It's time we had a long talk about "power pop".
For such a seemingly innocent-sounding term, it sure has come to be known as the proverbial "no -zip sorting bin" of rock.
Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who happily owned albums by Cheap Trick, the Knack, Great Buildings, the Producers, and 20/20, although a majority of my collection was comprised of new wave (Elvis Costello, the Go-Go's, Ministry, The Police), post punk (Chameleons/Killing Joke), and UK goth (Specimen, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Sisters of Mercy).
My first album, Darren Robbins Steals Your Girlfriend, had arrived in 1988 at the tail end of both the Paisley Underground and American roots rock movements, both of which were commercial busts, as far as this writer is concerned.
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| The 1997 compilation from Not Lame that included tracks by This Perfect Day, The Rooks, Big Hello, 20 Cent Crush, and my first new music in seven years |
Several years after Steals Your Girlfriend's initial success, I left the Chicago skyline behind for the natural skyscrapers of Colorado. After a day of mountain biking, I found myself staring at several boxes of DRSYG CD's taking up space in my garage and, in hopes of making enough room to store said mountain bike, I decided to place an ad in the back of Goldmine magazine.
Having done so in advance of the magazine's next issue, it would be weeks before the ad would appear so I had completely forgotten I'd even placed the ad by the time the first envelopes started showing up in my mailbox.
The first letter was from Japan and was written in the most charming broken English I'd ever read:
"Dear Sir Power Pop Kingpin,
Please send CD most hastily to replace the mix tape that I broke, so sorry, PLEASE HURRY!!"
Needless to say, I did as instructed and fired off a package to the address at the bottom of the letter.
My girlfriend, who was well aware of the album's notoriety, though it predated our relationship by a good five years, got a big kick out of finding herself romantically linked with a "Power Pop Kingpin" and would later present me with a bathrobe upon which she'd ironed those big puffy letters spelling out "Power Pop Kingpin" on the back.
Even so, being labeled "power pop" by a Japanese fan perplexed me, but soon letters were arriving by the dozens from all over the world and, by the time all was said and done, I became quite awed by the global reach of one issue of Goldmine magazine, but the fact that it put me in-touch with someone in the very same city as I (Denver), would be its greatest by-product.
As the "letters with money" continued to arrive and the mentions of the album's popularity among those in the "Power Pop community" piled up, it would not be long before I'd be hearing from the man himself, Bruce Brodeen of Not Lame Recordings.
In hindsight, if my Goldmine ad had sold no copies at all, but had still brought me to the attention of Brodeen, it would have still been a success in this writer's mind because, as it turned out, Brodeen had only begun catering to what many now recognize as that most rabid of musical fan - the power pop geek.
Best of all, Brodeen just so happened to live in Denver, too, so a fast friendship was formed and copies of Steals Your Girlfriend would be sold through the Not Lame pipeline.
It was only fair to show my appreciation by offering my first new recording in seven years ("Take Me or Leave Me") for inclusion on his label's inaugural power pop compilation.
But I still never thought of myself as "power pop", much less a "Power Pop Kingpin", even after numerous invites to power pop festivals and the like. I even donned the name Time Bomb Symphony to further dispel such lazy classification, but, by now, every major label I was dealing with was impressed by my recent Goldmine goldmine (I wound up selling over 300 copies from one $96 classified ad), but incapable of worrying about being considered "power pop" might do to their investment.
In the end, it appeared to be enough to kill any serious offer from a label that would be tasked with promoting my music to modern rock stations.
Considering that the term had originally been coined by Pete Townshend to describe his band's music at the time, it was a stunning predicament to find myself held prisoner by lazy classification.
That "power pop" was ever allowed to be co-opted by clean-cut soft rock bands like the Rubinoos and Raspberries served to only to confuse the masses, who took one listen and asked, "Where's the power?"
Meanwhile, bands that wholeheartedly defined the term "power pop" like The Romantics ultimately had to resort to drastic measures to not being dragged down by the classification.
For "power pop" to retain its full impact, it needed a band like the Ramones to give it some street cred and, let's face it, there was no band more "power pop" than the Ramones, yet you can probably count the number of times folks have put "Ramones" and "power pop" in the same sentence over the last 20+ years or so on one finger (the middle one).
As a result, even Cheap Trick's loose association with "power pop" failed to bring the necessary cache and quickly became the major label no-zip sorting bin of rock for any band unfortunate enough to be saddled with the term.
Don't believe me?
Ask Big Star, the band who practically defined the term, yet broke up under the weight of soul-crushing obscurity.
More recent examples would be Wanderlust or Gigolo Aunts, two bands whose major label debuts for RCA got off to fast starts at radio in the mid-90's and were just about as hooky and powerful as anything you could hope to hear at the time, but whose albums suddenly stalled without reason once the term "power pop" got batted around too frequently in reviews while the Gin Blossoms continued to rack up one hit single after another.
In talking with members of the Romantics in recent years, Wally Palmar actually admitted to this writer that, in 1981, the band made the near-metal Strictly Personal album as a direct response to being pigeonholed as "power pop" and seeing their last album (National Breakout) die on the vine.
Doing so led one of the band's founding members to quit the band in disgust (although Mike Skill would rejoin them for their next album).
Did it work?
While Strictly Personal flopped, all mentions of the Romantics being "power pop" disappeared like the morning fog by the time their next album, In Heat, arrived on the scene. Amazingly, it was accepted on its own merits and would launch "Talking In Your Sleep" and "One In A Million" into the Top 40.
An A&R acquaintance who has worked with everyone from Nirvana to Lisa Loeb recently took a young power pop band under his wing, but only after a concerned "come to Jesus" moment with his new clients, at which point he asked the band point blank who they saw as their prime audience.
If they saw aging men who brought book bags to concerts as their prime audience, opined the music industry veteran, by all means continue mining that "power pop" vein, but if they aspired to see actual living, breathing women at their shows, they may think long and hard about ditching the "power pop" stance sooner rather than later.
Now, I won't out the band, or the A&R person, for that matter, but a little sleuthing can fill in those blanks quite easily, I presume and, yes, their sound is completely void of any traces of "power pop".
While the jury remains out as to whether that move will be a wise one for this young band, it is advice that many a manager or A&R person has delivered to many a guitar band that adhered just a little too closely to unabashed pop melodies and, gasp, vocal harmonies, as if such things were to be rooted out and buried like radioactive waste while radio stations continued to poison innocent ears with Limp Bisquik and kORN.
Tags:
fight the power