September 28, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from U2, Monsters of Folk, LL Cool J, and Fame.
George Harrison was often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", and while he earned that moniker due to his subdued and low-key style, it seems to have unfairly extended to the majority of his post-Beatles solo work -- beyond a handful of hits. But that's all starting to change with the release this year of Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison, the first comprehensive collection focused on his solo career, and Yim Yames' Tribute To EP (a spare recording of six of his favorite Harrison songs). Both releases show that there's much more to George than "My Sweet Lord", "What Is Life", and "Give Me Love"; both sets go beyond the obvious hits.
But there's even more A-level material that's not covered on either of these titles. Harrison's triple-length debut, All Things Must Pass, gave us the foreboding (but never heavy-handed) "Beware Of Darkness", arguably the centerpiece of his Concert for Bangladesh; the song's been successfully covered by artists as diverse as Concrete Blonde, Joe Coker, Eric Clapton, and Harrison's friend and sometime bandmate Leon Russell. And "Wah-Wah" now feels like a great power pop song just waiting to be rediscovered -- and remade.
His second album, Living In The Material World, showed no drop in quality, featuring the stellar "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" (one of the great anti-music industry songs) and the Spector-influenced (and produced) "Try Some Buy Some", which, not surprisingly, was also recorded by Ronnie Spector. And that's just from the first two albums! Two of his later albums Cloud Nine("Got My Mind Set On You" ) and Thirty Three And 1/3 ("This Song") are well worth checking out and both demonstrate some of his best work in came well in the 80s.
September 22, 2009
AOL's Spinner.com, recently posted a list called "Back To School Songs: A Classroom Survival Guide in 20 Tracks" featuring such selections as The Beach Boys' "Be True To Your School" and Twisted Sisters' "Be Chrool To Your Scuel" alongside tunes by a diverse group of artists consisting of the Ramones, Nada Surf, and Rufus Wainwright, among others. The list is also interesting because the number of songs that express excitement over being back in school is definitely less than the number of songs despondent about it!
Also mentioned on the Spinner list is "School Days" by The Runaways, which is worth noting for several reasons -- first, because it's a great record and connects more directly to the high school experience than many of the other songs on the list (makes sense since all four Runaways had just barely reached graduation age); second, because The Runaways are the subject of an upcoming feature film due out next year starring Twilight's Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning; and third, because they were the first all-female rock group to make any kind of real impression in the predominantly male-dominated market. Formed in the pre-punk nascent Hollywood club scene of the mid-'70s, The Runaways never got credit for being one of the first punk bands, even though they stood beside the Blondies, Ramones, and Damneds of the world, not to mention gave us a very young Joan Jett, and -- in addition to "School Days" -- some of the best glitter-meets-punk songs of the era, especially "I Love Playing With Fire" and "Cherry Bomb." Treated at times like novelty, they have slowly been gaining the respect they deserved in the first place. While you're waiting for the media onslaught that will surely accompany the band's biopic, check out their Best Of.
September 14, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from the Fox TV show Glee, Brendan Benson, Danny Elfman, and the songs that celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.
We casually mention the term power pop in referencing our Genius Pick of the Week, which combines an old and a new track by Brendan Benson: "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" (off of 2005's The Alternative To Love) and "Eyes On The Horizon" (off of this year's My Old, Familiar Friend). Probably best known as partner to Jack White in the Raconteurs, Benson's the one who supplies the catchier pop confections to White's harder blues riffs, who also has four solo albums to call his own.
To us power pop is best defined as a mixture of the melodic elements of the early Beatles and mid-period Beach Boys, combined with some of the aggression heard in early records by the Who, Kinks, Small Faces, and some of the catchier punk records by the likes of the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, and the Jam. Though the term is now tossed around with casual abandon, it was birthed by critics in the early '70s in reference to the first great power pop band, the Raspberries. Fronted by Eric Carmen of "All By Myself" fame, the Raspberries were groomed (by of all people, Capitol Records) to be the next Beatles -- a full seven years before the Knack would surface (on the same label). This was during a time when hit music from the previous decade seemed to lack any credibility. And in response a small band of critics, mostly falling outside the Rolling Stone/FM underground, who were suspicious (if not outright contemptuous) of the Woodstock counterculture, took up the cause of the Raspberries' early hits "Go All The Way," "Tonight," "Ecstasy," and their near-Spectorian masterpiece, "Overnight Sensation," as a shot at rock's first great renaissance.
Some other great practitioners of power pop are the now-revered Big Star (almost in league with the Velvet Underground for great cult band status), Nick Lowe, early Cheap Trick, Marshall Crenshaw (who added a healthy dose of late '50s and early '60s role models like Dion and Buddy Holly), the Smithereens, and Fountains Of Wayne (probably the most recent example and well worth a listen beyond "Stacy's Mom").
For a quick tour of how durable this format is, check out our Power Pop Essentials and let the songs absorb into your catchy-tune-ready bloodstream like so many simple sugar-y treats.
September 8, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Oasis, Jay-Z, John Fogerty, and The Black Crowes
While we're contemplating the breakup of Oasis and America missing out on the whole Brit pop movement, consider a radical question that might be almost as outrageous as the whole Oasis as the next Beatles thing: Blur, as good or better than Oasis?
A quick sampling of our Blur Essentials, namely "Song 2" and "She's So High," will help newcomers with an easy answer, but value seekers might want to spring for Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To Blur, a single-album-priced 31-song retrospective that makes the case for them being ignored by us an even greater sin of omission than us missing the Jam in the '70s. If you're hooked or even intrigued, we'd love to make a pitch for two more of the country's more melodic practitioners from vaguely the same era by pushing greatest hits compilations by bands that didn't have any (not here in the U.S. at least): Supergrass' Supergrass Is 10 and Pulp's Hits, which will give you a taste of what we passed on in favor of louder, more groove-oriented sounds and image-oriented pleasers in the '90s.
Let's try and make it up to them retroactively, shall we?
