Parts Unknown
Ten tracks from all over the place: Chicago, Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Northern Ireland (three times), the Netherlands, Italy, New York, and Brisbane, Australia. Power pop with no fixed passport.
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01
M.O.T.O. — “I Hate My Fucking Job”
Masters of the Obvious, since 1980. Paul Caporino has written hundreds of songs, released dozens of records, maintained zero commercial traction, and shows no sign of stopping. When Razorcake asked what his most-requested song live was, Caporino answered correctly: this one. Two minutes of perfectly formed power pop grievance that could have been a hit if it were called something else, which would have missed the entire point. The title is load-bearing.
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02
The MnM’s — “I’m Tired”
Marcy Marcs on vocals, Paul Collins connection, one 7-inch. “I’m Tired” was the B-side to “Knock Knock Knock,” which is a remarkable position for a song this clean and this certain of itself. Both tracks ended up on the Bomp compilation The Roots of Powerpop, which is how most people found them. Burger Records eventually put out a proper collection in 2016. Better late than never, though it took thirty-six years.
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03
The Crowd — “Right Time”
The Beach Blvd scene produced a specific kind of punk — melodic, fast, slightly sunburned, with hooks the LA scene never quite allowed itself. The Crowd were the power pop end of that spectrum. A World Apart on Posh Boy in 1981 is ten tight songs and no ballads, and “Right Time” is one of the best of them. Jim Decker wrote songs that sounded like he knew the window was closing. He was right, but the songs survived it.
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04
No Sweat — “Start All Over Again”
Clive Culbertson’s three-piece, pressed the same year as the first Good Vibrations singles. More pub rock in the bones than the punk kids recording down the road, but “Start All Over Again” has hooks that the straight punk bands weren’t bothering with. The single had to be reissued under the name The Sweat after a legal threat from another No Sweat on Pete Townshend’s Eel Pie label. Culbertson later toured with Van Morrison. Belfast, 1978, and all roads led somewhere unexpected.
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05
De Cylinders — “I Wanna Get Married”
Six pieces, keyboards, Jolanda Markus on vocals, three singles between 1979 and 1981, all of them good. Dutch power pop existed. It was called De Cylinders, and basically nobody outside the Netherlands knew about it for thirty years. “I Wanna Get Married” is their 1979 debut: a female-fronted power pop single with a hook that competes with anything the British or American scenes were putting out that year. The genre had no room reserved for the Netherlands. De Cylinders didn’t care.
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06
Ice and the Iced — “We’ve Had Enough”
Recorded live at a venue called the Duke in November 1980. Released on TRUX Records in 1981 in an edition of five hundred hand-numbered copies. An Italian punk band that absorbed the KBD playbook from a long way away and played it with enough conviction that the distance doesn’t show. “We’ve Had Enough” is a song about not wanting to fight wars, delivered with the specific urgency of people who actually had something to say about it. Filed under: Killed By Death #77. Should be filed under: better than most things on it.
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07
Nasty Facts — “Drive My Car”
Cherl Boyze on bass and vocals: a queer person of color fronting a New York power pop/punk band in 1981, which was not a common configuration and wasn’t treated as one. The Drive My Car EP on Jimboco Records is three songs. None of them waste a second. NTS described it as “one of the great NY punk bands that the history books forgot,” which is accurate and also the situation for approximately forty percent of the bands on this website. The history books were wrong about a lot of things.
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08
The Tearjerkers — “Murder Mystery”
Five pieces from Ballyclare, signed to Phonogram’s Back Door label, produced by John Astley — Pete Townshend’s brother-in-law, which explains the production clarity on a record this small. “Murder Mystery” was their second single; John Peel put it on the radio and gave them a session. At one point they had their own TV show in Northern Ireland. None of it stuck. The record did. There is a whole Tearjerkers rabbit hole available if you want one, and you probably do.
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09
The Moondogs — “Who’s Gonna Tell Mary”
Power pop trio from Derry, signed to Real Records — a Sire subsidiary — in 1980. Todd Rundgren produced their album. The Undertones comparison was inevitable and slightly wrong: the Moondogs were doing something more melodic, less jagged, more interested in the hook than the aggression. The single “Who’s Gonna Tell Mary” turned up on the Shake Some Action power pop compilation and finally found the audience it deserved about twenty years after the fact.
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10
The Riptides — “77 Sunset Strip”
Brisbane, 1978, on the Able Label — the same imprint that would release the Go-Betweens’ early records. A song about a 1950s American television show, made by a band absorbing British Invasion and American punk signals from the other side of the planet and translating them into something that sounds completely local and completely universal at the same time. The ZZZ radio station had to keep their copy under lock and key because copies were selling for a hundred dollars. It was eventually reissued. Worth every cent either way.
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