Power-pop for weekend consumption

When the tedium of daily life is just a bit too much, mindless pop music is the best solution. Perhaps because I was a child of the Seventies, I veer immediately to what was labeled “power pop” and was at one point known by the gimmicky nickname, “New Wave.” In April of last year I offered links to a number of key tunes (the last, most pungent example can be found here), and returned to the topic in October when I offered an all-too-brief personal survey of ’79 new wave.

In this post I return to those thrilling years of yesteryear by first of all mentioning tha the lame-asses at Warner Music have pulled from YouTube any and all postings of Bram Tchaikovsky’s “Girl of My Dreams,” so you must go immediately to our pals at Never Get Out of the Boat and listen to this sterling bit of perfect power-pop right NOW! (there's an embedded player right on the page, babies). I remember that the local oldies station, WCBS-FM, at the time the song was released included it in their playlist, saying it would become a classic. It didn’t, of course, sell millions, but it is fondly remembered by all of us who were addicted to it at the time (and still crack out the “Strange Man, Changed Man” LP to indulge).

And on the YouTube front, we discover the song that received much publicity some months back when Avril Lavigne released her latter-day power-pop ditty Girlfriend. It sounded quite familiar, and I immediately thought of the Ramones' “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”. But those with memories even longer than mine remembered this Rubinoos item that still packs a kick (although Avril’s music-makin’ machine speeded the sucker up for the redo):



I identify power pop with the late 1970s, but there were a bunch of precedents for this sound, most notably the top-10 British hit-meisters The Sweet, whose Greatest Hits album is something I’ve worn out over the past few years. Here's “Wig Wam Bam” (which was gloriously celebrated in a great “Love and Rockets” — the comic, not the band — story several years back):



And from Cleveland, the Raspberries, with two of their biggest PP hits, including the wonderfully come-on, “Go All the Way” (never had pop seemed so… straightforward):



Let’s move back to the late Seventies, and celebrate a Deceased Artiste, Philly rocker Robert Hazard. Hazard was best known for having written the MTV hit “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (his version here, different in its approach and lyrics from Cyndi's hit). His most memorable bit of Eighties hookiness, though, was “Escalator of Life.” Scope out this arch little vid made for the record:



I close out with two songs that have stuck in my brain since I first heard them quite a long time ago. The first comes from the band that Bram Tchaikovsky left to go solo, The Motors. Their 1980 EP “Tenement Steps” is deserving of a place in any Seventies pop fan’s library, and it can be found (along with the band’s albums) at the Digivinyltal blog. Apparently, there are no live recordings or TV lip synchs of the awesome song "Love and Loneliness" available, so one fan has put up a video of the EP cover, with the song playing in the background. It doesn’t convey at all the power of this killer tune, so I recommend you download the EP from the DVT blog. If you need a quick reminder of what the song sounds like from across the room, the link below is worth a click — with, again, the caveat that the melodramatic pop-rock majesty is lost. "Now loneliness is there/ despite the love we make/ And loneliness knows where to find the friends we make/ And the place we live/ is just a new street number/ on an old address/ called Love and Loneliness."



And every single time I find myself thinking or saying the phrase “I don’t want to argue…” in real life, my mind automatically produces the words “I don’t want to budge/take this number down before you call up the judge…” The absolutely perfectly produced tune in question is The Records’ “Starry Eyes.” (I hadn't remembered the legal pun, "The writ has hit the fan...") To hear the real song, go straight to this YouTube upload. I love this song deeply, and recommend the single first and foremost, but a reasonable, not as pitch-perfect, version would be this live TV performance:



One wistful commenter for one of these vids noted, “They tell me not to live in the past, but the music was so much better then….”

Ladies upload movies too! Latest YouTube discoveries

I think I’ve referred in the past to most of the YouTube posters who’ve uploaded entire movies as “he” because I tend to identify that level of obsessive fan behavior as male (you ladies tend to have more sensible proclivities). Well, two of the posters who’ve put up entire flicks on their accounts are indeed female, and so this week, in my ongoing survey of what’s what on that crazy, insane, bottomless source of entertainment, I salute them. (And yes, I know, the Internet being the intangible concept it is, the people claiming to be men could women, and vice versa.)

The first poster is someone known as The Thin Woman. This poster, like so many folks on YT, pays homage to her fave performers by making little music-vids of their best moments, as with this valentine to the great Myrna Loy:



She generally uses danceable trax as a background music, and in some cases the lyric/title adds another layer to the imagery, as here Garbage’s “Androgyny” is used to salute Garbo:



Her most interesting is a montage of actresses who were rumored to be lesbians scored, natch, to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”:



The Thin Woman’s complete uploads include these movies: The Blue Angel, The Bachelor and The Bobbysoxer, All About Eve, Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie:



The other female poster must be named Sara, because her nick is SaraismyName. Sara is a young woman in Sweden who also likes old movies and Golden Age actresses. Her rarest upload is a full 1972 TV interview with Ingrid Bergman (without subs), which can be found here.

She also does montages of her faves, set to current music. This is a compilation of moments featuring the ever-awesome Carole Lombard set to a song by “ladies man” Chris Brown (he treats ’em so nice):



Sara’s complete uploads include Madame Curie, The Letter, That Forsyte Woman, Blossoms in the Dust, The Old Maid, Charade, The Miniver Story, The Golden Arrow, and The Great Lie. Here’s my fave of the bunch, the perfect screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby:



Sara is also a fan of classic TV game shows from the U.S. I’m not sure where or when she saw ‘em, but people know my opinion of GSN here in the States since they dropped all their b&w programming. In any case, Sara has posted some montage videos of the ladies of What’s My Line?. I didn’t realize there was anyone under 30 years of age who even knew who these women were, so I was surprised to see that she had posted this episode of a 1950s show hosted by Arlene. And was very amazed to see this collection of “Lady Arlene” moments (I do miss John Charles Daly!) set to the Beatles:



And this further Arlene/Beatles clip:



This one was the biggest eye-opener, a montage of Dorothy Kilgallen moments, set to Blondie’s “One Way or Another”:



Give both posters a whiskey, with ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby. (Understand who will.)