But after doing some exploring, I’ve come to the conclusion that they were actually a pretty decent power pop band that had the misfortune of bad timing, coming along during hair metal’s MTV-driven dominance. This is not to deny that they have many of the unfortunate trappings of your garden variety hair metal bands. Today’s selection certainly has the look and feel of all the stuff Adam Curry used to pleasure himself to on the Headbanger’s Ball. But if you can get past the B.C. Rich shredding and the vaguely guido-ish vibe that was so often an essential component of the hair metal ethos, you’ll hear an amazingly catchy pop song with lyrics that, while cloying and naïve, are nevertheless very far removed from the by-numbers misogyny of the genre more generally. And how often do you see a guy in a metal band of any kind playing a Rickenbacker? Try never…except in the case of ‘nuff Z. It makes me think that they wanted to be more direct in their power pop approach but were thwarted by marketing suits at the record company who made them put on makeup and riddle their songs with Eddie Van Halen-style fills. What makes things all the more tragic is that 'nuff Z's 15 minutes overlapped with that period when grunge was on the rise and hair metal was already in decline. Just really bad timing on all levels, it seems... I’m still making my way through the ‘nuff Z catalogue, but so far I like what I hear. They recorded their fair share of stinkers, of course, but the good stuff is hooky, crunchy, tight, and well crafted. If more of the hair bands had gone in this direction, I’d probably be wearing lipstick right now…

occasional dream, three

2012-01-10T16:16:00.001-08:00

So one of the reasons I’ve been on this Rock Candy kick has to do with trying to understand, for myself, why I continue to be drawn to David Bowie’s early 70s records, everything from The Man Who Sold the World (1970) to Diamond Dogs (1973). This is the stage of his career in which his music arguably ROCKED the hardest, and I’ve begun to shy away a bit from hard rock with the onset of middle age. I suppose the reason why these records still move me is that the music is not ROCK as an end in itself. The ROCKingness of the songs is always in the service of themes that can’t but be communicated in a hard charging way, but there’s plenty of candy to both offset and complement the ROCK. The music remains melodic in spite of its hardness. It really doesn’t get any more melodic than The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), and yet Mick Ronson’s guitar snorts and snarls and farts and growls all over that record. It’s a perfect blend of hardness and tunefulness and strikes me now as quite an abrupt departure from Hunky Dory (1971), which is the one record in Bowie’s ROCK period that doesn’t ROCK quite so hard. Having said all this, though, I’d have to add that The Man Who Sold the World is my least favorite of Bowie’s ROCK records, perhaps because it’s not just hard but hard and heavy. I think of it in the same vein as Led Zeppelin III. The two records were released within one month of each other in late 1970, each a heavy-duty, plugged-in folk album. I don’t mind heaviness if it’s tuneful, but often times heaviness prevents music from realizing its full melodic potential. This is definitely the case with The Man Who Sold the World. I wouldn’t necessarily characterize the record as a step backwards from Space Oddity, but Space Oddity is the more enjoyable record to hear because you don’t have to fight through so much noise to get to the heart of the matter. Still, The Man Who Sold the World has its moments, and it’s a David Bowie record and as such is interesting by definition. Black Country Rock, with its tambourines and squawking Mick Ronson guitar playing, is my favorite song on the album. Bowie has always had such great taste in guitarists, hasn’t he?

the king of queens

2012-01-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

Queens of the Stone Age are one of my favorite all-time bands. They have been for many years now. It’s hard to believe almost 14 years have passed since the appearance of their magnificent debut album, which features tonight’s seductively riffy bit of Rock Candy. But to call QOTSA a ‘band’ is something of a misnomer as it’s basically Josh Homme’s baby in conception and execution. The rest of the personnel have been comprised of a continually shifting cast of players, some of whom have stuck around for comparatively long stretches (Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan), while others have just passed through (Dave Grohl, Nick Lucero, Dave Catching). Unfortunately, three years or so have passed since the last QOTSA record and I fear Homme may have decided to shelve the band for good. Homme, in fact, seems to have laid low for awhile more generally as there hasn’t been much output from any of his other projects either (Desert Sessions, Eagles of Death Metal). Hopefully he’ll make a triumphant return to the scene sooner rather than later. Although my tolerance for heavy ‘n hard music is increasingly limited these days, Homme breaks the mold and defies categorization. And he gets things exactly right in the process because his vision is squarely within the realm of the pop life. The hooks just keep coming and the riffs have phenomenal staying power. He’s obviously well versed in Black Sabbath, ZZ Top and AC/DC, on the one hand, but the catchiness of his melodies makes me think he’s probably a huge fan of everything from the Beatles to Big Star to Husker Du to REM. He’s one of those rare performers who are at their best more often than not, and when he’s there he plays hard – and, yes, heavy - pop. There’s not a lot of people who can import heaviness into pop, but Homme does it in a way that’s just so satisfying. The other thing is that Homme’s music quite clearly comes from a place of supreme intelligence, which is not necessarily a requirement for me when it comes to the music that captures my imagination, but it doesn’t hurt, especially if the smartness of the music emerges spontaneously as opposed to being mannered or showy. …With a few rare exceptions, I’ve almost completely abandoned contemporary music. My iTunes library cuts off at about 2005, so I’ve been out of it for a long time. I know this is a tell-tale sign of incipient Dinosaurism. Maybe it’s no longer even incipient but rather a fait accompli. I am Dinosaur, hear me roar! But as long as Josh Homme continues to record music, I’ll be able to claim at least a tiny bit of purchase on What’s Happening Now. He’s one of a handful of artists still making music that sends my spirit soaring…

sweet 'n heavy...

2012-01-03T10:07:00.001-08:00

…Continuing in the vein of music that’s at once hard, heavy, and pleasing. Let’s keep calling it Rock Candy for short. Brant Bjork makes great Rock Candy Records. It’s funny to me that his name is Brant Bjork. When you picture the person behind the name, your mind conjures up an image of a blonde Aryan dude from Scandinavia, but then you see him and he looks like he’s from Spain or South America. Bjork is actually from Palm Desert and cut his teeth playing drums, first in Kyuss with Josh Homme, and then in Fu Manchu. And given this pedigree, you might expect his solo material to be more rock than candy. My taste will always be such that I prefer artists to err on the side of candy. But this is exactly what Bjork does when he’s on his own. He’s all about catchy riffs and poppy hooks, though his stuff is also admittedly pretty darn heavy at times. I don’t mind heaviness if it frames something sweet and compact. I can’t do Sabbath, or Deep Purple, or Led Zep these days, for example. Their stuff is too stretched out, with the focus placed on making the music as heavy as possible. Some progressive rock, by contrast, is expansive yet catchy without being too heavy, which I can take in limited doses. I’m thinking of bands like Caravan, Be Bop Deluxe, Jethro Tull, and Utopia…What makes me head for the exits is music that’s simultaneously windy, heavy and anti-pop. It seems that the Palm Desert ‘stoner’ scene birthed at least some music where the riffs are the main thing and heaviness coexists in a nice equilibrium with catchy hooks. Along with Queens of the Stone Age, Brant Bjork is one of the best examples of this. Play today’s selection at 7:30am, and I guarantee it’ll still be in your head at dinner time. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop the rock tonight. Yes, indeed…

rock candy

2011-12-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

For several weeks now I’ve been contemplating buying a Telecaster. I learned a little bit of guitar when I was a kid, but didn’t have the patience to stick with it. Over the years, I’ve picked it up on and off again, just for kicks, but now I’ve become obsessed with at least cultivating some competence. It’s not because I dream of ever performing in front of anybody (though my sister tells me that it can be a total chick magnet), but rat

her that it’s just so satisfying to be able to play for myself and my cat in the solitude of my bedroom. So anyway, I have my eyes on a Telecaster, which in my mind is the perfect guitar in its design, versatility, and, most importantly, tone. I’ve been making several trips a week to the guitar shop in Pasadena, waiting for the prices to come down after x-mas, but ogling the guitars in the meantime, anticipating the moment of ecstasy when I pull the trigger, take the thing home, and can wake up every morning and feel so blessed to finally own a Telecaster…a fucking Telecaster!

…Last night at the guitar shop, I plugged in and played all the riffs I’ve learned or re-learned over the past few months – Day Tripper, Cinnamon Girl, Substitute, Rebel, Rebel…and No One Knows, the Queens of the Stone Age song that has one of the greatest riffs of all time. A guy working at the shop gave me the thumbs up and said “Queens!” (dudes who work in guitar shops always seem to be hard rock lads). It made me feel good because I can never tell whether I’m playing the riffs in recognizable form. We got to talking about QOTSA, and about Josh Homme, and Kyuss, Homme’s first band. One of the biggest disappointments of my life is that I had a chance to see Kyuss live in the mid 90s and passed it up. I just didn’t like their stuff at the time, and I still think their last album, And the Circus Leaves Town, is the only one that’s any good. It’s certainly their most accessible. But even when they’re accessible Kyuss remain extremely heavy, both in their sound and their overall vibe. The reason Queens of the Stone Age are so damn good is that Homme dispenses with some (though certainly not all) of that heaviness, maintains the hard edge, but also adds incredible melody lines and hooks. He has a poppy sensibility that he never really had a chance to hone during his time in Kyuss, and he pays a lot of attention to crafting great, self-contained songs. Homme does admittedly go over to the dark side with some regularity, but QOTSA resonate most with me when he keeps things tight and tuneful. And needless to say, the guy is a master of the catchy riff. And he’s also very intelligent from what I can tell… When I mentioned to the guitar shop guy that Homme’s guitar often seems like it’s tuned down a full step to get that low vacuum cleanerish sound of his, a la Blue Cheer, he laughed and said, “dude, he has that thing down at least a step, sometimes close to two.” Tonight’s song is a case in point. It starts out innocently enough with with some hash brownie sounding meanderings on a guitar and a weird repetitive bicycle bell. But what at first sounds like sloppy farting around quickly crystallizes into a lead pipe of a riff, replete a discombobulating tempo change. There’s a lot going on here, yet somehow, improbably, the melody remains just barely intact, and I mean just barely. And listen to how low to the ground those guitars are! It almost sounds like a tractor pull… Kyuss’ is generally way heavier than anything I wanna spend a lot of time with these days, but I’ve been thinking about music that’s hard and tuneful. QOTSA are one of the great hard and tuneful bands, and it’s interesting to trace Homme’s approach to making this type of music back to its roots…

occasional dream, two

2011-12-20T10:26:00.000-08:00

This occasional dream thing is turning out to be more occasional than I had planned… Janine is another example of how the Bowie Sound was at work from a relatively early point in the man’s career. Many of his signature tricks of the trade are already in use, albeit without their subsequent assuredness, and they all serve to intensify the emotional impact of the music: The distinct expressiveness of the singing; the manic self harmonizing; the acoustic guitar used as a rhythm guitar; the shimmering tambourine running through the chorus… I never used to care much for any of Bowie’s stuff prior to Hunky Dory. The folky space hippie persona of Space Oddity, which turns sharper and heavier for The Man Who Sold the World, just didn’t do it for me. Hunky Dory always seemed like a huge leap forward to me, one that rendered his previous efforts irrelevant. I still think it’s an enormous advance from his first three full-length albums, but starting with several great songs on Space Oddity, Janine being my personal favorite, you can hear his sound developing right there in the grooves of the record. A number of the chord progressions he uses would be right at home on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. This is what makes Space Oddity such a fascinating album to listen to. It’s kind of a test run. It certainly wouldn’t be my Desert Island Bowie Record, but neither is it one that the obsessive fan can easily ignore…

on the (middle of the) road to new wave

2011-12-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

One final Scott Walker post is in order, this one from the 1975 Walker Brothers reunion. By then, Scott Walker had abandoned much of the Euro Romantic ethos, at least for the time being, in favor of a more conventional Middle of the Road approach. But No Regrets nevertheless has a very interesting melody line, no less pleasing for being so subtle, and Walker’s distinct croon always draws me in and gets me to pay attention. The song brings me almost full circle back to where I began reflecting here on Walker’s music. A few years after No Regrets was recorded, Walker rediscovered the Euro thing with Nite Flights, offering it now in a compelling New Wave idiom that suggested he’d been paying close attention to Krautrock, Eno, David Bowie, and Roxy Music, just as each of them seem to have paid close attention to him. But No Regrets still seems light years away from New Wave romanticism, or perhaps not so far away at all…

the dawn falls hard on my face

2011-12-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

I’m still thinking a lot about Scott Walker. Thanks for Chicago Mr. James might be his poppiest song. The melody gets inside your head and stays there. His echo-heavy Euro romanticism remains present, along with the blue wistfulness he does so well, but now there’s the added dimension of an irresistibly catchy hook. Listen also for his harmonizing with himself, and for the way the chorus rises up a tone or so towards the end. I especially like the strange chord change he throws in for the line, And you needed more / than the smile I wore... Even as Walker evolved and embraced the pop life with increasing enthusiasm, he remained entirely unique. A handful of artists have been inspired by Scott Walker, but nobody has ever really replicated his amazing approach to making music…

warmth and compassion

2011-12-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

Rhymes of Goodbye is arguably Scott Walker’s finest moment as a performer. By the time he got around to recording the songs for Scott 4, he was at the peak of his creative power. The songs on the album are quite a bit more accessible than what you get on Scott 1, 2, and 3, combining his distinctive Euro-Romantic crooning with lovely, melodic melancholia, and the songs take a step towards folk pop and away from what up until then was Walker's occasionally dicey penchant for maudlin show tunesy-type fare. It’s a welcome artistic evolution and makes for some of the warmest music you’ll ever hear. I’ve been fascinated by Scott Walker on and off again for almost 20 years, and for a lot of his music my obsession comes more from the head than the heart, but with Scott 4, and especially Rhymes of Goodbye (which, fittingly enough, closes the album), the music has an added emotional depth that cries out for repeated listening. My favorite part of the song is the verse that goes…

The Bells of our senses can cost us our pride
Can toll out the boundaries that level our lives
Can slash like the sunlight through shadows and cracks
Our nakedness calling, our nakedness back

I'm not quite sure what he’s saying with this, but I know it’s something good, and the glockenspiel that punctuates it is a perfect little flourish that adds to the song’s soothing magic…

what if...

2011-12-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

Scott Walker’s music puts me in a European frame of mind, whatever that means. I guess for me it means “romantic”, “philosophical”, “weighty”, “deep”, “sophisticated”, “contemplative”, and all the rest. John Paul Sartre. The Welfare State. Krautrock. Films as opposed to movies. Good coffee. Skinny people… Europe is not just not America but also un-America, if that makes sense. It doesn’t surprise me at all, for this reason, that the European Union is crumbling. It’s the logical result of Europe trying to be more like the U.S. I knew integration would fail. Europe can’t be like the U.S. because it’s so eminently…European, meaning that it’s everything America rejects. And this is why Scott Walker had to embrace Europe. He’s an American – an Angeleno to be precise – who turned himself into a Euro. The music has an undeniable ex-pat feel about it, though it doesn’t eschew Americana in a self-righteous way. There was simply no way Walker could have realized his vision in an American context, but a lot of his stuff would be right at home with the music Jonathan Schwartz used to play on WNEW-AM. It’s music I could very easily play for my parents and I bet they’d dig it if they don’t already know who he is. …Tonight’s selection really gets to me, especially the line, are you sorry that you met me? When you love and lose, the answer to this question is so often ‘yes’, but it raises all kinds of interesting counterfactual questions. They’re European-type questions. They inspire deep reflection and ultimately make you recognize the potential fatefulness of every move you make…

P.S. - Oops, I did it again. I wrote about a song without checking first for its availability on youtube. The one I wanted to play for you is Best of Both Worlds, from Scott 2, but instead we’ll jump to Scott 4 and do Angels of Ashes. Enjoy!

the lonely romantic

2011-12-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

I generally like my music to pack an immediate pleasurable punch and tend to resist stuff that's overly arty, but I make exceptions for the likes of Scott Walker, David Bowie, Peter Hammill, and a few others. ...If you're not in the right mood, Scott Walker can sound like Stephen Sondheim on crack. But if you're feeling lonely, reflective, and wistful, you might very well identify with Walker's melancholy romanticism, and you may find the heroic aspect of his music uplifting. There's a tragic component to what he does as well. When I hear Scott Walker, the epic grandiosity of his approach to making music puts me in the frame of mind of a solitary seeker, one who craves a deeper connectedness to people, fears it may not be possible, but makes the quest for it a central part of his life's journey all the same. Check out the soaring orchestral arrangement in tonight's song and the deep echo effect of the production. It's dreamy and expansive, and it still gives me goose bumps every time I hear it...

only one promise, only one way to fall

2011-12-01T11:28:00.000-08:00

David Bowie is a singular, entirely unique talent. I say this while also recognizing that he’s a textbook example of the postmodern bricoleur, assimilating a diversity of styles, making each one of them his own, without ever settling for too long into a fixed way of doing things. I mentioned yesterday that, in spite of his incessant stylistic slippages, Bowie’s body of work is held together by a series of recurrent melodic structures that together constitute something like a signature David Bowie sound. It’s difficult to pin down where these structures come from. In part, they’re the product of sheer genius. I don’t use the ‘g’ word lightly, mind you. I’ve read as much Foucault and Barthes as the next dilettantish jack of all trades, master of none, but I do believe there’s such a thing as genius, and I’m convinced that Bowie is one of them. He’s a paradox: A genius assimilator. And as such, his melodic tendencies come not only from genius but also from what the pop music cognoscenti like to call ‘influences’, a word I don’t happen to like in this context, hence the derisive quotes. But there's no doubt that Scott Walker is one of Bowie’s biggest…influences. There’s an interesting dialectic at work between the two men. Scott Walker had a profound impact on David Bowie – not just the melodies but also the theatricality of the music, the decadent romanticism of his worldview, the idealization of Europe, etc, etc – and then Bowie, in turn, had a deep impact on Scott Walker. It’s somewhat akin to the reciprocal relationship between Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Byrds. …The Walker Brothers’ Nite Flights is virtually impossible to find these days for less than a few hundred bucks, unless someone “shares” it with you from a file sharing website. It’s too bad because the album features some of the greatest New Wave songs of all time. The album has four fantastic tracks, the standout being the majestic title track. Have a listen to it and see if you can hear the dialectic at work. To my ears, the song would fit perfectly on any album Bowie recorded during the second half of the 70s. …Over the next few days, I have a feeling I’ll be thinking a lot about Scott Walker, without whom David Bowie would likely have had a very different career arc, one that would not have subsequently fed the stunning second (or perhaps third) wind to Walker’s own career…

occasional dream, one

2011-11-30T09:31:00.000-08:00

On my just completed trip back to New York City for the Thanksgiving holiday, I had occasion, once again, to contemplate the magnificence of David Bowie, from his early days as Davy Jones, a maker of somewhat canned sounding Mod pop, up through songs and albums released within the past ten years. I wrote somewhat extensively (and turgidly, truth be told) about Bowie on my previous blog, which I discontinued in the midst of my 19th nervous breakdown. I was focused back then on albums, but in the time since then I’ve become much more interested in thinking about specific songs apart from the albums on which they appear, so I think I might occasionally post a few thoughts on Bowie songs that continue to capture my imagination, even after all these years of hearing them again and again and again. …Bowie is one of the few artists for whom I will make exceptions to my growing intolerance for explicitly conceptual music, progressive rock, and songs that are hard, heavy, and/or stretched out and windy. …Nowadays when people meet me and ask me what kind of music I like, I tell them that I like guitar-driven pop, and David Bowie. And in a strange twist of taste, it’s precisely when Bowie is at his poppiest that his music is least compelling to me. I’m thinking here of what I regard to be his roughly decade-long ‘lost period,’ spanning from Let’s Dance up to but not including Black Tie, White Noise. I would also include his Tin Machine albums with the lost period. I don’t know why he ever thought it would be a good idea to go grunge. …I had an opportunity to speak with my sister at some length about Bowie while I was staying with her in the Big Apple, and one of the things we both marveled at is that, in spite of the dizzying diversity of musical styles that Bowie has either adopted and made his own or, in some cases, pioneered, there’s an overarching unity to the body of work as a whole. I’m talking here about a David Bowie sound, as it were, a distinct musical thrust that glues together everything from his earliest Swinging London recordings onward. I gave a lot of thought on the flight home Monday to how to articulate the nature of this sound more precisely. More than anything else, I think it comes down to common melodic structures. I looked up a bunch of Bowie guitar tabs on the internet the other night and, sure enough, there are certain things he’s done repeatedly from the very beginning to his most recent recordings. I’m not a musician, so I can’t really describe what he’s doing technically except to say that he’s quite fond of Major 7th chords, and he often likes to substitute a minor chord for a major chord even though the latter would be more conventionally appropriate. I think these compositional tendencies are what give the music its distinct feel, one that’s at once forlorn and ethereal. His songs generally have very unusual progressions with plenty of weird chords or little surprises that take things off the beaten path, much in the same way that you tend to get with the Beatles. And it’s the strangeness of the music, it’s flair for the unexpected, that makes it so enduring. It occurred to me yesterday that the David Bowie sound is generally dissonant, but perhaps part of his genius lies in his capacity to make dissonance sound catchy and infectiously tuneful. …Much of this is, of course, merely mental masturbation on my part, but what else would you expect? I am and always will be Bowie’s biggest fan, not least because his music is so rich and meaningful and thought provoking both in form and content. I just wanna know everything there is to know about how the songs are conceived and executed, what the approach is, who the players are, what the vibe is like in the studio, and how it all reflects some larger social, cultural and/or historical context. I’ll see if I can get at some of this in a weekly feature, an occasional dream, at least for as long as I have the energy.

Originally, I wanted to start out with a few Davy Jones recordings, but I couldn’t find any on Youtube, nor could I find any from Bowie’s 1967 debut as Bowie, so the first one comes from Space Oddity, which is actually a very interesting collection of songs. The music is undeniably based in folk, and there are quite strong hints of the direction he’ll go in for The Man Who Sold the World. The recurrent melodic tendencies I alluded to just now are already in place. The song is the work of an exceedingly English, somewhat posh space hippy, searching for a stable identity and perhaps coming to the realization that stability is far too ordinary for someone with his talent and predisposition…

c'est moi

2011-11-17T13:40:00.000-08:00

Phil Seymour’s reinterpretation of Looking for the Magic is the complete power pop package. It’s punchy, perky, androgynous, tart ‘n fruity, and has a deceptively driving beat that makes the whole thing feel coked up, 80s style, but which also gives the song a teenybopper vibe that conjures up images of young girls having a squealing pillow fight. I love the original version of the song, but I think I love Seymour’s rendering more, even though there’s something a bit chipmunkish about it, no doubt an effect created through varispeeding the tape up a few tones. I think what keeps the song from sounding wimpy is that, along with having a great voice – one that manages to sound simultaneously from the Heartland and from the heart of Hollywood Boulevard – Seymour is also a fantastic drummer, not in the ostentatious sense of Neil Peart or Phil Collins, but more along the lines of Charlie Watts or Phil Rudd, guys who just get a full, resonant sound that makes it ok to place the drums very prominently in the mix… As always, there’s also the song’s sentiment, which when combined with its sound makes it just about as irresistible as music can get. The opening line sucks me in right away. All my life I been lookin’ for the magic. Yes. That’s me. It’s my fatal flaw, perhaps, but that’s me! And I have to believe that I’ll ultimately find the magic, because the alternative is simply too dreary. You can’t look for something your whole life and never find it, can you? Or maybe looking for it – for meaning, for redemption, for love, for completion – is enough. Maybe the magic lies simply in the faith that it exists and can be found…

remembering

2011-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

I know it probably seems sometimes like my blog is little more than a Dwight Twilley fan site, but I just uncovered some footage I’d never seen before of the band (featuring Tom Petty on bass) pretending to play one of my favorite songs. …I think it’s Twilley’s innate grasp of the relationship between pop and heartbreak – the former tending to have the latter built into it – that explains why his music moves me on such a deep level. The theme of tonight’s song is memory. We spend so much of our lives reflecting on the life we’ve already lived. Or at least I do, especially of late as I try to make sense of a short but particularly intense and strange chapter in my life’s journey. When Twilley and Phil Seymour hit the song’s climactic high note, I remember you, it puts me in touch with the way loss can turn what were life’s tender moments into painful memories. The thing that made you so happy is gone, so remembering it leaves you with a chilly emptiness. You get over it eventually. Time heals and gives the clarity that comes with perspective. You come to understand that maybe you weren’t so happy after all. But tonight’s song is sung from the point of view of someone who’s not yet healed. The memories haunt him. If only he could step into a time machine and get a do-over. He’d do a few pivotal things differently, say things he didn’t say the first time around, and not say things he did say but shouldn’t have. But there’s no time machine, no do-over. There’s only memories, which with some distance lose their jagged edges. The events and the people you experienced them with fade away, much in the way the song fades, the main difference being that you can play the song over again. And you will…

elevator going up...

2011-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

I’m not among those who dismiss the Association as muzak. It’s not that they’re not muzak but rather that muzak needn’t be rejected out of hand. The stuff serves a useful purpose. It calms you down as you anticipate the pain and then dulls the pain when it finally arrives. What’s wrong with that? I think of stuff like the Association and Burt Bacharach as music for folks who were in their 40s and 50s during the 60s, guys like my dad, hip enough to have his finger on the pulse of the now, somewhat, and who might even take a puff off a reefer if it was passed to him at an au courant party, but who would be totally out of place at a love-in. …When the Association are waved off, it’s usually on account of this, but also this, as well as this, and even this. I think all those songs are terrific. Each of them are quasi-muzak tunes, but they’re distinguished by their intricate production and arrangements, their sweet ‘n sticky melodies, and harmonies that are among the most perfect I’ve ever heard. And a lot of their music does indeed put you into a numb trance, awake yet asleep, a state that can be quite soothing under the right conditions. You might just find that you want the elevator to keep going up, up, up, past the second floor (ladies accessories and apparel); past the third floor (menswear); past the fourth floor (linens and cookware); then through the roof and into outer space. Keep the elevator door shut and the compartment ascending higher and higher, up up and away in my beautiful balloon… What’s interesting about the Association is that they eventually assimilated psychedelic motifs. And when psychedelia meets elevator music, the result is sunshine pop. Tonight’s song attests to the excellence of this fusion. It’s certainly one of the more psychedelic songs the Association ever performed, yet it maintains the morphine-like affect that so much of their music offers. It’s the dreamy harmonies that’ll stay with you more than anything, like the first brilliant rays of the early morning sun slowly burning off the overnight fog…

open wide

2011-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

I found Nick Decaro’s cover of I’m Gonna Make You Love Me on a sunshine pop compilation I bought a few years back. I thought it was so completely wrong the first time I heard it, but now I’ve come around to thinking that it’s actually on par with the original. The two versions are very different in tone and execution. Decaro gives the song a lounge/muzak interpretation. It's strange for sure, but somehow it works, though I could swear I hear the high-pitch whir of a dentist’s drill squealing ever so slightly in the background. The affect is casual and blurry, almost narcotic, and it makes you feel the way you do after the first gin and tonic kicks in. And then there’s the song’s sentiment, the force of will one tries to impose when in the throes of total infatuation. In Diana Ross' hands, you truly believe that she’s gonna make him love her, yes she will, yes she will. But when Decaro sings it, you’re not so sure. You wonder if it’s the liquor talking, expressing the brazen self-assuredness on the way up that, on the way down, will inevitably turn back on itself and become little more than the empty wish it really is...

"sunshine" pop

2011-11-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by guys who continued to craft great pop music after the tide had turned decisively to rock. That they did this, though, doesn't always mean that elements of rock were eschewed altogether. Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul both have thematic strands that unify the songs, which to me is a sign of the onset of the self-important rock mindset, but they're both also great pop records... My taste is such that the music's meaning gets lost if it's dragged out for too long. Can you think of any song that conveys its meaning more effectively and directly than I Want to Hold Your Hand? I sure can't. ...Curt Boettcher is one of those 60s figures who stayed true to pop. There's not a great deal of information available on him, but he's another guy I would credit with inventing sunshine pop. Along with producing some of the Association's greatest singles, he released two amazing albums of his own, one called Begin under the heading of the Millennium, and the other called Present Tense, released under the name Sagittarius. The latter album, produced by Gary Usher, is tragically under appreciated. I would characterize it as archetypal sunshine pop, yet it has some of the conceptual unity I was talking about just now. I suppose that in the wake of Sgt. Pepper's it would have been almost impossible to make a record where the focus was on the parts instead of the whole. But if you break Present Tense down into its parts, it has four or five bona fide classic pop songs, all replete with lush orchestral textures and lovely multi-layered vocals. The session players are not credited on the album sleeve, which is frustrating because the playing is outstanding. ...What I've started to realize about sunshine pop is that the name can be quite deceptive. Often times the stuff's actually pretty sad. Maybe it's just because of where I'm at right now, but today's song really got to me this morning, especially when Boettcher sings but you'll understand another time, so I guess I'll save my breath. It's the kind of line that seeps into your chest and moves up into your temples, and then you have to struggle to hold back the tears. It's such sweet pain, and I can't make up my mind right now whether to embrace it carefully or run from it as fast as I can...

go and beat your crazy head against the sky

2011-11-11T03:10:00.000-08:00

If you pressed me on my favorite 60s pop bands, the Lovin’ Spoonful would be right up there with the Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds, and Left Banke. I think it’d be fair to say that the Spoonful laid down the initial prototype for what became known as Sunshine Pop, which is self- explanatory, I think. Even the most cynical, miserable, beaten-down person in the world can’t help but smile when Do You Believe in Magic comes on the radio. It's magic if the music is groovy, it makes you feel happy like an old-time movie... The great thing about the Spoonful, though, is that they evolved, adopting a slightly more serious vibe as the 60s progressed with songs like Summer in the City and Younger Generation, but they never crossed over into rock, insisting instead on keeping the music and the arrangements pleasingly nimble. John Sebastian later became a little more pretentious and ‘heavy’ as a solo artist, but that’s what people were doing at the time, so it’s hard to fault the guy too much. I give him the benefit of the doubt if only because he was such a gifted songwriter and performer. …Tonight’s song is my favorite Spoonful song. I love the way the horns and strings build, but the climax owes more to Burt Bacharach than it does to Sgt. Pepper’s. Like I said, the Spoonful never got overly serious or self-important. But this doesn’t mean the song can be dismissed as disposable, middle-of-the-road trash. Not at all. Its tone is at once, wistful, wise, and compassionate, expressing a degree of human understanding and connectedness that’s rare in music of any kind. It’s lovely in at least a dozen different ways, and it’s just the kind of thing I need right now…

chasing the dragon

2011-11-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Undiscovered pop gems are a double-edged sword for me. Few things in life give me more pleasure and satisfaction than turning someone I care about on to something they’ve never heard before, especially if they really dig it. But it’s also frustrating when it’s so clear that an artist deserves so much more than cult status amongst a small handful of maladjusted pop geeks who live for nothing so much as familiarity with things that are otherwise hopelessly esoteric and obscure. This is precisely how I feel about the late Tommy Hoehn. I love it when his great LP, Losing You to Sleep, is playing in the background and a friend says, ‘wow, who is this?’ It’s happened on more than one occasion. But then I feel sad for poor Tommy. If only things had played out a little differently, he might have received the love and respect and adulation he so richly deserved. He’s another one of those artists with whom I have to tread very carefully at the moment. He has a beautiful if also quite unusual voice, high and magnificently expressive. His songs are tuneful and hooky as can be, but the hooks convey an undeniable pathos, and when you combine them with his voice in that upper, yearning register, it leaves you with a sense of unrealized dreams and deep, painful sadness. His work is another example of beautifully tragic music, and putting this type of thing within my grasp right now – and perhaps at any time – is akin to giving a junkie a roll of tin foil, a lighter, and a two-pound bag of Persian White. Chasing after that elusive moment of transcendence is a risky proposition, one that’s bound to lead you down some dark corridors and potentially into the abyss. And yet on some level Hoehn’s music is reassuring. It’s likely to make you sad, but in doing so it confirms that you’re alive, that you’re not sleepwalking through life, and that you’re not a member of the living dead. Its music for those who are blessed with the capacity to feel, to love, to put it all on the line and maybe get hurt, yet who also know that at some point they'll draw the Ace that makes all the bets that didn’t pay off completely worthwhile. OK, with all this talk of Persian White and pulling Aces, this is starting to sound like some Garcia-Hunter dreamscape, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, just not quite the vibe I’m going for here….The Tommy Hoehn selections on Youtube are quite limited. It gets to that negative aspect of undiscovered pop gems I was just talking about. So I hope you’ll forgive me for re-posting a tune I already talked about a few months back. On the plus side, it’s a fantastic song, with its big, dramatic sound and intense emotionality. When the tambourine kicks in and Hoehn sings ‘say goodbye’, you might feel a little overwhelmed if you’re at all like me. But be brave. Collect yourself and let yourself feel. It’s life. It’s worth it…

pop rock

2011-11-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

Pop will get you through the bad stuff life throws at you. For me it’s pop, and friends, and writing, and playing the guitar, and my beloved cat, Vito, who’s put up with a lot from me lately but remains just as loyal to me as he ever was. …The other day I pointed out that Substitute is a nearly flawless song, and it got me to thinking about my favorite pop songs of all time, not in a Top 100 kind of way, mind you, but more free form. That’s where my mood is taking me to now, with my net cast widely so as to catch anything that makes me feel good, and whole, and connected… A few months back, when I was in an entirely different frame of mind, I wrote a few words about Blue Ash, one of the great, unheralded bands of the 70s, but I was so wrapped up in other stuff at the time that I gave them short shrift. Like Vito, they deserve so much better. They’re a remarkable band. The sheer volume of delightfully tuneful songs they recorded - songs with incredible melodies, great guitars, soaring harmonies, and generally groovy vibes - will make your head spin. When Blue Ash are at their best, it’s obvious that they love what they do, almost as much as I love hearing it, and you just wanna make ‘em a part of your life because their songs leave you feeling so young and free and energized, even when they’re about heartbreak. And believe me when I tell you that they have a few songs, like the one I’ve posted tonight, that you need to be careful about playing if you’re not in an entirely good way. I was listening to tonight’s song on my way to work this morning, and when Jim Kendzor sings, ‘And I don’t know why, but you really sent me a-reelin’… I mean, jeez, I dunno. Lines like that may not be the best thing for me at the moment, but I can’t help myself because hearing it feels so fucking good somehow. But it hurts, too. A friend asked me last weekend if I’m in love with the pain. I’d hate to think this about myself, but maybe. Maybe there’s a masochistic side to living the pop life. Pop is intrinsically tragic, after all, though it also offers redemption and rebirth. Around Again has an unmistakably tragic vibe. There’s something about the way the piano carries the melody that really gets to me. It’s pretty subtle but, man, it has me teetering on the razor-thin line separating ecstasy and abject sorrow. It’s not an emotional space I care to dwell in for too long. It’s ok for short visits. But the song is also sung from the point of view of a guy who loves again after having been convinced he’d never be able to. I find that comforting and hopeful, even if the song’s overall ethos leaves you with the impression that, in the end, things will turn out the same way this time as they have all those times before. At least he’s capable of going around (and around) again. The accumulated disappointments never completely snuff out his capacity to love, his willingness to take a chance and to dream. That’s the part of the song I really clutch onto and savor. It brings a smile to my face at a time when the smiles aren’t coming so easily. …Blue Ash are a bit of an anomaly in that they’re a pop band, but there’s a smidge of Southern Boggie that creeps in here and there. It’s weird because they’re from Youngstown, Ohio, which I don’t think is even considered to be in the region of the state that most resembles the South. (The last few elections have imbued me with an appreciation for the ‘two Ohios’, one part of the state where the cool people live, like the guys in Blue Ash, and one part where the redneck Bible thumpers live). I mention this because I like Blue Ash least when they ‘lapse’ – for lack of a better word – into the R&B boogie thing, and I like them most when they sound like Ohio’s answer to the Beatles. Had I produced their records I would have advised them to be less Stonesy, less bloozey. Dispense with the meatheaded shit. Accentuate the pop, even if you can’t help straddling the divide between pop and rock. I guess that’s the thing. Blue Ash make pop rock, and when they lean heavily towards the former, there’s very little else that’s as lovely, affecting, and inspirational…

PS - Wouldn't you know it. The song I just rhapsodized about so passionately is not available on Youtube, and I don't possess the technical skills to figure out how to upload the song from my computer. So instead I've posted Bad Actor, another great Blue Ash gem that basically traverses the same emotional terrain as Around Again. If you're curious about Around Again, it's available on the iTunes store for less than a buck. A dollar might change your life. Do it!

the simple things you see are all complicated...

2011-11-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

After a long period of dormancy, I've started playing the guitar again. I find it very soothing, something to help mend my broken heart. I only wish I'd develop emotional calluses as hard as those that have re-emerged on my finger tips. I mention this only because I’m currently teaching myself the main riff from Substitute, and my efforts have reawakened me to what a great song it is. I think it might be the best thing the Who ever did, next to Eminence Front... But all kidding aside, Substitute is about as close as the Who ever came to recording a flawless pop song. If the received wisdom is true and Pete Townshend was the first to coin the term power pop, then I think it's fair to say that Substitute is the prototype. The song's riff is so perfect in its simple, direct immediacy. And I like the way the main guitar in the song is acoustic, which gives things a lovely mid-60s folk rock vibe. ...I’m not usually a fan of Keith Moon’s drumming – it’s generally too frantic and wild for my taste - but the layers of percussion in Substitute, and especially the prominence of the tambourine, are wonderfully satisfying. I know it’s a song everybody’s heard like a gazillion times. But if you really listen closely, unpack the song's component parts, and then reassemble them in your mind with newfound appreciation, you can almost get back to the amazing feeling that overtook your body the very first time you heard it…

the world's greatest rock 'n roll band...

2011-11-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

It's a cold and wet Sunday evening here in the Southland, but I'm keeping warm with some luscious music directly from the heart of the pop life: Mark Johnson... Orange Humble Band... Utopia....Tommy Hoehn...the Rubinoos... Those who say that the Rolling Stones are the world's greatest Rock 'n Roll band have obviously never spent any quality time with the Rubinoos. I've never been able to figure out why they weren't huge. It's an injustice. If Pop Life Unlimited were in charge, the Rubinoos would be living in a mansion at the top of Mulholland, Platinum Records lining every wall, and a view out over the expansive electricity of the greatest city in the world. It's weird that they're from Berkeley. Their sound has a light finesse I don't associate with the Bay Area at all. The harmonies are so tragically pretty and affect me in the same way as the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, except that the songs have the tiniest bit more of an edge. Maybe it's that edge that kept them out of the charts, but it's what draws me in and makes me wanna hear their songs over and over again... I can't recall whether I posted The Girl earlier, but it's from Party of Two, a five-song EP produced by Todd Rundgren and with the guys from Utopia serving as session players. I especially dig the bottom end of the harmony in the chorus and the House of Mirrors-esque synth, but the best part is the pleading in Jon Rubin's voice when he sings, 'but if you knew her you'd understand...' It's great stuff, and it's a great way to get back into the swing of things. Enjoy...

my power pop addiction, no. 139 (211)

2011-09-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

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...

my power pop addiction, no. 127 (199)

2011-08-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

If I'm given a choice between punk and New Wave, I'll take New Wave every time. But how about bands like the Buzzcocks, and the Only Ones, and the Undertones, who straddle the divide and then throw in a bunch of addictive poppy hooks to rein in the alienation just a bit? Canada's Diodes were one of the best of these hybrid outfits. You can find their songs on both punk and power pop compilations. It might be that their split personality, which defied easy categorization, was the reason they remained so obscure. They remind me of another very good and somewhat obscure Canadian band, the Barracudas, who were one part punk, one part pop, at home in neither camp, and so a stranger in both. Music that’s difficult to label might be more interesting than easily identifiable product, but it also makes the stuff much more difficult to mass market. Too bad for the Diodes. I like their sound a lot, even if it's punky 'tude takes things a bit outside my normal crotchety comfort zone. Tired of Waking Up Tired has enough ennui to keep your mohawk as sharp as nails, but it's also tight, melodic, and devilishly catchy. And the thing is, who isn't tired of waking up tired? The song's sentiment gets at a universal problem in the modern world...

my power pop addiction, no. 126 (198)

2011-08-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

First off, I want to thank my amazingly talented sister for the new look and feel of this blog. I gave her a couple of loosely formulated ideas, an she just grasped my vision intuitively. Thanks, Molly. You're the best...

I don’t know much about Fotomaker, except that they came out of Long Island and featured two members of the Rascals as well as Wally Bryson, the guitarist for the Raspberries. Their sound, which is definitely in the same orbit with the Raspberries and Artful Dodger, is pleasing if not particularly earth shattering. Sometimes power pop affects me profoundly. Dwight Twilley, Dom Mariani, the Rubinoos, Todd Rundgren, 20/20…They’ve all had a deep impact on my consciousness. But other artists just provide momentary pleasure, and then you move on, and that’s ok. Fotomaker are one of those bands for me, along with the Raspberries, Pezband, Cheap Trick, and the Romantics, just to name a few. None of them offer anything too spectacular, in my opinion, but they pop up on my iPod every so often and bring a little added sunshine to my day. It’s not a bad thing at all.

my power pop addiction, no. 125 (197)

2011-08-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Rubinoos embody that pop life vibe I love so much. In their heyday during the late 70s and early 80s, they were a fresh faced, wholesome looking bunch who seemed like the kind of band that’d play your high school dance. I’m thinking of the one where I wanted nothing more than to dance with a cute girl from my English class, not because I liked dancing but rather because I liked her - a lot - and I spent the entire evening getting up the nerve to ask. When the moment of truth finally arrived, I tapped her on the shoulder. She knew my name, which took me by surprise and gave me some added confidence. I fumbled a little with my words and I was glad it was dark in the gymnasium, enough to camouflage the beet redness consuming my face. My body felt warm with nervous excitement and a bead of sweat dripped down my back. See what guys go through? But I gotta admit that I felt pretty damn good about myself when she nodded and I got to dance with her, and I felt even better about myself when she kissed me on the cheek afterwards. The smile she flashed at me lit my world up like a brilliant sunrise. It’s a shame that feeling can’t be bottled and sold. It’s the greatest feeling in the world. Someone needs to figure out a way to freeze those perfect moments in time. There’s so much anguish and insecurity during teendom, it’s easy to forget that there’s some moments of blissed-out ecstasy scattered in there as well. The Rubinoos remind me of the bliss. They inject a great punchy energy into their songs, youthful and upbeat, even when they’re singing songs like It Hurts Too Much. The music has a bit of an edge without ever getting too hard. The guitars are crunchy and the drums are prominent in the mix, but the overall thrust of things remains endlessly tuneful and poppy. And their yearning harmonies are just right. They strike a perfect balance, creating archetypal power pop that flirted with the charts a few times but sadly never really broke through in a big way. They eventually got around to recording a patchy album with Todd Rundgren and Utopia, scored a minor hit with the theme song to Revenge of the Nerds, and even have a collection of songs for kids that’s supposed to be a lot of fun. But it just seems to me that they should’ve been so much more than a cult favorite amongst obsessive pop geeks. If I could figure out a way to bottle that amazing feeling from the high school dance, I think the Rubinoos would become the Platinum selling band I know they could have been…

my power pop addiction, no. 124 (196)

2011-08-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

The first few Undertones singles were so great. They never really got the credit they deserved, at least not in the U.S., for their excellent brand of punk infused power pop. If you're like me and bands like the Scruffs, the Only Ones, and the Buzzcocks are about as punky as you like your punk (not terribly punky in other words), then you'll love the Undertones. The first time I heard Teenage Kicks back in the day, I remember feeling like, 'yes, this is for me, this is what I need, this is how I want my music to sound.' It's one of those songs where the only thing you wanna do when it ends is hear it again. It's so simple, and it's tuneful as hell, yet it also packs enough of a punch without ever rocking harder than it needs to. I've come to appreciate how rare it is for a band to achieve that balance, where the music is just on the threshold but manages to resist the temptation to flex too much muscle. The Undertones' restraint, which is a kind of insistence on keeping things poppy, pays huge dividends. And what I hear more than anything over the two minutes or so of tonight's song is a group of guys who love what they're doing. I think it's the hand claps that give it away. Their joyfulness is infectious...

my power pop addiction, no. 123 (195)

2011-08-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

With Cheap Trick you've gotta take the bad with the good. The bad, in my opinion, is that they've always been kind of a bar band with arena rock aspirations, which often results in music that's a bit too meat headed for my genteel sensibilities. They are widely viewed as one of the great American power pop bands, but even on their first few albums the material already crosses over from pop into rock with the subtlety of a jackhammer. Also, the lyrics to a handful of songs from their classic period - tunes like Elo Kiddies and Taxman Mr. Thief, for example - reveal a shallowness of spirit that I find to be a distasteful harbinger of the Reagan era's ethos of greed and narrowly defined self-interest. There's no question in my mind that Cheap Trick were mostly in it for the money, and while there's nothing wrong with that, why not just go work at a bank if your motivation is 90 percent mercenary? On the good side, even when the songs are more hard rocking than what I would prefer, there's no denying Cheap Trick's excellent feel for melodies and hooks. And while it's fairly obvious that they yearn above all else to be well heeled rock stars, there is a power pop band hidden beneath the bloat and unseemly ambition. Another thing is that drummer Bun E. Carlos strikes me as one of the most iconic figures in rock 'n roll. In fact, the juxtaposition between the two dream boats in the band and the two guys who look like they'd be more at home doing your taxes is pretty damn hilarious...

my power pop addiction, no. 122 (194)

2011-08-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

I don't know much about Chicago's Pezband at this point other than that they had a cool look, sounded like a cross between the Raspberries and the Pop, and don't have any albums available anymore unless you're willing to go the Japanese import route and shell out $100 or so. I've always heard good things about these guys, but limited access to their music has made it hard for me to get a sense of what they're all about. If I were the type of guy who steals music - and I'm not, just in case the FBI is monitoring my seditious musings on power pop - I would download their whole catalogue in a matter of minutes and be able to offer a more interesting post for today. For now, though, here's a groovy sounding Pezband track I found on youtube. It's the best I can do at the moment...

my power pop addiction, no. 121 (193)

2011-08-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

This will sound like pop life sacrilege, but I think the Raspberries are kind of overrated. There’s a reason it’s taken me 121 posts to get to what is widely regarded as the ultimate power pop band. I appreciate the prototype they created, all the more so since they did it in the age of bloated arena rock, and they definitely have a handful of terrific songs - catchy, loaded with great sounding guitars, and radiating good time vibes - but I honestly don’t think they’re that great. They're good, sometimes quite good, but never great. And tonight’s clip of them 'performing' one of their best songs shows that they’re pretty bad at synching. There’s not even a fleeting attempt to make things look authentic. But still, if you’re gonna talk power pop, the Raspberries eventually need to be inserted into the conversation, so enjoy it and don’t let my occasional need to be contrary sway your opinion one way or the other…

my power pop addiction, no. 120 (192)

2011-08-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Artists like Peter Hammill, David Bowie and Robert Fripp blazed a trail from progressive rock to New Wave starting in the mid 70s, but none of their efforts were ever as pop oriented as the fusion Todd Rundgren forged with Utopia. I have very little patience for progressive rock these days, but with Utopia I make an exception. Adventures in Utopia is a fascinating transitional album that’s intricate and technically sophisticated, but also tuneful and hooky at the same time. Parts of the album are a bit more crowded with effects than what I usually go for, and the sound is undeniably heavy and heady, but there’s about three or four songs I can’t resist. When Rundgren focuses on making music and concise songs, as opposed to making a fetish of twiddling nobs and creating sounds, there’s really nobody I’d rather hear. And his singing and guitar playing on Adventures in Utopia are in peak form. …Check out the excellent footage I found of the band playing one of their greatest songs on the Mike Douglas show. For all the moaning and whining I do about how everything was so much better before the digital age, I gotta admit that youtube is just the best. Utopia actually look like they’re totally prepared for the digital age in this one. The guitar and drum kit alone are worth the price of admission...

my power pop addiction, no. 119 (191)

2011-08-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

Todd Rundgren’s creative restlessness can be quite maddening. Maybe it’s narrow mindedness on my part, but I really wish he had spent his entire career honing his pop chops instead of spending so much time in tedious stretches of experimentation. I don’t care for experimentation as an end in itself, which in my book = self-indulgence, a sin Rundgren has certainly been guilty of periodically over the course of a career that’s spanned more than four decades at this point. On the other hand, maybe his flights of fancy have helped re-focus him in some way so that when he’s returned to what he does best, making tight and immediately impactful pop songs, he’s come back fresher and more into what he’s doing. But this is all pure speculation. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the man and he still remains a mystery to me. The image that's formed in my imagination is of a mercurial enigma, though his opacity is admittedly part of his appeal. And in spite of the flaws that mark significant portions of his body of work, you have to admire his relentless commitment to his work and his apparent indifference to commercial success, especially since, as Something/Anything seems to show, he could, if he chose to, churn out commercial hits in his sleep. Yet, Something/Anything is far from a perfect album. It’s kind of too bad that it’s a double LP because the filler – or what I regard to be the filler anyway – diminishes the album’s half dozen or so gems. They get lost in traffic. I’ve alluded to this before, but double albums are almost never a good idea, particularly if they’re studio albums. I can’t really think of one double album that wouldn’t have been better if it’d been reduced down to two sides, including the White Album, Exile On Main Street, Freak Out, Zen Arcade, and Double Nickels on the Dime. Maybe if windy concept albums with lots of instrumental noodling are your thing – Progressive Rock, in other words – you can make a case for the double album as an art form. But if you’re like me with my short attention span, my need for instant gratification, and my spare personal aesthetic, then you start to get sleepy at the very thought of sitting through an hour or more of music where the good songs come only intermittently. Something/Anything should have been pared down to two sides. Imagine a record clocking in at 30 minutes, maybe even less, where every song is as good, or almost as good, as the one I’ve posted for you this evening…

my power pop addiction, no. 118 (190)

2011-08-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

The Nazz, Todd Rundgren's first proving ground, played an early variant of power pop over the course of three albums that, while patchy and uneven, each have moments of crackling electricity. Tonight’s song, from Nazz Nazz, is a hot mess of church bells, gun-fire drums, trippy psychedelic flourishes, and disorienting time signature chicanery. But there’s also a highly melodic pop song lurking beneath the the song's harsh atmosphere of white noise and weirdness. It’s a little more involved and produced than I tend to like my pop, but its deceptively tuneful, and its overall vibe, which is somehow tight as a drum and slovenly at the same time, keeps me coming back for second and third helpings. Even at the dawn of his career, Rundgren was already making records that get to your head as much as they do your heart, often times without even seeming to try very hard…

my power pop addiction, no. 117 (189)

2011-08-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

We will be out of commish for the next few days, but not before leaving you with a serious slice of early 70s Midwestern power pop. Blue Ash are somewhat unique in that their British Invasion template is often tempered by a hint of boogie, which is not typically a style associated with pop's lighter touch. I think it’d be fair to say that they owe as much to the Rolling Stones as they do to the Beatles. I haven’t really thought about the Stones for a long time and haven’t had a hankering for anything Stonesy in I dunno how long, the one exception being Blue Ash, whose pleasing melodies stick inside your consciousness no matter where your mood’s at. Enjoy it, and enjoy the weekend!

my power pop addiction, no. 116 (188)

2011-08-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

Emitt Rhodes yesterday, Badfinger today. This must be the week of damaged lives and the first wave of Beatles simulacra. Badfinger were the first of the bands trying to sound like a band trying to sound like the Beatles, if that makes sense. The Byrds were obviously influenced by the Beatles on their first few albums, but they took the Beatles’ sound and made it their own by injecting folk into the mix, whereas with Badfinger (and with Emitt Rhodes as well, I suppose), the relationship to the Beatles was more purely mimetic. They took a lot of shit for this. My cursory survey of reviews archived on the internet revealed that critics tended to find the blatant imitation to be grating. Robert Christgau, for example, in his Consumer Guides review of Badfinger’s Straight Up, wrote that he was “forced to wonder whether [he] wouldn't like this record if it were by the Beatles. But without mentioning what the question says about the group, which is called Badfinger, the answer is that the Beatles couldn't have made this record. Except for ‘Day After Day’ and ‘Perfection,’ not one of these unabashedly tuneful tunes has any magic to it, which isn't simply a matter of cautious tempos and harmonies--it's a matter of magic.” My sense is that critics had yet to come to terms with the postmodern condition as the age of aesthetic simulation. And, to be fair, it would have been difficult to do so at that time as postmodernity was only beginning to assert itself unevenly in the culture at large. Things are very different today. It has long been the case now that it’s virtually impossible to talk about music, literature, fine art, cinema, etc. without reference to what/who it sounds, reads or looks like. So then the question becomes, if all art is now necessarily derivative and always already engaged in a chain of reference, is any of it any good? That’s a little heavier than what I feel capable of at the moment, so let’s bring it down a few notches: Are Badfinger any good? Do they fill you with inspiration and creative energy, or do they merely engender a kind of depressed fatigue in marking the start of a prolonged age of cultural exhaustion? In other words, how do you feel when you come to the realization that there’s no longer anything new under the sun?

my power pop addiction, no. 115 (187)

2011-08-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

I must confess that I'm not a huge Emitt Rhodes acolyte, but there's a handful of his songs that put me in an intensely reflective mood, not necessarily in a bad way, though there's an undeniable undercurrent of tragedy in much of Rhodes' music. I think tonight's selection is the best song he ever did. It puts his gift for communicating sadness and loss on full display and is deceptively affecting at under three minutes long. The problem for me is that I really don't wish to be this sad any more than I have to, so that whenever the song pops up on my iPod I have to decide whether or not I'm really in the mood to go down its dark and lonely passage. In fact, the entire trajectory of the Emitt Rhodes story is quite frankly just too depressing for me. I recently viewed an Italian documentary about him and had trouble sitting through the whole thing, kind of in the same way I had trouble sitting through Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the documentary about Rodney Bingenheimer. There’s no question of Rhodes’ talent. His self-titled first solo album after his stint as the leader of the Merry-Go-Round was released more or less contemporaneously with, and compared favorably to Paul McCartney’s first solo album in 1970. But there's so many times when talent alone doesn’t cut it. Lots of other factors enter into the equation: Dumb luck, personal charisma, record company backing, and the emotional resilience the artist does or doesn't posseses in dealing with the ups and downs of the star making machine. What I took away from the documentary was that the lack of this resilience in the face of the machine destroyed Rhodes, turning him into a maladjusted man child. Think Brian Wilson only with no chart success to buoy him even just a little bit. Throw in an indifferent record company and you’ve got a perfect storm for a shattered pop life. There may be days now and again when I’m feeling ghoulish and the arc of the Rhodes narrative will hold some appeal for me. It speaks to that part of me that digs Sunset Boulevard, The Last Tycoon, and even Helter Skelter. But usually the thought of Rhodes makes me sad in a way I don’t want to be if I can avoid it. I hope that doesn’t make me sound callous. I recognize his magnificent talent, but the whole package – the feelings stirred up by his music, and knowing the way his life turned out – I find it all too difficult to enjoy in anything other than small and infrequent dosages…

my power pop addiction, no. 114 (186)

2011-08-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

I recently paid $60 for the Orange Humble Band's much-sought-after record, Assorted Creams. In this economy - or ITE as the saying now goes - this may seem like the height of profligacy. I should be either hoarding every last cent or buying gold in anticipation of the apocalypse that's just around the corner, but I must say that the purchase was completely worth it. In times of darkness and confusion, it becomes so much more important to take solace in the things that put us in touch with the goodness life has to offer. And for me, Assorted Creams is one of those things. It’s certainly not a perfect album by any stretch of the imagination. There are a few songs that are way too long, and there are ones that rock a bit too hard and/or unimaginatively for my taste, but the good songs are some of the best I’ve heard in quite some time. …As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've always liked the idea of Let’s Active more than the reality, yet it seems that almost everything else Mitch Easter has been involved with, including the Orange Humble Band, is really worthwhile. Among the pop lifers joining Easter on Assorted Creams are Ken Stringfellow of the Posies and Daryl Mather from the Someloves. That’s some pretty serious pop pedigree if you ask me, the power pop equivalent of Baker, Bruce and Clapton...or not. Either way, when the Orange Humble Band keep things concise and focused, their layers upon layers of guitars create gorgeously melodic pop songs that improve with each successive listening session. So while sixty smakers is a lot to ask for a CD these days, it seems like fair market value for something that offers such soothing comfort in the midst of an increasingly uncomfortable world...

my power pop addiction, no. 113 (185)

2011-08-14T04:39:00.000-07:00

The studio version of today's song is far superior to the one posted here, which is performed in a Spanish television studio sloppily, somewhat out of tune, and a little hard for my taste, but it's better than nothing. There are a few turns of phrase that really stay with me. 'Our eyes have met but we haven't had a chance to talk', 'I'm a fool if I let a chance like this go by', 'From the street I look up at your window, I can see your perfect silhouette', 'When I go to sleep tonight I'm gonna dream about you...' It's great pop life stuff, and when Mariani blends it with his great feel for guitar-driven melodies, there's almost nothing else I'd rather be playing, at maximum volume...

my power pop addiction, no. 112 (184)

2011-08-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Dom Mariani has become one of my all-time pop heroes. He understands the emotional component of it all, that pop is exactly the right vehicle for communicating the ecstasy and agony of romantic longing. Just listen to the intricacy of the guitar playing in tonight's song and you'll feel that pleasure/pain nexus quite viscerally. And there's something about his sunny Aussie accent that always stops me in my tracks. It's so distinct and perfectly suited to the emotional landscape he creates. I hear his beautifully melodic pop songs, tinged with piercing desire, and I think to myself, 'this stuff is so me.' He's completely attuned to the way I experience music. I feel like he's my long-lost Australian soul brother, the South Pacific's answer to Dwight Twilley or Richard Lloyd. I've admired the bands Mariani has been in for quite some time, from the Stems, to the Someloves, to DM3, but only recently have I come to recognize just how devoted he is to the dream and how much he embodies the pop life...

my power pop addiction, no. 111 (183)

2011-08-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

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...

my power pop addiction, no. 110 (182)

2011-08-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

To be honest with you, I tried for about an hour to locate a photo of the Names on Google and the thing kept routing me to pictures of Don DeLillo. I didn't think they were that obscure, but I guess I was wrong. Why Can't it Be is a bit of a garage oddity. It's not particularly hooky but it has a certain something about it if you have patience and are willing to play it a few times in a row. It starts off sounding like a throwback to the Golden Age of Rock 'n Roll, but then the guitars pick up steam about half way through and inject some much needed muscle. Because the last thing this world will ever need is another Sha Na Na. So I don't know what you'll make of this one. Some people love and revere this song. Personally, I think it's a nice track to put in the middle of a compilation, but I don't need to hear it more than a few times every few years...

my power pop addiction, no. 109 (181)

2011-08-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

It’s pretty much impossible not to fall in love with There She Goes the first time you hear it. It’s one of the greatest pop songs of all time, even if it reminds me of my gloomy days living in England during the first Gulf War. Back then, the records I listened to most often, all on store-bought cassette tapes, were a German edition Best of the Byrds collection, Big Star’s first two albums (one on each side of the tape), and the one and only release from the LAs. I guess that puts the latter in pretty good company, eh? Dunno why they insisted on spelling their name with a possessive apostrophe. Just a pet peeve of mine. I was introduced to the LAs via a new music radio program on a local BBC station in Cambridge that came on every weeknight called Jive Alive, hosted by Mick and Sarah Jane, two cool cats, very English sounding, no Americanization whatsoever, which I appreciated. …It always fascinates me when a band has one shimmering, transcendent moment and then is never heard from again. Such is the case with the LAs. I’ve read various bits and pieces on the internet about Lee Mavers, the band’s front man and principal songwriter, and learned that his career was derailed both by his impossible perfectionism and hard drugs. Apparently he’s crawled out of it since then and lives a reclusive life in a suburb of Liverpool. Good for him. He brought a little cheer into my life during an especially difficult time for me...

my power pop addiction, no. 108 (180)

2011-08-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

There are worse things you could do than make a Spirit of ’66 Pet Sounds-Rubber Soul fusion album with bits of the Byrds and the Left Banke thrown in to give the music added sheen. I must confess, however, that there’s a not insignificant part of me that wants to reject Splitsville’s Pet Soul as just a little too clever for its own good, what with its nerdy-cool record collector pose. Perhaps I feel so much of my essence in the music that it makes me uncomfortable. But in the end, these guys are simply too damn talented and too good at what they do. Resistance is futile. They hit all their idols’ nuances in ways that are just right. The album is nothing less than a joyous celebration of the very peak of human civilization, replete with fulsome guitars and airy West Coast harmonies. I don’t even mind that there’s a song on the record called Caroline Knows. It helps that it’s a fantastic song that does honor to its progenitor. When the music is good, all other considerations go out the window for me. The whole thing is a bit show offy and over the top, no doubt, but I’ll bet you a Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda you’ll be seduced by Pet Soul’s mimetic charms after one listen straight through. It won’t feel like the first time, and maybe not even the third or 25th or 100th, but demanding that it do so at this overripe point in the age of simulation would be setting the bar impossibly high. Let’s simply be grateful that there remain folks for whom this type of thing still matters. Every last one of them forestalls the fade into oblivion, the fate of the dinosaurs. If loving this shit is wrong, I don’t wanna be right…

my power pop addiction, no. 107 (179)

2011-08-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

The values of the Reagan era have reasserted themselves in a big way over the past few weeks. It’s strange and quite dispiriting for those of us who had hoped Obama would be another FDR. It was naïve to think this, sure, but it’s painful nevertheless to watch as he triangulates in Clintonian fashion, especially since he doesn’t have Bill’s political chops and so his presidency, which started out with such high hopes, appears to be slipping through his hands, paving the way for some conservative nutter to win in 2012. But for the most part I don’t really like to mix my pop with politics. Pop is my escape from politics, or at least that’s what it’s become. Still, I find it difficult to stay completely blinkered to what’s going on, and the return to the 80s mindset dovetails nicely with my having turned my attention to the Go Gos. I really wanted to post Vacation, which is my favorite Go Gos tune and has a great video (remember the water skiing?), but it’s not postable, probably for some petty corporate reason. So tonight it’s Head over Heels instead, a song from the very peak of those days of exposed shoulders. It was a grim time for sure, but this doesn’t mean the song isn’t very catchy and won’t hang around in your mind all day long after you’ve heard it just once…

my power pop addiction, no. 106 (178)

2011-08-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna lie and say that the Go Gos are one of my favorite bands of all time, but they have eight or ten songs that fit in perfectly on any pop compilation I make for myself or friends. They really captured the spirit of the early 80s Hollywood scene, and this as much as anything else is the reason they remain interesting to me. When I was a teenager growing up in NYC, the Go Gos seemed so otherworldly to me. They represented something I had no familiarity with whatsoever, but it appealed to me, Los Angeles as a place of freewheeling decadence and sexy fun. It's not that far off from the way Fast Times at Ridgemont High affected me. Perhaps these kinds of things planted seeds in my brain that eventually made me so much more receptive to the place when I finally moved here... The only other thing I would say about the Go Gos is that Jane Wiedlin is a very good songwriter and has excellent pop instincts, even if her personality puts me off somewhat. She is the band's real talent in my opinion. And my understanding is that this eventually caused tensions as she received song writing royalties from which the others were excluded. Ah, the jealous games people play...

my power pop addiction, no. 105 (177)

2011-08-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

I should be a bigger Bangles guy than I am, but I just don't think the songs are there. In the battle of the bands between the Bangles and the Go Gos, the Bangles seem like a much nicer group of girls, but the Go Gos have more talent. That's my opinion anyway. I like the idea of the Bangles - comely, cool, easygoing women committed to the pop life - more than the reality. Still, they have about four or five terrific songs, and they're children of Los Angeles, very much a part of the paisley underground story, along with Rain Parade, the Three O'Clock, Long Ryders, and Dream Syndicate, and for this they deserve recognition. Tonight's song, one of my favorite Bangles tunes, was originally performed by Katrina and the Waves, but the Bangles improve upon it greatly, giving the song added tunefulness and throwing in some pleasing backing vocals that make me think of the Mamas and the Papas. All the vocals for the song are actually quite lovely and make it a perfect track for you to enjoy with your morning cup of coffee on a overcast, Liverpudlian Saturday morning...

my power pop addiction, no. 104 (176)

2011-08-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

Part of me thinks Material Issue is a mere eyelash away from being the Goo Goo Dolls, and that's not really a good thing to be in my world. But if I leave my preconceived notions aside and take in their music on its own terms, then I have to admit, perhaps somewhat grudgingly, that they have their moments. I give them credit for having been an unwavering power pop band in the era of the grunge monolith. I also can't easily dismiss a band produced by Shoes' Jeff Murphy, whose calling card will always command my attention. It's funny how the 90s seem so distant all of a sudden, and yet it was all only yesterday, wasn't it? The first time I ever heard Material Issue was in the Virgin Megastore at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights. I bought International Pop Overthrow that day...and then brought it into Rockaway Records on Glendale Blvd a few days later for trade, pennies on the dollar. They just didn't do it for me at the time. Part of it might have been that I'm resistant to trios. I know this doesn't really matter in a studio context because you can just mix in the second guitar, but conceptually I like thinking about two guitarists working in concert, and it's hard to do that when you know the band is a trio. And not to speak ill of the dead, but it's also been hard for me at times to warm to Jeff Ellison's voice, particularly when he slips into his affected, kinda-sorta faux English accent. I can take this sorta thing with some guys (Emitt Rhodes, Michael Quercio) more than others (Billie Joe Armstrong). Whatever. These are just some of my weird music hang ups. I've mellowed as I've gotten older and I've grown to appreciate a handful of Material Issue songs over the years, including tonight's song, which makes me think of American Psycho, Paula Jones, Paul Tsongas, The Player, Kirby Puckett, Shannen Doherty, Dan and Anne's wedding, Freddie Mercury, Anita Hill, Serbs and Croats, Reginald Denny, Arsenio Hall, Arthur Lee live at Raji's, my dingbat apartment on Barry Ave, Matthew Sweet, gas for $1.25 a gallon, Mao II, Gen X, Quentin Tarantino, American Gladiator...

my power pop addiction, no. 103 (175)

2011-08-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

There’s a much punchier rendition of tonight’s song available on the Yellow Pills compilation, but this one will have to suffice. Whenever it’s popped up on my iPod in the past, I’ve gotten a hankering to explore the Rubinoos in more depth. But I’ve always forgotten to do so until last night, when my army of research interns informed me that the song, as well as the album on which it appears, Party of Two (1983), features all the guys from Utopia as players and is produced by Todd Rundgren. You learn something new every day! I can’t speak for the rest of the record yet, but I love the song even in its inferior incarnation. It has a very distinct late 70s/early 80s sit com vibe. Think Three’s Company meets Eight is Enough meets One Day at a Time. And then maybe throw in a little John Hughes teen-o-rama for good measure. The feel is similar to other New Wavey power pop of the same period, like the stuff you get with the Records, 20/20, Rick Springfield, and Phil Seymour. Rundgren keeps the song’s footprint nice and light, which I love, but still manages to insert an ever-so-slight edge into the music. It’s really very catchy and actually sounds like an attempt to make a single for the charts. Play it once and you’ll be singing it to yourself all day long. I especially dig the way the band captures teenage romantic fixation so perfectly. The girl / That’s all my mind is on / The girl / That’s all I ever want / The girl / So glad I got / The girl, the girl, the girl, the girl, the girl… Yup, you guys nailed it.

my power pop addiction, no. 101 (173)

2011-08-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Back online at last!…I’ve never met the blokes in Teenage Fanclub, yet they understand me better than some people who’ve known me all my life. They love all the things I love: Tuneful, romantic songs; hooks that send the imagination soaring; guitars deployed as elemental building blocks; ethereal West Coast-style harmonies; and reverence for the West Coast sound more generally. Their music is quite simply joy, joy and more joy. And their story is inspirational. They were the wrong band at the wrong time, arriving on the scene during the first wave of Nirvanamania. Remember that bleak period in music? The cheerless, flannel-clad Aryans from places where the sun never shines, playing their grim music, heavier and blacker than the sludge at the bottom of your coffee cup. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time… Bandwagonesque, Teenage Fanclub’s breakthrough third album, got lumped in with all those unhappy purveyors of the grunge. And since grunge was the type of corporate ‘alternative’ music charting at that moment, the record company asked them to make follow-up records that sounded like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, as if there wasn’t already more than enough of that shit to go around! But the band didn’t want to make those types of records and refused, so the record company didn’t promote them and relegated them to several years in commercial limbo. But during this lost period, Teenage Fanclub made two really great power pop records. It’s too bad only hardcore members of the Fanclub’s fan club bought Thirteen and Grand Prix because both records sparkle and shine. What comes across when you listen to them as much as anything is that the guys absolutely love what they’re doing and want nothing more than to stay true to their vision of the pop life. And everything they’ve put out since then has been terrific as well, especially Songs From Northern Britain, a record that finds them at their unrelentingly mid-tempo, Byrds and Beach Boys and Neil Young worshipping peak, with lots of tambourines and shakers thrown in for just the right amount of additional adornment. My only quibble with them is that they have a fair number of songs that are too long by at least a minute, sometimes two. This is where their Neil Young fetish perhaps does them a disservice. I mean, I love a great rusty guitar solo as much as the next guy, but a song doesn’t need more than one of them, and the one solo per song needn’t go on ad infinitum. Remember that there are many sides to Neil Young, one of which is the amazingly intuitive melodic sense he has, and the way he can make a guitar’s sound count for more than technical skill. I would call this Neil’s ‘feel’, and it’s certainly something that can and should be emulated by pop bands, to the extent that emulating feel is even possible. But then there’s also the side of Neil that’s given to stretched out jamming, the Like a Hurricane and Cowgirl in the Sand side, which can also be thought of as the hescher side and the anti-pop side. Teenage Fanclub sometimes sound like they’re attracted to both these aspects of Young’s musical personality, and I think their songs would be even stronger if the jettisoned the latter. But this is really a minor complaint, and if you’ve been reading me with any regularity at all then you know that it’s very much my cross to bear. I just don’t have the time or attention span for songs that go on foreeeeeeverrrrrr. They reach a certain windy threshold where they’re not really songs anymore, they’re just zzzzzzzzz, if that makes sense. Ironically, there’s a track on Thirteen called Gene Clark that is, if anything, the opposite of its namesake, with five minutes of Cortez the Killer-ish jamming before they even get to the first verse, by which time I’m bored to tears and ready for a bathroom break. But these lapses take very little away from the love I have for Teenage Fanclub, those Scotsmen who hold a deep and abiding attachment to California as an aural concept. They’ve never lost faith in the notion that guitars and harmonies will set you free. They didn’t become the cash registers the suits initially thought they might be, but I saw them live once and I can attest to the amazingly warm and mutually devoted connection they have with their fans. Maybe it’s the repressed hippie in me coming out, but I’ll take that reciprocal human connection over a Platinum selling record any day of the week. It’s a beautiful thing when a band carries the pop life torch as lovingly as Teenage Fanclub. My life is so much better for having their music in it…

my power pop addiction, no. 99 (171)

2011-07-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

It’s true that the Lemonheads were, in essence, a Husker Du/Soul Asylum/Squirrel Bait cover band, and it’s true that they were annoying pretty boys from Beantown, one of my least favorite places on the planet, but they had something goin’ on for a few years in the late 80s. Their sound – the sound shared by all those bands I mentioned – was a power pop variant that’s hard to categorize. It’s not hard pop because it’s too punky, and it’s not hard rock because it’s too poppy, and it’s not straight hardcore because they’re too pretty and the music is too tuneful, and it’s not power pop in the usual sense of the term because it’s a bit too dissonant. So what do you call tuneful, melodic, romantic, poppy hardcore punk? …How about popcore? I like it. One of the unfortunate things about popcore is that so much of it was recorded so badly. I can’t listen to Husker Du much anymore because I feel like I’m listening to a transistor radio that’s been smothered under a pillow. It seemed cool at the time, that muffled DIY lo-fi thing that gave the music an underground, non-corporate feel, but 25 years later I’d have to say that a lot of records recorded in the 60s and 70s have stood the test of time better. I don’t like feeling like I have to trudge through poor recording techniques in order to get to the tunes and melodies. But if the popcore sound hasn’t aged as well as some of the other stuff I’ve posted here, it still takes me back to the subjective experience of being 20 years old, and that’s an ok head space to get into for short bursts of time here and there…

my power pop addiction, no. 97 (169)

2011-07-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

A little while back, I observed that Todd Rundgren might be the closest thing America has to David Bowie. Now it’s time for an equally inexact and pointless comparison: Julian Cope is the closest thing England has to Todd Rundgren. Both cut their teeth in semi-psychedelic pop bands that became cult favorites if not chart toppers, and then both went on to pursue solo careers marked by creative restlessness as an end in itself, lurching from pop to progressive rock to the utterly undefinable, and then back again. And yet, in both cases – and perhaps with Bowie as well, though less so – a small semblance of a core identity has remained intact through all the shape shifting. …Being a fan of Julian Cope takes work. His avowed love of psychedelia and progressive rock, particularly Krautrock, has imbued him with a taste for wild experimentation and a degree of artistic indulgence that’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But if you wade through Cope’s entire body of work from the Teardrop Explodes onward, I reckon you can put together 90 minutes of highly engrossing music. You can’t say this about too many artists, and while I’m less interested in being engrossed these days than I am in experiencing immediate pleasure, Cope is, at his best, both heady and pleasing. …Tonight’s song isn’t power pop, but it is pop with a melody line that’s no less satisfying for being so simple, with a few curves thrown in to keep the listener from slipping into total passivity – check out the oboe, the psychedelic flanging effects, and Cope’s trademark nonsensical/acidic lyrics. I’ve always loved the Englishness of his singing voice as well. …In an era of simulation, Cope's work is at once heavily referential and completely unique sounding. It’s a strange and contradictory balance that comes out of his daring approach to making music. He’s not afraid to fall on his face, but when he stays at least somewhat focused and uses his great instincts and massive storehouse of musical knowledge coherently, what results is an elegant chaos that more than makes up for those times when he misses the mark…

PS - Add J.C. to the list pantheon of those who harmonize with themselves!

my power pop addiction, no. 96 (168)

2011-07-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Like Kiss, the Sweet are hard but not heavy, crunchy but also tuneful and poppy. Their music is too big and loud, and their image and stage presence are too much of a spectacle, for them to be a power pop band. I guess the category should be something like hard pop, though there’s obviously a very fine and line separating hard pop from power pop, and there’s another fine one separating hard pop from hard rock, yet somehow the distinction between hard rock and power pop is pretty easy to make. When I was a kid, hard pop – everything from Alice Cooper to BTO to Foreigner - would get played on AM radio, whereas hard rock, with some exceptions, like Queen, was strictly the stuff of FM. It’s tempting to conclude that it’s not power pop if it received AM radio play, but then there’s songs like Todd Rundgren’s I Saw the Light and Badfinger’s Come and Get It, both of which are at least nominally power pop but also practically qualify as AM Gold. Maybe they’re the rare exceptions that prove the rule. Does anybody really care? …At the peak of my radio listening days, when I crossed over and back again easily between AM and FM, I loved Fox on the Run, and I seem to remember hearing it on both dials. I was developing an ear for music that was both hard and tuneful. In fact, listening to the Fox on the Run now I realize that the basic building blocks for my adult taste were already in place when I was seven years old, and although there have been some diversions and explorations along the way, including a good chunk of time in hescher land, my basic preferences haven’t really changed in 35 years. Now as then, I still close my eyes, tilt my face to the sky, and smile ecstatically when Brian Connolly sings the line, fox is on the run at the end of the chorus. But what puts the song over the top for me is the intricacy of the high harmonies. Intricate might not even be the right word for what’s going on. The harmonies are just plain weird, sounding like something you’d hear in an old horror flick. Campy is the word I’m looking for, I think. The Sweet actually made fairly common use of those campy harmonies in songs like Little Willy, Wig Wam Bam, Ballroom Blitz and Teenage Rampage. And, along with the melodies and compactness of the songs, it’s the peculiar harmonies that give the music a playfully childlike quality and keep the Sweet from slipping downward into hard rock...

my power pop addiction, no. 94 (166)

2011-07-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

The genius of Kiss is to have gotten eight-year-olds to hum songs about blow jobs as if they were as benign as London Bridges Falling Down. By my count there are at least five songs from the band’s Golden Age that use some form of the phrase ‘get on your knees’ (e.g. gets on her knees, got on her knees, goin’ down on her knees…). I also only realized much later on the real meaning of Gene’s tongue wagging. For a not insignificant stretch of time in my life, probably from about age 8 to 15, it was virtually impossible to snap a photo of me without me rockin’ a Gene Simmons pussy lickin’ tongue. I recently looked at photos taken of me 30 years ago at my Bar Mitzvah and my tongue is a-waggin’ on every last one of ‘em, almost as if it was some kind of nervous tic. My father looked at the pictures with me and said that he blames "all of that on the Kiss.” He’s cute that way, and he’s absolutely right. Gene Simmons introduced oral sex to America's very young and packaged it, along with Paul Stanley, in songs that seem now like they were specifically designed to stick in our minds with the power of Gorilla Glue. I can still sing every note of every song. Tonight’s song offers perhaps the strongest instance of the recurrent on-your-knees theme: So if you please, get on your knees / There are no bills, there are no fees / Baby I know what your problem is / The first step of the cure is…a KISS! Can there be any doubt but that the Gene's dick is shaped like a dollar sign? And it’s great pop, too, big and hard. Gene wouldn’t dream of giving it to you any other way…

my power pop addiction, no. 93 (165)

2011-07-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Robert Christgau gets things just right, as is so often the case, when he points out that Kiss are hard but not heavy. Most of the time - and I'm only talking about the classic period here, nothing after Kiss Alive II - Kiss are a hard rock group playing pop songs. So they should be the ultimate power pop band, yet somehow they don't fit in with the milieu no matter how broadly it's defined. I can't really put my finger on why. Maybe it's that their sound is so big, all the better to fill arenas with, and/or that their guiding ethos is unambiguously the profit motive. Or maybe it's the clown makeup and the spectacle of it all. I don't know. But whatever this amorphous concept of the pop life may refer to, it's clear that Gene and Paul are the opposite of it. This doesn't mean, though, that they haven't written their share of ridiculously catchy, if also shrewdly manipulative songs. I don't mind being taken for a ride with Kiss because a big part of their appeal is the way they revel in their own slime. But they're also capable of transcendent moments, tonight's song being Exhibit A. Everything about it is fantastic. I'd venture to say that it's a perfect pop song, except that it's hard rock, but not really, so somewhere in between maybe, but then again... Check out Ace's guitar playing throughout, both acoustic, which is used as a second rhythm guitar, and his lead, which jumps right out of the speakers and grabs you by the nads, or the cloest equivalent if you haven't got any. But the best part is saved for the 25-second fade out, an orgy of guitars, high harmonies and hard rockin' fever. It's inspired stuff and makes me think these guys might have a bit of the pop life in 'em after all...

my power pop addiction, no. 89 (161)

2011-07-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

The only real quibble I have with John M. Borack’s book on power pop is that it’s based on albums – the 200 greatest power pop albums of all time - as opposed to songs. The album as a stylistically and conceptually coherent musical document is an artifact of the era of rock. Power pop represents an attempt to shed the heaviness and artistic pretension that increasingly engulfed rock as the 60s started to go bad. One upshot of this is that songs reemerged as the main vehicle of artistic expression. All of which is to say that I think the top 200 power pop songs would have been more appropriate to the art form. …And yet, there's Chris Von Sneidern’s Big White Lies (1994), which I heard for the first time last week, another spectacular find courtesy of Borack, who places it as high as #6 on his all-time list. I’m still processing my feelings and responses after a weekend of listening to the album incessantly, but right now I think I can safely say that it’s one of the most amazing pop *albums* I’ve ever heard. And I want to underscore my feeling that it works as an album. Von Sneidern (whose real name I fear might be Chris Schneider) has a masterful grasp of songcraft, so much so that the dizzying wealth of material on Big White Lies is enough to constitute nothing short of an entire album of gems. If there’s any criticism I have of Big White Lies, it’s that the album doesn’t give you any time to catch your breath. It's too good, if that's possible. It reminds me of the way Vito, my beloved cat, bites me if he gets overstimulated, like if I rub his belly for a long time. He gets to the point where it's more pleasure than he can take. And so it is for me in hearing Big White Lies. Sometimes you want a little filler here and there so you can fully absorb the gems. Even Revolver and Pet Sounds provide a little downtime with some filler. ...My thinking with pop these days is that I’ve gotten my $10 worth if there’s one good song on any album/collection I download. A good song is worth $10 to me. Big White Lies is a collection of 11 great songs. Thankfully, there’s no conceptual connection between the songs, at least from what I can tell, because that would be taking this regression back to the album a little too far. One of my cardinal rules of pop: Just say no to concept albums unless, as is the case with Big White Lies, the unifying concept is simply the empyrean beauty of immaculate pop purity. The album overflows with the goodness of the pop life:

*McCartney-esque melodies - check;
*celestial West Coast harmonies - check;
*devastatingly addictive hooks - check;
*guitars, guitars, everywhere guitars - check;
*romance, heartbreak, and unrequited love as recurrent themes throughout, but always with just enough sweetness and hope to give you reason to believe - check.

...I don’t say this kind of thing very often, but Big White Lies will blow your fucking mind. My mind has been blown now and again in my life, but it hadn’t been for quite some time, until I listened to Chris Von Sneidern for the first time last week. And after all the pop I’ve heard over the last 35 years or so, it’s gratifying to find that there’s still stuff out there that can affect me so dramatically. Music of such effortless power and vitality doesn't come along every day and deserves to be revered as the rare and wondrous gift that it is...

my power pop addiction, no. 87 (159)

2011-07-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

If you lived in LA and tuned into FM radio on any given day in the mid 70s, chances are you'd be treated to Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac... There's a lot to admire about this milieu, and I appreciate how deeply imprinted these artists are on the psyche of this city, but the truth is that they collectively constituted the rear guard of pop. The advanced guard was happening at KROQ-FM, an oasis in the hescher desert, and the Pop is one of the great if little known bands the station played while Hotel California and Aja chimed incessantly from the more mainstream stations. The Pop's music is fueled by a very different spirit and a different way of experiencing Los Angeles, one that's more youthful, more energetic, and not so drearily burned out. Don't get me wrong though. There's definitely room in my life for some good LA-style post-60s malaise. Nothing wrong with a little navel gazing and self-involvement. But a lot of those titans of the FM dial just sound so heavy to me these days, not in the sense of the music being hard and loud, but more in the sense of the music having a vibe I can only describe as dispirited, traumatized and fatigued. By comparison, Down on the Boulevard sounds as if it comes from a completely different world, one that's punchy and crackling with creative excitement. The band sounds like they're having fun, as trite as that may be to say. I'm a huge fan of Jackson Browne, but let's be honest, he rarely sounds like he's having a very good time. He's too haunted by the death of the hippie dream to think about injecting pleasure back into the process of making music. Sometimes I hear his stuff and I wish he'd just snap out of it already. Yeah, it's a bummer that it all didn't work out the way you and your cohorts might have hoped, but it's over now, it's not coming back, and you're filthy rich to boot, so quit whining and let's get back to the serious business of fresh faced music, tight and concise, endlessly melodic, and fully given over to the hooky goodness of the pop life...

my power pop addiction, no. 86 (158)

2011-07-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

There's a woman I know who's learning that forever is such a long, long time. When you live the pop life, you know this implicitly. ...Artful Dodger was a Roman candle of power pop, lighting up the sky with bursts of brilliance for a few short years, and then fading into the darkness of night just as they released their best album, Rave On (1980). What a shame they never made the big time. If you dig husky vocals in the spirit of Rod Stewart, and if you're fully committed to living the pop life, then Artful Dodger is the just the thing for you. Unfortunately, Rave On is just about impossible to find. I don't know what's wrong with people. Don't they know that there's at least a half dozen of us out here that need this shit on a daily basis, and that we'll die in a pool of our own withdrawal vomit if we don't get it? Where's the compassion? ...I had a vinyl copy of Rave On back in the day, but I sold my record collection last year in a concession to the digital age, one of many. I should've had more appreciation for the precious jewels in my possession. They're gone forever, and they're never coming back. Forever is such a long, long time. ...Tonight's song is a ballad of the Bic lighter variety. Don't let the grainy, unsynchronized video get in the way of your listening pleasure. This stuff is pure magnificence. It'll make you feel sad and wistful, pensive and philosophical, but it'll do these things in a good way, in the way that only a great song can, and I feel pretty confident in saying that when it's over you'll be wanting to hear it again...

my power pop addiction, no. 85 (157)

2011-07-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the Holy Trinity of British punk - The Buzzcocks, Wire and the Sex Pistols - the Buzzcocks are by far my favorite. The Sex Pistols are ‘important’ in a cultural and historical sense, but they have way too much contempt for their audience for my taste and their music is too hard and heavy for my fey listening habits these days. Wire have a handful of transcendent moments, especially on their spectacular debut album, Pink Flag, but thereafter they become progressively more arty with each record and the ‘songs’, such as they are, are often too atonal to really penetrate into the part of my brain that registers aural pleasure. This leaves the Buzzcocks, who straddle the fine line separating punk and New Wave. I think it'd be fair to say that they're pop life punks. I love their neurotic lyrics and the way the irreverence is tempered by moments of genuine frailty and even sensitivity. It's the kind of human touch that's completely alien to most punk rock of the period. Singles Going Steady was a big record for me when I was a teenager, each song so wonderfully guitar spangled and perfectly balanced between melody and alienation. Listening to those songs again now, I'm still so taken by the band's command of tight, hooky songcraft. I also admire their throwback neo-Mod style, which gives them some continuity with a broader tradition of English pop greatness. …For some reason, tonight’s song is rarely if ever mentioned as one of the all-time power pop greats, perhaps because punk is typically viewed as distinct from power pop. But we strive here at the Lonely One to expand categories instead of limiting them, and any song as catchy as Ever Fallen in Love, with its gloriously melodic chorus and spot-on rendering of raw romantic anguish, absolutely deserves to be in the conversation…

my power pop addiction, no. 83 (155)

2011-07-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

god bless Kirsty MacColl for having written and performed the ultimate theme song for those of us who live the pop life. The song cleanses my soul, emptying every last drop of hurt and bitterness out of me. The melody caresses my face with its tingly perfection, and consumes my body with warmth, making me feel as if I’m back in the womb, or lying entwined with the love of my life… MacColl doesn’t have a great singing voice by any stretch, occasionally coming up just a semitone or so flat on some of the notes, but there’s an innocence and earnestness there that’s far more affecting than any pitch-perfect singing performance could ever be. The flaws in her voice actually add something, and I like appreciating people for their flaws, possibly because I have a deep-down fairy tale wish that there’s somebody someplace out there in the universe who will appreciate me for mine. They Don’t Know About Us gives me hope that this is still possible. Maybe it’s the part where she sings, we should just take our chances while we’ve got nothing to lose. Or maybe it’s the way the song’s tunefulness makes me sway and tilt my face up towards the sky. Or maybe it’s the song’s unabashed sentimentality, an expression of tenderness and love for some lucky guy, warts and all. Or maybe it’s that the song is sung from the point of view of someone who’s misunderstood by everybody except the person who matters most to her. It’s probably all of these things. The song, in short, is the pop life put to music, and I adore every splendorous moment of it…

my power pop addiction, no. 82 (154)

2011-07-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve always had reservations about Elvis Costello. My earliest memories of him are of seeing posters for his first album on the wall while I was browsing the LPs at Record Connection on 86th and Lex, drooling over Kiss Alive and Houses of the Holy. Record Connection was a place where you could not only buy records but also pipes, papers, Rush, incense, Creem, Circus, Rolling Stone, and stag films, which they made no attempt to hide from underage kids. It’s not like what happened later in video stores where all the porn would be kept behind saloon doors. ‘Howdy pardner, I’m here to buy something to jerk off to… Record Connection, along with Music Maze, a few blocks away, were basically hescher outlets that had to make grudging concessions to punk and New Wave as a matter of survival. They ended up not surviving anyway. I remember seeing a New York Dolls album at Record Connection, and David Bowie’s Young Americans, and thinking to myself, ‘man, those guys are scary and gross.’ Kiss somehow seemed less threatening, in spite of spitting up blood and breathing fire, probably because there wasn’t the same degree of gender bending. They wore makeup, and Paul Stanley flitted around like the King of Christopher Street, but Kiss was much more of a meat(head) and potatoes kind of thing in both its sound and signification. …Costello is somebody I should champion without ambivalence since he basically made being a nerd cool, but there’s a certain pompousness with him that I find unpleasant. He gives you the feeling that he knows he’s the smartest guy in the room, and a lot of the time he’s right, but that level of self-confidence means he’ll never be somebody who lives the pop life. The most apt observation I’ve ever heard about him comes from – who else? – David Lee Roth, who remarked that the reason rock critics love Elvis Costello so much is that he looks like they do…In spite of my reservations, though, Costello’s first few albums, and especially the second album, This Year’s Model, all have a number of outstanding songs on them. I could do a whole week on my favorite Costello songs, but I think I’m gonna just do This Year’s Girl, which is arguably the high water mark for New Wave. …I remember being in 4th grade and seeing high school kids walking around with Elvis Costello albums, and I congratulated myself for already being cooler than they were since I had Aerosmith’s Rocks and Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle at home, and how could this angry nerd wearing glasses and a disheveled suit possibly compare to a bunch of drugged-out long hairs playing 10-minute guitar solos in front of gigantic Marshall stacks? As I got older and became a little more discerning, I came to appreciate that Costello, early on, rarely seemed to do a song that went over three minutes. Only as he became more insufferably self-important did he start to go longer with regularity. I think of him as an example of the dialectic of pop: In the beginning, the pop artist seeks to achieve an impact with quick, concise, uncomplicated songs. But once he succeeds in doing this and gains a measure of self-certitude, the songs get stretched out, which is indicative of the artist’s newfound sense of his own importance. Money and adulation will do that to you. Over time, the successful pop artist’s work becomes increasingly bloated, windy, and pretentious, until a full transmutation has taken place, turning the pop artist into a rock star. With Costello, the dialectic begins with Armed Forces, his third album, and doesn’t really come to full fruition until Imperial Bedroom, the last album of his I can stand. Each record over that four year period has its share of great music, but the deftness and urgency of the first two albums fades further with each offering until finally it vanishes entirely...

my power pop addiction, no. 77 (149)

2011-07-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

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…

my power pop addiction, no. 76 (148)

2011-07-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

I’m hearing Squeeze again for the first time in years and years. I don’t know why I’ve stayed away for so long. All their albums are patchy, but each has at least three devastatingly great tracks. Pound for pound, the gems on East Side Story are perhaps less shimmering than those on Argybargy, but In Quintessence is a power pop classic for the ages, so compact and precise, a perfect album opener that sets the tone for a delightful listening experience. Sometimes a patchy album is actually preferable. With pop, as opposed to rock, the emphasis is on the artistry of the song, not the album, and great songs on an otherwise patchy album are often more impactful and dramatic. That’s the thing about albums. They’re a by-product of the transition from pop to rock and symptomatic of growing bombast and self-importance. The first few Beatles albums are really just warehouses for singles and filler. The filler is like sonic wallpaper while the singles are sublime paintings mounted atop the wallpaper. The single is the thing until about 1965. Rubber Soul is probably the first record designed to work as an album, and in this respect it marks the passage of the Beatles from a pop band to a rock band. This is true even though they continue to make pop songs, the difference now being that the music has pretensions to aesthetic seriousness. Drugs made people more self-conscious and more serious. With the appearance of double albums, from Freak Out and Blonde on Blonde, to Tommy, to Exile on Main Street, along with the occasional triple album, like the slog fest that is All Things Must Pass, the era of rock reaches its zenith, and therefore reaches its nadir as well. The great material on rock albums often gets muddled and lost in the crowd. Can you honestly differentiate much between the songs on Quadrophenia? ...Power pop returns the focus to the song, perhaps as a kind of nostalgia for when everything wasn’t so fucked up and complicated, but it’s a healthy corrective turn all the same, and no band I know of can match Squeeze’s feel for self-contained pop. Their breezy self-confidence is like the freshest breath of fresh air and gives the music a golden glow…

my power pop addiction, no. 75 (147)

2011-07-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

As a 12-yr-old, I'm a hesher. But I'm not a hesher of the meat headed variety. I'm more enlightened and self-aware. I'm loyal to my dinosaur bands, the Stones, Led Zep, Deep Purple, the Who, Jethro Tull, Cream, and what have you, but I can feel and see the transition happening right before me. It's happening on the radio, where Marshall Crenshaw and Elvis Costello are peppered in between Crosby Still and Nash and the Doors. It's happening in the record stores, posters of Hendrix and Clapton replaced with Graham Parker and the Rumour and the Pretenders. And it's happening at school. A handful of cool high school kids are wearing dark overcoats, sporting neatly cropped mod haircuts, and bringing their Stiff Records singles in with them to lend to their friends. I'm only 12, but I'm already an anachronism. The trouble with latching onto music so early in childhood is that I connect with what's available at the time, in the early/mid 70s, so that now I'm stuck in hesher land. It's not so easy to transform your identity when you're 12. So much of mine is wrapped up in hesher rock. I can't just abandon everything that makes me who I am. But I'm really curious. I make a clandestine trip to the record store and purchase a copy of Argybargy. And I can't believe what I hear. It's so fresh and new and different. It's hookier and more tuneful than anything I've ever heard in my life. And I feel like William Tell, as if my musical cherry is being taken all over again. I play Pulling Muscles (from the Shell) about 50 times. Same goes for Another Nail in my Heart. Same goes for If I Didn't Love You. What's with those weird harmonies that aren't really harmonies, where one guy sings the melody regularly in the high register while the guy singing in the low register does the same melody, only much lower, so that he sounds like a frog? It's not exactly David Crosby and Gene Clark, but it works. A whole new world is opening up before me. I'm hooked. I want more. But I'm also so frightened of change. I've already had some jarring changes in my life and I know I don't like the way it makes me feel. I'm wired for continuity. Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend will always be the best guitarists in the world, won't they? Is it possible to conceive an order of things that's any different? You might as well tell me that blue is green, air is water, dirt is chocolate... Music is about so much more than the tunes embedded in the grooves of the record. Who will I be and how will I act? I'm too young and inhibited at this point to get a haircut and sport one of those long coats. I've still got my army jacket, my long hair, and Highway to Hell. It's me, my essence. I'm a hesher. Some kids, mostly a few years older than me, are able to just show up one day and be completely changed from what they were. I recall this one girl, probably in 10th grade at the time. She goes home on Friday as a nerdy girl who loves horses, cats and difficult crossword puzzles. She's a wholesome girl, the teacher's pet. She comes back on Monday looking like the bastard child of Wendy O'Williams and Richard Hell. Me, I can't do that, or at least I can't do it so quickly and dramatically. It needs to be a process, one where I tell people what I'm doing as I'm doing it, making sure that every step of the transition is explicitly spelled out and acknowledged. I'm preternaturally conservative that way, and also anal retentive and neurotic. I tell my friends that 'hard rock' is still my favorite, but I also really like Bowie (who has crossover appeal), the Jam, Squeeze... Privately, Squeeze becomes my favorite. Their stuff is just too infectious. It's almost like children's music, only with cool, grown-up themes, the kind that are starting to make sense to me as my body changes, and so do the bodies of the girls around me, and so do my thoughts and dreams and desires. There's a brief window in my life where puberty is actually kind of fun. See? Sometimes change is ok. No need to feel guilty or scared. The new music guides me through it. I can't get enough of it. Yet there's also that part of me - still with me today - that wants to hold on to the past. It feels like a tug of war. I can't really reconstruct things in any great detail, but I muddle through all this with something like a split personality...

my power pop addiction, no. 73 (145)

2011-07-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine complains that every song the Feelies play sounds the same. True, but who cares as long as it's a great sound? Their music brings me back to the summer of '89, living in the Westcott Nation, Syracuse, NY. I pretty much wake and bake every day that summer. Hazy days, blurry nights, watching Bergman films on VHS cassettes, reading The Magic Mountain, and falling in love with Sarah, a jewess from London finishing up her MA in critical cultural studies. The two of us have fun together for a few months. The relationship doesn't end so much as fade away, like an exhaled cloud of bong smoke. The Feelies and their strummy guitars are a constant through all this. The Good Earth, with Peter Buck manning the control booth, sounds like the Great Lost REM album. They have flashes where they're even better than REM - purer, cleaner, more in line with the concept of what all these types of bands should be. There is admittedly a certain monotony in what they do after awhile. It can put you into a sleepy trance. But it's hard to find music that's more pleasurable if you limit things to about 20 minutes here and there. ...Towards the end of that summer I go back to visit with my family in New York and see the Feelies play at Maxwell's in Hoboken, where they are more or less the house band. The place is packed to the rafters. Bob Mould is in attendance. He does not seem like a very affable guy, perhaps a little embittered by the experience of being a gay hardcore punk, once upon a time. The Feelies take the stage. After two or three songs, I come to the conclusion that they're a great live band. I also develop an instant crush on the bass player. The two guitars make the whole room sizzle with electricity. I dance with anybody who will dance with me because I'm young, and I'm free, and I don't quite know where I'm headed, only that I'll go anyplace where there's music that makes me feel this good...

my power pop addiction, no. 72 (144)

2011-07-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

So I participate in a fiction workshop a few years ago and there are a few young whippersnappers in the group, MFA students from Cal Arts, who write everything in the present tense. They all have a great facility for it, frequently accomplishing the difficult feat of using the syntax of the present to describe events that have taken place in the past. I become curious about how writing this way will make me feel, so I go home and try it. And I like it. I'm not nearly as good at it as the whippersnappers, but I find it freeing. It's a nice change to adopt the point of view of someone who doesn't have much time to think and reflect. I think too much about everything, so it feels good to at least pretend to be someone who *experiences* life in a more immediate way and isn't so trapped in his own head. Unmediated experience is something I rarely have, if ever. Like right now I'm listening to some more REM, trying to simply feel the music instead of intellectualizing it, and I must confess that it's quite difficult. I mean, I can describe how REM’s music makes me feel. But that's about the extent of it. Their music makes me feel romantic. It’s odd because Michael Stipe seems so asexual to me, yet the band’s best music radiates love and romance into the air. Murmur is a really evocative record for me in this respect. It always makes me think of the first girl I made out with in college. I go to this party and there’s this cute girl, by herself, wearing an REM pin on her black and white herringbone overcoat. I never approach strange women in bars or at parties because the thought of it embarrasses me so fucking much, but I approach the REM girl and we get to talking about music. I can’t remember the conversation, but I go get her a drink, and when I return Talk About the Passion is chiming out of the stereo speakers. It’s a great song for those of us who have a thing for guitars. Peter Buck even whips out a 12-stringer for the part that goes combien de temps? …I ask the REM girl if she knows what combien de temps means. You see, I know what it means because I grew up speaking French, and I’m kind of getting a little vibe from the REM girl like she’s gonna let me make out with her, and even though I’m nervous as hell because I’m not exactly Mr. Smooth with the girls, I think I might be able to impress her with my French. But she knows what the phrase means, says something like, ‘of course, it means how much time,’ and then she takes my hand and gets close enough to me that I can smell her shampoo and whatever other totally erotic scents she’s giving off. Now my heart is thumping like a Gene Krupa drum solo, my knees are knocking, and my teeth are chattering, but it doesn’t matter that I don’t know what the fuck to do next because she’s a take-charge type, leans in for a kiss, and holy shit does it feel amazing, especially when she sticks a little tongue in and nibbles on my lip. …For the rest of my years at the university, I never see the REM girl again. I can’t recall why. But every time Talk About the Passion comes up on my iPod, with it’s beautiful opening chords and folky post-punk melody, I think of her and wonder what she’s doing right now…

my power pop addiction, no. 71 (143)

2011-06-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

The double detachment of third person, past tense was just as difficult for him, his words frequently slipping into an especially ugly brand of the passive voice on those occasions when this more journalistic modality was deemed appropriate… To begin a thought piece in this manner, with a fragment that assumed familiarity with something said elsewhere, though not referring to it explicitly, struck him as a very REM-ish thing to do, and it reminded him of the pleasure he had derived as a teenager in trying to decipher Michael Stipe’s lyrics. There’s a splinter in your eye and it reads react… Back then, REM was for him like mac and cheese, peanut butter, and Chips Ahoy, comfort food for the ears, to mix metaphors, music that calmed him down when he felt uptight, picked him up when he felt down, and gave him strength to carry on in the face of repeated heartbreaks and disappointments. But as the tinny production value of the first few albums became increasingly difficult for him to abide, REM lost some of their luster. Still, there has never been the slightest doubt as to the greatness of the music itself, amounting to a kind of power folk pop, and peaking with the songs collected on Fables of the Reconstruction, the band’s third album, produced by Joe Boyd. Unfortunately, Boyd could not recreate the magic touch he had in the 60s and early 70s, when he made the likes of Nick Drake and Fairport Convention sound so warm and intimate. Fables sounded exactly the opposite, cold and distant, but this was not entirely Boyd’s fault as it would have been impossible for him to step outside the available technology and ascendant corporate ethos of the Reagan era. This was why seeing REM live became so essential to their most devoted fans. Freed from the stifling constraints of the studio, the band would grow wings and fly. He got to see them several times, the most memorable of which was their show at Radio City Music Hall in the spring of 1985, with the Minutemen as the opening act. Not a bad double bill! …REM were not at all extroverted on stage, but they didn’t have to be because they took performing seriously, and their amazingly tight shows - 100 times fresher sounding than anything heard on the albums - unleashed an energy that would fill any room with communal good vibes and joyful jingle jangle. There have been very few bands that could match REM’s quiet intensity on stage, and he has never forgotten the rapturous energy that flowed through his body when he saw and heard them play live...

Oy vey, this was really hard!

my power pop addiction, no. 69 (141)

2011-06-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Richard Lloyd is my guitar messiah. I grew up listening to Television, played the grooves off of Marquee Moon and Adventure, as well as the various bootlegged recordings I had of the early Richard Hell period, and though I always admired the intense fury of Tom Verlaine’s guitar playing, I identified much more with Lloyd. Verlaine is an incredibly accomplished player, but there's a flat, emotionally austere quality to his musical persona that leaves me cold. For me, it’s Lloyd’s vulnerability that makes Television such an unforgettable band. Without Lloyd's soulfulness as a complement, Verlaine would be just another ho hum cynically detached genius. How dreary and dull. Give me something I can believe in. ...It's quite revealing to look at what Verlaine and Lloyd have each done as solo artists. Verlaine's solo material is unremarkable. With Lloyd out of the picture, the music becomes brittle and a bit lifeless. But Lloyd's solo material pulses with love and loss and pain and sorrow and struggle and joy. Misty Eyes is one of my favorites. The lyrics are impressionistic, but I recognize myself in them right away, the regression to childhood, the yearning for a return to the ecstasy of sexual discovery, and the enduring power of formative romantic experiences. And he does it all in a way that feels off handed and casual, suggesting that this is just the way his mind naturally works, yet it’s also deeply thoughtful, daring to actually feel something, to be emotionally engaged after coming through the crucible of punk’s alienated worldview - so bored, so tired, so fed up with any lingering remnants of 60s idealism. Lloyd's approach takes courage, a willingness to stand for sentiment and meaning without the grating nihilism that afflicted so many of his peers. And it's impossible to miss just how much the guy adores the guitar. There’s obvious technical virtuosity at work, but no amount of expertise can give a guitar player the ability to make the thing cry, sing, laugh, scream, hum, vibrate, dance, and grunt the way Lloyd does. These things are primordial and transcend technique. Lloyd has such amazing feel, the way he hammers on and off notes, knowing exactly when to quiet down and when to add emphasis. ...For some reason, talking about all this now reminds me of a personality test I took a few months back, which revealed me to be INFJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging). An INFJ is also known as a Protector and a Mystic Writer. Apparently, only 1 percent of the general population can claim to be Mystic Writers. Dunno whether this means I’m fabulously special or a fucking freak, but what I take away from my test result when I cut beneath all the Jungian jargon is that I’m a guy who loves redheads, Raymond Chandler, kissing, perfume, the mountains, the ocean, contemplating the cosmos, and the Beatles and Byrds. But then, I knew all this about myself already, so what's the point of taking a test? ...I’ve never met Richard Lloyd, except over Facebook, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s an INFJ as well. When I hear him play his guitar, it’s like listening to someone who thinks and feels and dreams all the same things I do…

my power pop addiction, no. 66 (138)

2011-06-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Matthew Sweet divides listeners, but count me among his boosters. I mean, he's a Born Again Angeleno, via Athens, Georgia, via Lincoln, Nebraska, who sings hooky songs of love and loss beautifully and digs guitars and harmonies and shakers and all the things we pop obsessives drool over, plus he uses Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine and Ric Menck as session players. What's not to love? When I first heard Girlfriend back in the early 90s, it was like an oasis in the grungy desert. It became one of those albums I played every day for months on end, so much that even now I always associate it with people and places and things that have long since passed out of my life. But the album still stands up, whereas so much music from the 90s just seems to be phoned in, sounding resigned to corporate domination and a narrow set of joyless formulas. Matthew Sweet is one of the few guys from that period who still sound warm and alive to me. Tonight's song is from 1995's 100% Fun, which is his best album and features many tracks that deploy a three-guitar attack. When two of those guitars are Lloyd and Quine, how can you possibly go wrong? You can't, and while a number of the songs are sad, the album has an upbeat energy that justifies its great title. Let it be known that I love Matthew Sweet and I don't care how many cranky, contrarian rock snobs think otherwise...

my power pop addiction, no. 64 (136)

2011-06-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

In spite of the oceans of critical jizz spilled over the dB’s back in the day, I always felt their supposed greatness was an illusion, the result of groupthink amongst an insular group of pencil necked music writers. I see the band as a bit of a lost opportunity. This may sound like harsh judgment, and it’s largely a matter of taste and my resistance to arty pop, but I think I like the idea of Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey much more than the reality. There’s no question that the two of them had a great feel for the craft of writing sharp, tight and nicely self-contained pop songs. The trouble for me is that the melodic hooks, with some scattered exceptions, just never really materialized with any consistency. The dB’s might’ve been as big and as good as REM if they had only made their music a little more accessible. After Stamey left, Holsapple and Co. released Like This, which, again, critics said they loved. The album has nice moments but to this day I still find listening to it to be an exercise in frustration. I keep hoping that it’s a grower and that I’ll eventually have that magic moment of recognition, but I’ve yet to break through with it, having tried multiple times over the course of almost three decades... Tonight’s song, the opener on the dB’s debut record, Stands for Decibels, is the best thing the band ever did. It shows me what they could have been if only they’d opted for an approach that was a little sweeter, a little less tart. The song holds a special place in my heart because it was the first song I heard, back in the early 80s, on that life changing day when I moved the radio dial on my Technics stereo from WNEW, 102.7 FM, a hesher rock station in the midst of an identity crisis, to WNYU, 89.1 FM, an excellent college station that introduced me to so many new bands at the time and was such a refreshing change from the relentless repetition of Layla, Pinball Wizard, and Sympathy for the Devil. I love lines like, ‘we are finished, as of a long time ago’, and the chorus, ‘I don’t enjoy you anymore.’ I also dig the interesting percussion and – duh! - the jangle of the band’s Byrdsy guitars. The most interesting aspect of the song to me now is that it’s the dB’s at their best and most accessible, but even so you can still detect some arty pretension creeping in if you pay close enough attention. I suppose some of this is an artifact of the music’s time and place. It was the 80s and some of the new generation of bands, like the dB’s, were trying to distinguish themselves by breaking free from what they perceived to be a tired way of doing things. But the thing about melody and tuneful hooks is that, in formal terms, their elemental significance to the art of the pop song transcends time. I would have rolled my eyes if I heard a dinosaur like myself say this back when I was in my 20s. But I was so much older then, and I’ve since come to recognize the metaphysical component to pop purity. You can only fuck with it along the perimeter. You can’t alter or elide the fundamental essence that gives the music its heartbeat…

my power pop addiction, no. 62 (134)

2011-06-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

Sex Clark Five, a quartet, actually, from Huntsville, Alabama, made arty power pop, often of a hyper-intellectualized variety, which is not typically a sub-sub-genre I relate well to, but their melodic chops are so good that I find them hard to resist. Tonight’s song, with its changes in time signature and epic, politicized lyrics, might even be characterized as progressive pop. I tend to think of pop and prog as being on opposite ends of the spectrum, but SC5 have a hand in both. You can really see why they never gained much attention beyond college radio and a few nerdy critics here and there. It’s pretty heady stuff. But they’re a band that can do many things well. While Sarajevo is filled with musical and thematic complexity, there are other tracks on Strum and Drum that simply channel the Beatles and the Byrds in fairly straight-forward ways, with maybe just a wrinkle or two in a few places. …SC5’s studio sound is a bit lo-fi for my taste, but again their wonderful melodies and obvious love of music trump all else and make them one of the very best guitar pop bands to have come out of the South...

my power pop addiction, no. 60 (132)

2011-06-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

All this thinking I've done over the last week or so about the Memphis scene of the 70s has reminded me of how much good guitar pop has come out of the South more generally. For all the reservations I have about Big Star, I appreciate the way they spawned a subsequent generation of southern power pop, culminating with REM's rise as one of the biggest American bands of the 80s and 90s. But other than REM during the first five years or so of their existence, Mississipi's Windbreakers are, for my money anyway, the best band of this second southern generation. It's hard to tell whether they were being cheeky, a la Spinal Tap, when they named themselves the way they did, or if this just occurred to me because I have the mentality of a five year old. Either way, the Windbreakers made ethereal pop music that sounds like something out of the Lonely One's most vivid wet dreams. ...A lot of 80s southern pop has a kind of angular, slightly dissonant, slightly arty feel to it that doesn't always agree with me. I want to like bands like the dB's, Let's Active and Sex Clark Five more than I do because I can tell that they like a lot of the same things I like. But I often find myself struggling to find the hooks and thinking that the music just isn't poppy enough for me. Not so with the Windbreakers, led by Tim Lee and Bobby Sutliff, two guitar fetishists that seem to have an intuitive grasp of what guys like me want and need in our music. I'm sometimes given to hyperbole when my enthusiasm gets the better of me, but I can say without reservation that Ghost Town is one of the finest pop songs I've ever heard. Everything about it speaks to me in the way I want to be spoken to. I dig the phrasing of the song's opening line - gin and tonic with a twist of lime - along with the sad, fragmented impressions that follow. I also love the intricate, arpeggiated rhythm guitar playing that glides along underneath the keyboard solo. And all the while, the song's tuneful hookiness creates a tingling warmth at the center of my soul. What's really amazing is that, while Ghost Town is their best song, imho, the band recorded about a dozen others that are almost as good. It's a real shame they remained so obscure and unknown. I think I should make it one of my missions in life to turn as many friends on to the Windbreakers as I can. It starts with you, dear reader...

my power pop addiction, no. 59 (131)

2011-06-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

#1 Record is the only Big Star album I like anymore. By the time you get to Radio City and especially Sister Lovers, things sound way too gloomy and weighed down by life. Some of their songs just make me feel so sleepy, exhausted and drugged. It's not a bad vibe to latch onto once in awhile, but nor is it music I feel like hearing very often these days. A friend of mine once made the astute observation that Big Star is a band for young people who take themselves very seriously. I can confirm this because I used to be one of them. But now that I'm no longer so young and self-important, the band doesn't speak to me the way it once did. I was introduced to the their music when I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University in the mid-late 1980s. By the time I was a graduate student in England, studying to be a wannabe radical intellectual, Big Star became the soundtrack to my life. Their music works very well in an English context, where the weather is unrelentingly grey and damp and depressing. In sunny Los Angeles, the music doesn't have quite the same impact, at least not for me. Still the poppiest numbers on the first album still pack a nice punch and can even bring a smile to my face when they come up on iPod Shuffle. Chris Bell takes the lead vocals in tonight's song, which is one of the earliest instances of revivalist power pop and provided a template for many bands to follow thereafter...

my power pop addiction, no. 57 (129)

2011-06-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Alex Chilton is typically viewed as the main creative force within Big Star, but for my money the late Chris Bell is the guy who made the band good. Big Star's music went south after Bell left, becoming heavier, less poppy, and more experimental and fragmentary (which is to say more druggy). Part of my admiration for Bell admittedly comes from the fascination I have with the secondary figures in pop and my soft spot for tragic figures more generally. The harrowing liner notes for the posthumously released I am the Cosmos, written by Bell's older Brother, reveal that, while Bell was obviously deeply troubled - a clinically depressed heroin addicted Jesus guy - he was also a soft-spoken gentle soul who became overwhelmed by Chilton's more aggressive, mercurial personality. Tonight's song shows what Bell was capable of without Chilton. It's one of the most amazing tributes to the Beatles I've ever heard (and is actually mixed by Geoff Emerick). Bell's feel for subtle hooks are on full display, along with his gift for melding his solemn outlook on life to gorgeously piercing melodies. It's definitely not the perky, light 'n airy side of power pop. The refrain that closes the song - I'd really like to see you again - caps off a deeply haunting listening experience, one that'll have you marveling at the way Bell transforms his inner torment into sublime pop art...

my power pop addiction, no. 55 (127)

2011-06-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

Another thing I've noticed about the Memphis scene is that it tended to produce very somber sounding records. I'm not talking about melancholy lyrical content here but rather about the way the albums actually sound, their physical sound, if you will, or the production value. I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly that gives the music these guys made such a rainy day vibe. The best example I can think of is the three Big Star albums, each one sounding more gloomy than the one that came before it. There's a strange juxtaposition between the music that makes you so happy because it's well crafted and hooky and perfect on so many levels, but then there's just a certain weightiness to the way the records are produced that makes them sort of...depressing. Even the Scruffs, who obviously had such passion for music and came up with such joyous melodies, have that elusive thing going on where the production value darkens the mood of the music somehow. Is it the use of echo? Is it just some intangible manifestation of 70s malaise? I wish I could say definitively what it is. You can also hear it on Van Duren's Are You Serious and Tommy Hoehn's Losing You To Sleep. When I listen to these albums, I feel like I'm hearing something recorded in a dark room littered with empty whiskey bottles. I'm not trying to say that it's unpleasant listening. Not at all. All these Memphis guys made great music and it's a shame they never received more recognition for it. But I'm starting to think that the reason a lot of their music was ignored has to do with it's generally downbeat sound. I personally like melancholy sounding music, but I think most people want songs to transport them from whatever sadness they have in their lives. Then again, maybe this is just me but I find that a beautifully realized sad sounding song can make you feel so good inside...

my power pop addiction, no. 54 (126)

2011-06-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight’s song is the best offering on Tommy Hoehn’s 1978 lost classic, Losing You To Sleep. The Big Star fans out there will hear it and be reminded of Chris Bell’s solo material. In fact, a lot of these mid-70s Memphis power popsters sound kind of similar, but that’s ok because they all create a lovely vibe, rich in pleasing Beatlesy guitars and resonant percussion. My sister pointed out last night that Hoehn is a bit closer to rock than a lot of the stuff I’ve been sampling here of late, but I still hear pop as the main motivation. Hoehn’s music is driven by an obvious desire to create quick bursts of euphoria, and his heaviness never slides down into full-blown rock, which is an especially good thing in the case of Love You Tonight because the song’s peak moment of ecstasy would be obscured and lost if things got too heavy. I’m talking about what happens at roughly 2:03 when the line ‘say goodbye’ gains added emphasis as it’s followed by a joyful interplay between tambourines, guitar, and backing vocals. Hoehn’s beautiful singing flutters along above it all, guiding the melody to a dramatic fade out that makes me sad every time I hear it because I just don’t want the song to end. But then I remember that less is more with almost all great pop. Pop songs can’t give in to noodling and heaviness without negating themselves as pop. So be forewarned: Tonight’s selection will leave you wanting and needing more. I’m very confident of this. I’ve come to realize that the irony of the best pop songs is that they induce a hunger that can never be completely satisfied.

PS - This version of Love You Tonight, the only one I could find on Youtube, is not the version from Losing You To Sleep and is not quite as good, but I think you'll still be able to hear what a great song it is...