Spring Forward Soundtrack: Power Pop

Material Issue hasn't made it on here yet? They were sort of a quintessential early 90s power pop to me.

A tad harder than a lot of what has been posted here, but I don't think I always classify jangle pop as power pop. Like I wouldn't really quantify the Robyn Hitchcock/Soft Boys stuff here (Flesh Number One and Queen of Eyes) really as power pop. (For the record I'm a bit of a Robyn Hitchcock scholar/obsessive). But I've spent enough time reading stuff on the Steve Hoffman forums to know that there are no absolutes when it comes to determining genres!

Incidentally, one of his new songs is fairly jangly-power-poppy:

And as a Kimberley Rew relevant bonus, here's a clip of Robyn and Yo La Tengo performing Going Down to Liverpool earlier this month as part of the Black Snake Diamond Role show they did at Bowery Ballroom.

Good stuff. I posted the earlier Hitchcock song but I've only been a dabbler over the years. He's a genuinely weird guy but in a good way that feeds his music.

Did someone say psychedelic '80's British power pop? First another artist deserving of far more attention than he got..

More Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

Gotta be on any Power Pop list

A Twitter thread by Dorian Cope (Julian's wife) that applies here, too:

https://twitter.com/onthisdeit...

Very sweet new cut from Matthew Sweet, who will be at SOPAC in September.  Who knows maybe Susanna Hoffs will show up. 

Nice track! Then again, he's got the blueprint down. 

This blueprint?

I don't see as much "Ma Ma Belle" in "Trick" as Big Star (what true PP artist doesn't) and Guided by Voices.  On the other hand spending about 7 years covering favorites from the 60s, 70s and 80s with Susanna Hoffs has to have had an effect.

If anyone owes ghost production credits to Jeff Lynne, it's fun. for their first album, Aim and Ignite

It was nice to see Jeff finally get his props for the outsized influence on rock he's had.  ELO still takes its knocks, but their music has been turning up everywhere the past few years.

@SkippyTopaz, I don'y want to be the arbiter of PP, but Bryan Adams' music just doesn't fit the style of most others mentioned.  And I can never hear his name without thinking of this...

Changing the subject, one of the all time PP classics, from Wayne Hills' own Dramarama

dk50b: I don't really think Mr. Sweet owes anything to Mr. Lynne. But if you can play the 14-second guitar intros to both songs back to back without cracking a smile, you're a sterner power pop fan than I.

ETA: While you're here, here's a favorite power pop song about a train (starts at 3:00).

Yea the guitar solo did ring a bell, but the song quickly veered into conventional PP territory.  Didn't mean to deny the borrowing.  If you've ever heard John Lennon's WNEW drop in with Dennis Elsas from 1974, his keen ear identifies "Heard it Through the Grapevine", Lou Christie's "Lightning Striking Again, and naturally "I Am The Walrus" as clear influences in "Showdown"

Since I think it's safe to assume you love the boys from Birmingham as I do, I must share a remarkably faithful original tribute album put together in 2006 by Boston musician Blue under the moniker L.E.O. Here is Alpacas Orgling in all its glory

http://www.airplaydirect.com/m...

Every ELO fan will crack an appreciative smile while listening.

Safe to assume, indeed. A former colleague wrote a funny article on behalf of us long-maligned ELO fans several years ago when two or three of their songs suddenly popped up in TV commercials. Sadly, neither of us can find the article on the web anymore.

I look forward to the Alpacas when I can get to a computer that can orgle it.

I think ELO would have benefited from coming on the scene later.  There's no denying Lynne's power pop heart but a lot of ELO material suffers from certain bad bloated rock tendencies of the early seventies too.   They were a good and bad band.

DaveSchmidt said:

Safe to assume, indeed. A former colleague wrote a funny article on behalf of us long-maligned ELO fans several years ago when two or three of their songs suddenly popped up in TV commercials. Sadly, neither of us can find the article on the web anymore.

I look forward to the Alpacas when I can get to a computer that can orgle it.

This work?

As Lennon might have said, good job realizing where Sweet's opening guitar lick emanated.  Not sure I would've caught it.

On that note (sorry!), I always thought Ian Broudie borrowed the main bass riff from New Order's Love Vigilantes for his solo in this song

dk50b said:

Every ELO fan will crack an appreciative smile while listening.

That grin didn't take long: The first track I called up made me instantly think of "Hold On Tight," and I was delighted to see they had titled it "Don't Let Go."

Agreed, bub, that ELO could be both god-awfully turgid and ear-splittingly artificial. Just like my teen years.

And I'm just yanking Sweet's chain; I don't mean to make anything more out of it. It's not as if he ripped off ELO the way ELO's "Do Ya" ripped off the Move.   

I'm seriously attention challenged.  The idea that Sweet was being accused of borrowing went right over my head and I wouldn't care anyway.  For a guy who has been  around a long time and whose big (relatively speaking) time was 20 year ago,  that new song's got real kick.  I will delve into rest of album to see if anything is post worthy.       

DaveSchmidt said:

dk50b said:


Every ELO fan will crack an appreciative smile while listening.

That grin didn't take long: The first track I called up made me instantly think of "Hold On Tight," and I was delighted to see they had titled it "Don't Let Go."

Agreed, bub, that ELO could be both god-awfully turgid and ear-splittingly artificial. Just like my teen years.

And I'm just yanking Sweet's chain; I don't mean to make anything more out of it. It's not as if he ripped off ELO the way ELO's "Do Ya" ripped off the Move.   

Was that comment about The Move sarcastic?? The Move was Jeff Lynne's band and they became became ELO and re-recorded "Do Ya"

Wasn't sure if you were kidding..

Aw, have some faith.

No one's going to confuse Steely Dan with a power pop band, and I'm one of those squares who liked them less and less the farther they got from "Can't Buy a Thrill." But Walter Becker and the boys deserved all the fans who stampeded past me, so in the ecumenical spirit of this thread I submit this song, the closest I think they may have come to power pop (if only in the echoes of Rundgren, and in the guitar that rumbles through the background of the chorus until it gets its brief James Gang audition in the solo).

In general, I wasn't much for "fusion jazz" at the time, maybe because I never really listened to most of the things that were given that label.   But what "the Dan" did in mixing some jazz elements with rock and funk was perfect to my ears.  That, and similar things Joni Mitchell was doing on her 70s albums, was heaven to me.   That first pure rock album is great though, no argument there.

Their song craft always held my interest. Musically, a perfect headphone experience capturing every nuance. They also soundtracked my adolescence in the free form days of early FM radio. They just don't write em like that anymore...

Speaking of ELO -- as we were a mere four months ago -- I saw "American Hustle" last night for the first time. Was psyched to hear "10538 Overture" (though, as far as I know, I was the only American at the time of Abscam who was listening to it regularly), and made a mental note to find out who had recorded another song that stood out and that somehow had gotten past me in the '70s, with a chorus of "long black road." Yeah, now I know. 

Again, not exactly power pop in my book, but it makes a nice companion to this song by another Brit in thrall to the Beatles, whom I think ml1 mentioned here earlier:

One of the great sweet/sad rock ballads of the 70s:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mozilla-003&hsimp=yhs-003&hspart=mozilla&p=youtube+pearl+of+the+quarter#id=3&vid=70f6a5e12a197447575484aee22bf597&action=view

Not the voice but the music.  Trying to stir the pot:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mozilla-003&hsimp=yhs-003&hspart=mozilla&p=youtube+magnetic+fields+i+don%27t#id=3&vid=1c8f561cbcad4d2b5d7aaab44952d9e7&action=click

69 Love Songs would be three of my Desert Island Discs, but I don't think Stephin could do his own songs power-pop justice (whether as a Magnetic Field, a Gothic Archie or even a 6th). It'd take someone like a Jon Brion or a Scott McCaughey to unleash their prodigious potential. In addition to I Don't Want to Get Over You, may I suggest Sweet-Lovin' Man, When My Boy Walks Down the Street, The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing, I'm Sorry I Love You, Bitter Tears and, of course, Underwear.

Or, though not from 69 Love Songs, it might take a certain group of Chapel Hillians: