MUSIC-USA: ‘Poptopia!’ Serves Up Fast Food Music

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, May 27 1997 (IPS) - Few forms of music are as prevalent throughout the world, and yet oddly so disrespected, as ‘power pop.’

The genre – named by the British group The Who to describe their fast, guitar-based anthems – conquered the world after the success of the Beatles, and can be heard in songs by groups from Britain’s Oasis and Japan’s Shonen Knife to Pakistan’s Awaaz and Spain’s Duncan Dhu.

The one place it seems to be missing, in fact, is the United States – probably the one place in the world where almost every teenager danced to the short, quirky tunes that once dominated the radio in the wake of the Beatles. U.S. rocker Marshall Crenshaw explains that, since some power pop groups like the Knack failed to rack up enough hits in the early 1980s, many groups have wanted to avoid being pigeon-holed as power pop performers.

Now, Rhino Records wants to make sure that the genre gets respect with its new, triple-album compilation of power pop hits from the past three decades, ‘Poptopia!’ The title of the compilation, lifted from a popular Los Angeles concert series, is an apt description of its contents: Pop music as utopia, with simple three-minute ditties taking on the resonance, and the unexpected delight, of epiphanies.

In fact, Rhino describes power pop as “a rock ‘n’ roll hamburger”: a humble, simple, easy-to-eat dish which becomes the staple diet of every teenager. Each of the ‘Poptopia!’ albums serves up 18 such fast-food thrills, offering a fair sampling of hits and obscurities alike from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

When ‘Poptopia!’ works, it offers the most mindlessly fun music the West has heard over the past half-century: yearning vocals sung exuberantly over solid drumming, inventive bass rhythms and the ever-present guitar riffs.

One of the best examples of that style come from Crenshaw, whose graceful ‘Whenever You’re on My Mind’ he now calls “naive”, but whose sweet sentiments of constant thoughtfulness about a lover (“I never thought I’d be in this situation/ Seems wherever I go, I’m with you”) depict a classic pop emotion.

The 1980s disc has perhaps the best sampling of such instant hits, from Crenshaw’s ditty to the Bangle’s peppy unemployment anthem ‘Going Down to Liverpool’ (“…To do nothing for the rest of my life,” they add bitterly) to the Romantic’s pounding, nasal dance song ‘What I Like About You’.

But as Crenshaw himself concedes in the album’s liner notes, “Over the years, some power pop has made me want to run in the opposite direction, while some of it has caused me to reach for my wallet.”

Quite a few of the power pop songs on the Rhino collection do the former: When the formula doesn’t work (as indeed with hamburgers), the songs seem flavourless, mildly irritating and just not that good.

The 1970s volume has many songs that suffer from such defects, including the opening hit, the Raspberries’ ‘Go All the Way’, where, with the passage of time, Eric Carmen’s lead vocals sound almost unbearably out of tune. Songs like the Dwight Twilley Band’s ‘I’m on Fire’ or the Flamin’ Groovies’ ‘Shake Some Action’ seem more affected than endearing in their popwer pop flourishes, while the Knack merely act smug and sexist in ‘Good Girls Don’t’ (which is really about the “bad” ones who do).

But Rhino at least includes many songs that were never hits, but have come to be as much a part of U.S. adolescence as comic books and baseball, such as Big Star, the influential 1970s group which sang ‘September Gurls’, or Australia’s rousing Hoodoo Gurus.

Much of the 1990s album, which is as effective a sampler of hits and near-misses as the 1980s one, focuses on groups that have not (yet) become famous, such as Velocity Girl, the Wondermints and Redd Kross (the last of which has appeared on U.S. television singing a revved-up version of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’, baseball’s anthem). The two best songs are so wistful and pretty that their melodies instantly are memorable, as with the best power pop tunes: Matthew Sweet’s ‘I’ve Been Waiting’ and the Lemonheads’ musing ‘Into Your Arms’.

In short, if you want to take a chance on a three-minute tune that could brighten your day – or alternately fade from memory within ten seconds – the ‘Poptopia!’ series is where to look.

At least a few songs will change your life around, if only for the seconds that you hear them; the rest may well tempt you do something else more productive – such as eating a hamburger.