Shake Some Action!
What's power pop?
Power pop (or powerpop) is a popular musical genre that draws its inspiration from 1960s British and American pop and rock music. It typically incorporates a combination of musical devices such as strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs. Instrumental solos are usually kept to a minimum, and blues elements are largely downplayed. Recordings tend to display production values that lean toward compression and a forceful drum beat. Instruments usually include one or more electric guitars, an electric bass guitar, a drum kit, and sometimes electric keyboards or synthesizers. While its cultural impact has waxed and waned over the decades, power pop is among rock's most enduring subgenres.
Wikipedia
Who's power pop?
Badfinger, Dwight Twilley Band, Big Star, The Raspberries, Blue Ash, 20/20, Cheap Trick, Shoes, The Records, The Motors, The Spongetones, Marshall Crenshaw, The Knack, The Smithereens, Jellyfish, Teenage Fanclub, Weezer, Brendan Benson...
and many, many more
What's this tumblr all about?
This is a place for videos, songs, photographs, URLs, articles.. anything and everything power pop. A celebration of jangly guitars and sweet harmonies! A cornucopia of choruses and chords!
Who runs this Tumblr?
Hi! My name is Mark, I'm a 27-year-old English geek, and there is (slightly) more to my life than power pop.. if you enjoy these posts I'd love it if you followed my personal Tumblr :)
The Monroes - What Do All The People Know (Merv Griffin show 1982)
A San Diego-based band, The Monroes released one five-track EP on the small Japanese-owned label Alfa. This catchy song slowly crept up the charts, peaking at #59. As the band toured to support the single, Alfa decided to pull out of the US market, destroying the momentum built up already and putting an end to any follow-up recordings. The rest of the EP isn’t up to the standard of this track, sadly, but What Do All The People know remains an early New Wave classic still in American radio rotation.
This album, “Stands for the Decibels”, and this band are criminally underrated. Seriously go listen to some of their music, you won’t be disappointed.
When the late great Jerry Lee Lewis sang about “Great Balls of Fire,” he may have been alluding to a sound that a group of fine tuned enthusiastic musicians from LA named the Plimsouls would emulate in stereo form some 30 years down the road of rock n’ roll history. White hot blazin’ fire can best describe the sound of this largely influential Power Pop group that not only played in a style that borrowed from the licks and hooks of the Mersey Beat, but also put forth the soul and passion that harkened back to the classic sounds of Stax and Motown records, and even adding the kind of introspective tendencies of American folk rock. All this and more can be heard on Beach Town Confidential, a live record that will be released on Alive Records on Feb. 7th. Beach Town Confidential was recorded back in 1983 at the height of the Plimsouls’ popularity and just might be one of the best live records I’ve heard in quite some time. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to talk to lead singer and founding member Peter Case about the release of Beach Town and much, much more.. enjoy!
-Kurt Baker
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The Poppees - She’s Got It
Paul McCartney - Come And Get It [Live at Unipol Arena, Bologna - 26-11-2011]
Paul wrote and demoed this song in 1969. A copy of the demo was given to the members of Badfinger so they could learn the song before Paul took them into the studio to produce it.
Badfinger’s Come And Get It was used in the film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, and when released as a single it reached number 7 in the USA and number 4 in the UK. Many listeners thought it was The Beatles releasing a single under a pseudonym.
42 years later, here’s Paul playing the song live on stage for the very first time.
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Sidewinder - Teenage Fanclub
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Matthew Sweet - I’ve Been Waiting
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Fountains of Wayne - Hey Julie (live in London 9th November 2011)
Yesterday I went to London and saw Fountains of Wayne for the second time. The first time was a staggering 9 years ago in San Francisco (Flickr helpfully informs me it was the 22nd), a few months before Welcome Interstate Managers came out. Then as now they certainly can rock live, but this time around there was a different mellow (doubt) side to the band.
Chris Collingwood played acoustic guitar on several of the tunes and Adam Schlesinger moved to the keyboards on songs like Stacy’s Mom (played in a slowed-down keys-led arrangement), and Hey Julie, for which they got three members of the audience on stage to play percussion.
As you can hear for yourself in the recording, the audience is singing along to every word. For a band like the Fountains, who sing of losers, lovers and loners, being in a room with a thousand other people all united by the music was a beautiful thing to be a part of.
