My Top Ten Power Pop Acts

Jari Mäkeläinen asked me to contribute a sidebar piece to be used in Manifesti, a fanzine published in Finland. The challenge posed to sidebar contributors: name your all-time top ten power pop acts.

In the words of Micky Dolenz: okay, I will.

MY TOP TEN POWER POP ACTS

by Carl Cafarelli

For me, the challenge of naming my all-time top ten power pop acts is in deciding what parameters of power pop I wanna play within. While many view power pop as strictly a post-Beatles phenomenon, I agree with the view expressed by writers Greg Shaw and Gary Sperrazza! in Bomp! magazine's epic 1978 power pop issue: power pop began in the '60s. Greg 'n' Gary traced power pop back to the early Who, while I go a little bit further back to the Beatles' "Please Please Me" in 1963. I've begun to entertain the notion that power pop predates even that; I don't think the music of Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys, or the Everly Brothers is quite power pop, but it's difficult to dismiss the power pop gravitas of some of Eddie Cochran's singles, especially "Somethin' Else" and "Nervous Breakdown."

But I wouldn't list the Beatles or the Kinks among my all-time Fave Rave power pop acts, if only because so much of their work falls outside my idea of power pop. The Who were 100 % power pop until Tommy, and really not power pop after that. 

So my power pop Top Ten doesn't go back to the '60s. By default, and for different reasons, I wind up agreeing with those who won't move power pop's Ground Zero to any date before John, Paul, George, and Ringo settled on separate and individual long and winding roads. I've also come to accept the idea that power pop isn't so much a genre as it an approach, which means relatively few acts are strictly power pop all of the time. With all that said, this list offers ten dynamic rock 'n' roll combos I'm comfortable referring to as power pop acts.

THE WHO

Yeah, I was lying. Upon further review, you can't talk about power pop without talking about the early Who, "I Can't Explain" through The Who Sell Out. It's not just because Pete Townshend coined the phrase; it's because he and his band embodied it. Everything the Who did before Tommy is at least peripheral to power pop, and much of it is the power pop Gospel.

THE FLASHCUBES

My hometown heroes, my favorite power pop act, Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse. An incendiary 1979 live show is currently willing itself into imminent release under the title Flashcubes On Fire, and that is pop with power incarnate. In the mean time, Bright Lights collects the '70s stuff plus four then-new '90s tracks, and Flashcubes Forever anthologizes the 'Cubes in the 21st century.

(NOTE: for those power pop fans looking for an excuse to become one of this blog's $2-a-month paid supporters, my liner notes for Flashcubes On Fire will be September's private post for patrons on Wednesday, September 1st: Fund me, baby!)

THE RASPBERRIES

Power pop on the radio, where it belongs. The horny singles--"Go All The Way," "I Wanna Be With You," "Tonight," and "Ecstasy"--plus the dreamy "Let's Pretend" (also covered by the Bay City Rollers) and album track "Play On" combine for a compact summary of the Raspberries' power pop c.v.

THE RAMONES

A consistently controversial choice for a power pop list, but I side with the Bomp! writers who considered the Ramones an essential part of the power pop story. The first four albums tell the tale: Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket To Russia, and Road To Ruin, with a little extra oomph provided by the irresistible in-concert document It's Alive!

BADFINGER

This gets back to the idea that some (many, most) power pop bands aren't power pop all of the time. Badfinger certainly wasn't, but then I've also gotta get back to that idea of power pop on the radio, where it belongs. "Baby Blue" may be my all-time # 1 favorite track by anybody.

THE ROMANTICS

On the other hand, the Romantics are generally power pop regardless of their intent. It's their DNA. They tried to make a hard rock album, Strictly Personal, but it came out as hard-rockin' power pop, and I mean that as a compliment. If you do just one Romantics album, you've gotta go with the eponymous debut, which includes "What I Like About You" and "When I Look In Your Eyes." Their early indie singles are likewise essential, especially "Little White Lies"/"I Can't Tell You Anything."

THE GO-GO'S

I continuously waffle on the question of whether or not the Go-Go's can be considered a power pop act. Their debut album Beauty And The Beat comes close at the very least, and its power remains undiminished forty years on. It's not just that album's great singles "We Got The Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed," but also album tracks like "Can't Stop The World" and "This Town" that make the case on behalf of the Go-Go's. Add in subsequent tracks from "Vacation" to "Head Over Heels" to "The Whole World Lost Its Head" to "La La Land," and it's difficult to deny the truth that this is pop with power.

THE NERVES

Cheating, but I don't care. The Nerves' eponymous 1976 EP inspired Blondie with "Hanging On The Telephone" (written by the Nerves' Jack Lee), but Lee's fellow Nerves Paul Collins and Peter Case went on to have significant and prevailing impact on power pop with their post-Nerves work in Paul Collins' Beat and the Plimsouls, respectively.

BIG STAR

Big Star's story also sprawls, spills, and bleeds beyond power pop territory, and I'm sympathetic to those who claim the group's records didn't have the pure power one would expect from power pop. Nonetheless: "Back Of A Car" delivers, and "September Gurls" transcends our silly little labels to assume the description a rock journalist bestowed upon it decades ago: "Innocent, but deadly." First two albums, # 1 Record and Radio City. Third, however, is most definitely not power pop.

THE SPONGETONES

North Carolina's phenomenal pop combo the Spongetones have always taken their love of rock and pop and Beatles and British Invasion and channeled it into something unerringly Fab. You know that can't be bad.

With a limit of ten acts in this exercise, I can't go on to tell you about the Rubinoos, Pezband, Holly and the Italians, the Flamin' Groovies, the Records, Shoes, the Buzzcocks, Generation X, Dirty Looks, the Shivvers, the Scruffs, Sorrows, Artful Dodger, Blue Ash, the Knack, and dozens more, then and now. Good thing that, in real life, we're not limited to just ten favorite power pop acts, right? Play on.

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