Asshole of the Century

Monday, May 24, 2010

Teenage Symphonies to God

The summer has begun, and the sun teems through the windows of my lovely home on the outskirts of Chicago, reigniting my passion for power pop. The world seems fresh and new, and me with it. And when I listen to this music, everything still seems possible.

“A teenage symphony to God” is how Brian Wilson described the songs on the Beach Boys’ “Smile” album (personally, I prefer “Pet Sounds”, or most of their early records for that matter, but to each his own). And there is no question that the Beach Boys were a touchstone. Take their melodies, or the chanted choruses from the English pubs, back these voices with distorted guitars, and you’ve got the basic recipe.

Great power pop is also infused with the enthusiasms of youth. At its surface, the genre tends to be focused on the travails of romance, but beneath the pretty harmonies often bubbles a dissonance. Power pop is the voice of folks still wide-eyed enough to believe in the essential goodness of life, but aware enough to sense that they are bound to be disappointed in this belief. Four themes proliferate: love (lost, found, requited, or not); fate; our place in society; and the joys of a good party.

So I wrote a list of my favorite power pop songs. It’s hard for me to look at this list and not think the thoughts of our politically correct age: “Hmm, is it my imagination, or is just about every one of these songs played by musicians with a notable lack of melanin?” But then I look a little further. These folks are not just white. They tend to be of Celtic descent, whether they hail from somewhere in the U.S. (as with the bands recording nine of these songs), Britain (eight songs), Canada (two), or Ireland (one). Maybe this is what happens when you take a bunch of Celts and place them in the city with all of its diverse influences and its modern technologies. It’s like the ghosts of our Celtic ancestors are pulling us to love this music. Maybe it’s what they would play with the benefits of electronic amplification.

Whatever the reason, this music speaks to me. When I was stomping through my punk rock youth, I felt the need to be too much of a bad ass to admit liking a great pop song. Then I went through a period where I felt that enjoying these songs was a betrayal to my (own perceived) musical sophistication. But now, in my dottering middle age, I can finally admit to the world that I love this music. Here are my top 20 picks. (Along with a warning: I’ve plugged in my old Technics keyboard that I picked up at a resale shop about a decade ago, and I plan on learning all 20 of them. Drop by our house in a couple of months, and I might subject you to a recital).


1. Big Star: “September Gurls”
A power pop hook can manifest itself through melody, vocal harmonies, or a guitar riff. “September Gurls” works on all three levels. It also tells the typical pop tale of young male longing. And Big Star is the power pop band nonpareil. A perfect song is almost like an accident, some brilliant thing, a freak of nature not made but discovered, like a sonic diamond. Most groups are lucky to have one of these gems in their career. Big Star wrote them by the handful.

2. The La’s: “There She Goes”
Another triple whammy, with the melody line, harmonies, and guitar all just picture perfect and cool. In fact, “There She Goes” may actually be more perfectly constructed than “September Gurls,” as even the refrain, that tertiary section usually thrown in just to cleanse the ears before the final rousing chorus, is achingly beautiful, its brief foray into minor chords sounding like a revelation. I still give “September Gurls” the edge, for its obtuse, plaintive lyrics and the Chilton/Bell harmonies, but you can’t write a better pop song than what the La’s produced here.

3. The Flamin’ Groovies: “Shake Some Action”
The guitar is the bell cow here, holding down both the groove and the melody. Dave Edmunds (of Rockpile fame), who produced the recording, does yeoman’s work getting this rockin’ band to sound melodic and pretty. “Shake Some Action” is tight and controlled, but you sense the band wanting to break free, to jam. The lyrics manage to be blunt and cryptic at the same time, lustful and defiant, with an undertone of frustration and maybe just a little bit paranoid. In other words, the band speaks for just about every 20-something rock ’n roll dude listening to college radio, tuning in for his fix. Those were the days.

4. The Replacements: “Unsatisfied”
Are The Replacements a power pop band? I don’t know. They were a lot of things, from drunks to punks to star-struck garage rockers. But if power pop is defined by a pretty melody and a rousing, chant-able chorus backed by a wall of bar chords, and if the best of the genre manages to capture the thrills and spills of youth, then the Replacements wrote two of the greatest power pop songs of all time in “Bastards of Young” and “Unsatisfied”. While “Wait on the sons of no one/Bastards of young” has to be one of the greatest choruses of all time, if I had to live on a desert island and only hum one Replacements song in my life, it would be “Unsatisfied”.

5. The Beatles: “I’m Only Sleeping”
I’m pretty much an anti-Beatles guy. “Sergeant Pepper” has to be the most overrated record in the rock pantheon, and their early yeah-yeah-yeah songs are just kind of lame. But there was a brief period, including “Rubber Soul” but most particularly “Revolver”, where the Beatles wrote some great tunes, and for me, the best of these is “I’m Only Sleeping.” Besides being a very pretty song with a haunting melody, it manages to capture that dazed yet profound feeling that you can get right after coming out of a deep sleep. It almost makes up for being subjected to “Strawberry Fields Forever” in the public airspace for the past 40 years.

6. Big Star: “The Ballad of El Goodo”
I limited this list to one song per band, but I had to make an exception with Big Star (actually, I don’t know how I can leave “Thirteen” off either, but my excuse is that it’s really more of a ballad by a power pop group, while “The Ballad of El Goodo” is a power pop song with “ballad” in its title). “The Ballad of El Goodo” could have easily been the top song on this list, and, in contrast to “September Gurls”, it mines that other great theme of youth: Spiritual righteousness, and how it helps you find your place in this world.

7. Kirsty MacColl: “They Don’t Know”
This perfect little pop song was later covered by Tracy Ullman, but the original is superior. It never made much sense that Ullman, who at the time was a big Hollywood star, would be singing some song about clandestine teenage love. But it made perfect sense for MacColl, circa 1979, a little-known musician floating around in various fourth-tier punk bands, to sing it. I love MacColl’s voice. And I have a soft spot for her Celtic defiance. Her voice graces a few of my favorite records, including the Pogues’ epic “Fairytale of New York”: “You scumbag, you maggot/You cheap lousy faggot/Merry Christmas my ass/I pray to God it’s our last.” Oh, Kirsty! You had me at scumbag.

8. The Jam: “That’s Entertainment”
“Mod”, “punk”, however they were labeled, the essence of early-to-mid era Jam is that they brought classic pop riffs back to the top of the British music charts. They morphed through a lot of phases in the few short years of their existence, but for me the highlight was the Setting Sons/Sound Affects era, as Paul Weller had honed his songwriting yet the band retained a lot of their early aggression. “Strange Town” and “Eton Rifles” are both great songs, but “That’s Entertainment” is my favorite. All three are bitter reflections on an England that they nonetheless love, seemingly against their better judgment. “That’s Entertainment” is poetry as journalism, masquerading as music, a song about the frustrated lives of the British working class: “Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight/Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude/Getting a cab and traveling on buses/Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs/That’s Entertainment.”

9. The Buzzcocks: “Why Can’t I Touch It?”
There are so many great Buzzcocks songs, but this one is probably my favorite. I like how it is tethered around this heavy repetitive bass line, which I imagine to be the result of what happens when a bunch of gawky white kids sit around listening to lots of reggae. I’ve always been an advocate of restricting the guitar to the function of rhythm instrument, and in this vein the one-two axework of Diggle/Shelley are as good as they come and are put to great use here. And the minimalist lyrics go a long ways: “And it seems so real (I can taste/feel/see/hear/etc it)/So why can’t I touch it?”

10. Cheap Trick: “Clock Strikes Ten”
Cheap Trick consistently delivers two or three great pop anthems per album. On “In Color and In Black and White,” their sophomore LP, however, they outdid themselves. By my count, eight of these nine cuts are classics. Which one should I list here? The rousing chants of “Come On, Come On”? The pop studio wonder of “I Want You to Want Me,” complete with a bouncy, old school Honky Tonk piano solo that sounds like it came straight out of an old Western movie? Or the more methodical harmonies of “Downed”? I opted for “Clock Strikes Ten” because it really rocks while remaining true to the pop simplicity of the rest of the album. And it is one of great party songs of all time: “Clock strikes ten it’s a Saturday night/Got money in my pocket and it feels alright/Not going home gonna stay out late/Gonna hear some rockin’ music it feels just great.” While the production of this album was somewhat controversial at the time, I love the clean sound, as it highlights what great songs these are. That to me is the point of most great rock ’n roll, to take a pretty little melody and then blow the crap out of it once you get onstage.

11. The Kinks: “Victoria”
Ray Davies is, of course, one of the planet’s great songsmiths, a jewel in the crown of rock. “Apeman” and “Death of a Clown” are other faves of mine. But there is something especially poignant about this anthem to a dead empire, sung with the wistfulness that only an Englishman can bring to the subject. And bonus points for the Fall’s great cover of this tune.

12. The New Pornographers: “My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism”
Another band with a wealth of beautiful songs. “Letter from an Occupant” and “My Rights Versus Yours” are other faves, the latter for its harmonies and the former because it rocks, but both of those are typical pop laments on the nature of relationships and love, while I prefer “My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism” for, well, its rather rapid descent into the mentality that goes along with a great bender.

13. The Undertones: “Teenage Kicks”
Three chords and a cloud of dust (OK, five chords if you count verse AND chorus), but catchy as hell, and I love the sound of those Marshall stacks.

14. Comsat Angels: “Independence Day”
Looking back, I can see that this band was hamstrung by the fact that they looked like a bunch of total gaywads. But it was the 1980’s, so a lot of us never really noticed that kind of thing. This is probably the only pop song whose hook consists of guitar harmonics and floor tom. “I can’t relax because I haven’t done a thing, and I can’t do a thing because I can’t relax.” Ah, the eternal lament.

15. Martha and the Muffins: “Echo Beach”
It’s an almost laughably nerdy topic for a rock anthem: “My life is boring; I’m an office clerk. I wish I could go back to my halcyon days on a quiet, out-of-the-way beach.” As told by a band of earnest Canadians. Featuring a chorus that is catchy as hell, and a prototypical late-70’s sax solo.

16. The Go Go’s: “Lust to Love”
I remember being a freshman in the dorms and taking the bus from Sproul Hall to the Starwood, and paying $2 (I had a half-off coupon from Rhino Records) to see the Go Go’s open for X. It was one of those awesome teenage nights, and this band was a big part of it. They used to play loud and fast, and they had this gang of butch girls who would follow them around and try to dominate the dance floor. It was kinda ridiculous, looking back at it, this mix of drugs and punk and artiness, both self-conscious and totally blotto at the same time. In the end, I guess we were all just a bunch of poseurs (which is probably why that was such a biting insult at the time), and within a year or so, I would snub the stylized aggression of the Hollywood scene for the H.B. punks, who could dish out more than their share of the real thing. But, looking back, I miss the innocent days, pogoing to the Go Go’s or the Zippers with a bunch of skinny kids on speed. While I like how the rich production of “Beauty and the Beat,” the Go Go’s first major label release, brought out the harmonies of songs like “Lust to Love,” check out the early Stiff single for an idea of what the Go Go’s sounded like when they were a punk band.

17. Michael Penn: “Someone to Dance With”
A sidebar to the idea of power pop is that this music tends to be created by a band, not a solo artist, but this song has all the power pop hooks: The jangly guitars, the rousing harmonies in the chorus, the yearning of youthful infatuation. I just know that I turned up the radio whenever I heard this song back in the day. Some may think the allusion to “Wuthering Heights” is a bit pretentious, but I was an English major, so forgive me if I found it endearing.

18. 20/20: “Those Yellow Pills”
This song was in heavy rotation on KROQ during the summer of 1980. “Everybody’s feeling groovy/Everybody’s cut their hair short/And everybody fells like they were/Just made by the Creator.” I remember singing this chorus in my bedroom in the morning, shaking the cobwebs out of my brain after some late night shenanigans, looking out the window at the bright California sun, thinking that this song pretty much summed up the world and its seemingly endless potential. It may not be as cool of a declaration as “today your love, tomorrow the world” or “now I wanna be your dog,” but it spoke to me.

19. Smoking Popes: “Pasted”
I’m not sure where power pop leaves off and emo begins, but the Smoking Popes occupy that space somewhere between the two. Maybe the first step to pop is being able to sing, and lead Pope Josh Caterer can certainly belt a tune. Backed by a wall of bar chords, the Smoking Popes sound like a cross between Sunny Day Real Estate and the Monkees. Which is not a bad place to be. “You Make Me Want To Do Something,” “I Need You Around,” “I Know You Love Me”: the band has written a lot of catchy tunes about the travails of modern love. But I prefer “Pasted” because of its obtuse paranoia and defiance, that confluence of jilted love and rebellion that becomes a deeply-held principle for many an idealistic young man. “I’m pasted on the ground/In a world of rooms/All designed to keep you down.”

20. Spike Priggen: “Every Broken Heart”
I heard this song on my one and only trip to NYC, four years ago. Spike was holding court at the Lakeside Lounge, an unpretentious dive of a bar that kind of changed my thinking about the Manhattan music scene. Musically, “Every Broken Heart” is a dead ringer for a Big Star outtake. Lyrically, Priggen’s songs remind me a little of late edition Nick Lowe. There is something about these tales of lost romance as told by a grizzled veteran that can be particularly sad, almost poignant, but also a little silly. My mind fills in the back story for these singer-songwriters still slogging along, hearts on their sleeve like some 20-year old, still looking for that big hit or that perfect romance.

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