Blog: PowerPop

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental Michelle-ma-belle Fah Lo Suee and I are off to (insert joke here). [Seriously, I'm drawing a blank on the traditional gag this week, so consider this an audience participation sort of thing. Thank you in advance for your diligence in this regard. -- Ed.]. That being the case, and because -- if all goes well -- things will be a little quiet around here until Monday, here's a fun and hopefully thought provoking little project to help [...]

From sometime in the late 80s, please enjoy Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos live with John and Paul's "I Wanna Be Your Man." Words fail me, except that this one kicks astoundingly major ass (and kudos to the great Steve Jordan on those pagan skins, where he is -- IMHO -- primarily responsible for the level of the astoundingly major kick-assedness). You will, of course, note the interesting irony that Keith and the boys are NOT playing the arrangement of the song that provided the embryonic Rolling Stones [...]

So last night I had the great pleasure of hearing Kevin Avery , author of Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson , do a reading/discussion from/of the book at a local indie book store. I raved about Everything in these precincts a few months ago, but it's finally out officially -- you can order it from Amazon over here -- and again, I can't recommend it highly enough. And no, it's not because I knew its subject professionally and am quoted, briefly, in the bio section of the book [...]

Just got finished submitting my Top Ten Albums of the Year list to the Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review, along with the rest of the reviewers on the masthead. The issue with the results won't be out till next year, but here's a hint at what album made the top of my list. Well, it's more than a hint, obviously. And also not much of a surprise ...

Ever watch something and go "You gotta be fucking kidding me"? Seriously -- forget the ripped t-shirt/crawling across the floor Flashdance stuff. But the skipping/aerobics?/wrist-wavin g moves Squier does here are SOOO sexy I can't imagine why guys all over the country aren't trying to do them in front of their bedroom mirrors to this very day. Okay, actually I can. Two words: Ed Grimley. And this, from Squier's Wiki entry, is particularly delicious: "Rock Me Tonite" was Squier's biggest Pop hit. It reached #15 on Billboard's [...]

Apparently, and against my better judgement, I'm gonna have to see the Ferrelly Brothers ' forthcoming The Three Stooges movie. I should add that this is largely because the nun -- played by Larry David (!) -- is named Sister Mary Mengele. I also have a theory of Devo-lution about this. To wit: 1. 60s kids rediscovered The Marx Brothers. 2. 70s kids rediscovered The Three Stooges. 3. 80s kids rediscovered The Brady Bunch. I rest my case.

Seriously. I'm completely at a loss today after a fairly busy and stressful week. Oh, except for this video clip -- which actually seems to be a 15-year-old Mick Jagger doing rock climbing or something. Talk amongst yourselves or something. [h/t Steve Schwartz]

No Listomania clue today, for the simple reason that it's been a crazy week and I didn't have time to get a Listomania together. Rest assured, however, that the List will return next week, in fighting trim. Also, that intertube radio show appearance I made on Tuesday is now archived over at Area24 ; when you get there, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Lost at Sea for December 6th. Pretty funny stuff, I think, and some interesting music gets played as well. And finally, just because I'm [...]

You know, as much as I loved Jason and the Scorchers , my favorite pioneering indie-rock band from Music City U.S.A. was.... The White Animals. And here they are, on their hometown local TV in 1982 -- a clip I did not know existed until yesterday -- with a great song about "Girls." The White Animals are the great lost American rock band of the 80s -- a ferocious live act (any band that shared a stage with them did so at their peril) and true musical visionaries whose [...]

Shameless self-promotion: I'm gonna be on an intertube radio show this evening. Hosted by my old chum Allan Rosenberg . You can can hear it over at Area24Radio.com . Once you get there, click on Lost at Sea . Today's show streams live between 5-7pm, and I'm informed that if you miss it -- and frankly, what kind of a schween would you be if you did? -- that it will be archived at the site no later than Thursday. In [...]

So I was going through some of my old clippings the other day when I chanced across this (I think) amusing little interview with a bunch of sci-fi novelists, from the cyberpunk school, that I did in 1987 (on the occasion of the publication of an anthology called Mirrorshades ). If you click on the image above you can enlarge it to the point where you can actually read the piece, but the reason I'm bringing it up is because Bruce Sterling -- one [...]

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental Taco Belle of the Ball Fah Lo Suee and I are off to beautiful London, England where we'll be participating in the very first protest of the Occupy Joanna Lumley's Knickers! movement. Hopefully, Joanna will be home at the time. That being the case, and because things are doubtless going to be traditionally quiet around here for a bit, here's a hopefully fun and definitely relevant little project for us all to contemplate: Best or Worst [...]

From 1966, and the December's Children LP, please enjoy the Rolling Stones and the Jagger-Richard 12-string pop beauty "The Singer Not the Song." I love this song with a white-hot passion, fully cognizant that it is quite as ridiculous on some levels as Greil Marcus observed in that review of Some Girls I referenced yesterday. In fact, I actually used to sing this with a couple of my old bands back in the 70s. Okay, to be scrupulously honest it might be more accurate [...]

Okay, ladies and germs, please enjoy one of the rarest -- and certainly one of the most exciting -- Rolling Stones rarities of them all. From 1978, it's the Bob Clearmountain remix of the great Some Girls track "Before They Make Me Run." Which kicks the album version's ass bigtime. How rare is this? Pretty damned rare; it was released as a limited edition 45 for critics and press only (with that fabulous Annie Leibovitz [...]

[Yes, this is the beginning of five days of Rolling Stones -related stuff, inspired by the fact that I shnorred a promo copy of the quite excellent -- with cavils, which I will note as the week progresses -- new deluxe edition of the band's last classic of the 70s. You're welcome. -- Ed.] Beatles or Stones -- that was the existential dilemma my generation faced. (Bill Clinton chose Elvis Presley , BTW, which is why I never trusted that rat bastard from day one. But I digress.) So [...]

As the weather cools and I realize that holy-crap-fall-is-over-and-I-h aven't-accomplished-a-thing, I'm looking back on what I've been listening to over the fall and see that, overwhelmingly, it's centered on 2 CDs: the breathtaking Sky Full of Holes , and Vegas with Randloph's Above the Blue . I've obsessed about VWR here before , and all the songs mentioned here are indeed on the CD, which was released at the end of the summer. But Above the Blue is a lot more than that: the title itself references [...]

Hey -- it's the Thanksgiving weekend, and I pretty much had my hands full the last day or two getting a holiday dinner together for my Maternal Unit. So no Listomania today, but have no fear -- the List will return next week, all tanned, rested and ready. But it in its stead, and given some of the current events of the last couple of weeks, please enjoy -- along with your leftover turkey and stuff -- The Call and "When the Walls Came Down." Still the best political/protest rock record ever made, IMHO. [...]

We at Power Pop would like to wish a very happy birthday to John Murphy of Shoes! Murphy was a scrawny, quiet kid with killer art skills and a massive record collection (which he shared with his younger brother) when the guy sitting next to him in sophomore English, a tall jock he didn't know named Gary Klebe, looked over his shoulder and saw the caricature he was absent-mindedly drawing of the teacher. Gary asked him if he wanted to draw pictures for a satirical high-school magazine he and some of his friends were putting together, and [...]

Saw Ray Davies in concert over the weekend -- a lovely show, including the stuff with the Dessoff Choir, which worked far better than I had frankly expected it to. And of course, the "and then I wrote..." format isn't really hard to take when the person who's singing the songs has the sort of back catalog that Ray has. But here's a song of his -- from the early 80s -- that he didn't do on Sunday, and I'm kind of glad. "Art Lover." Which is not to say [...]