Marshall Crenshaw - Too Many Hooks?

Wazzabout The Plimsouls/The Nerves/Peter Case etc.,

i wouldn't dare to venture a definition of "power pop," but i often think of it as fundamentally british invasion-oriented, and that stuff generally seems like just one (and not the most prominent) of crenshaw's reference points.

Pete Townshend supposedly coined the term when describing The Who's sound circa 1966, defining it as "Pop Music played with the energy/intensity of Rock'n'Roll", and while one can find easy problems with that description, it also feels like an apt take on the best of this music.

Reminds me that some people - including myself, once- think of a Power Chord as any chord being strummed by a windmilling Pete Townshend, when really it mostly means a chord with only roots and fifths to avoid beating due to heavy distortion and volume.

Not if you're Wally Bryson!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l24DFbedbJ0

Not if you're Wally Bryson!

Have you seen this book I just googled to, Tim, Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide, by John M. Borack?

No, I would read that, though!

Too bad. Seems out of print and currently unavailable. You can look at it through Google Books though. Guess what the top two albums are.

I have it (though not accessible at the moment) - worth buying for a reasonable price.

Mostly worth buying to help discover new stuff, though many of the albums you haven't heard of are personal favorites of the author and obscure for a reason. Every power pop fan has stuff they like that is beyond the pale taste-wise but hits the spot somehow.

There's also another book of power pop albums and singles I picked up, lovingly prepared with A-B-C grades and short descriptions and done on a typewriter, but I can't remember the title or author. Helpful, I know...

So the reasons Marshall Crenshaw wouldn't like to be associated with the term Power Pop are maybe that
1) He feels that his songcraft and musicianship are more nuanced and draw upon a wider base and he doesn't want the stigma of "ghettoization"
2) He wants to distance himself from a perhaps to him distasteful component of his audience (cf. Robbie Fulks's "Roots Rock Weirdos")

I guess I'd assume that you are meaning more nuanced stylistically rather than using the word "nuance" to refer to complexity?

If it's style, I would have to wonder if it is really something more broad or if, on the other hand, it's merely its own "ghetto."

Crenshaw said this when I talked to him last year--he was no doubt tired of talking about it:

"I’ve always hated that term being used when someone discusses my music, but I hate to be thin-skinned about it. For some reason, it’s always annoyed me to be put into that sub-category. I don’t think it’s fair, and I reject the concept. My stuff is popular music, or it’s rock music, you know? There’s a lot of power pop, quote-unquote, that is made by American anglophiles, and I won’t wear that label."

When you get into the Sneetches or the Shazam, it loses me, the lack of meaningful content, the formalism of it all. That's what Crenshaw is talking about, maybe. Peter Holsapple and the dB's also transcend the Anglophile label, a great band and great songwriting from Holsapple (and Stamey). James OTM about the ur-power pop chord usually containing root and fifth. Folkies need not apply.

yeah the way power pop rhetoric revolves around perfection and purity, it ends up prioritizing form over.. the transcendent potential of pop/rock. despite power pop arguably being "about" recreating the ecstatic/euphoric transcendence of the beatles et al.

that's not quite right... most power pop just sounds restrained to me, it has a stilted-ness that i attribute to its rejection of certain formal/technical possibilities.. idk

marshall should change his last name to scrimshaw and exclusively record and perform sea shanties

Has anyone seen him him do his tribute to producer Tom Wilson? He's also making a doc about him, that's mentioned on the Tom Wilson thread that's on ILe.

Crenshaw talking a bit about the planned doc and Wilson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/marshall-crenshaw-pays-homage-to-late-producer-tom-wilson/2016/08/10/b0ef4e00-5d85-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html

I don't think the dB's transcend power pop. I think they are not textbook power pop but I don't see how their deviation from it is ultimately more expansive.

And if Bryson is in any sense an archetypal power pop guitarist, I'm still disagreeing also with the root-fifth argument on power chords. He played thirds all the time.

I was commenting on the confusion between the correct definition of power chords and the incorrect one influenced perhaps by the term power pop and, as is often case, confusion may have increased instead of decreasing.

This guy is so fucking good. I will hear no complaints about the production on Field Day.

Yeah "whenever I think about you" dazzles

Could definitely use some more MC in my life right about now

hell, even MC could use more MC

Love that both he and fellow smarty pants cult songwriter Robert Forster were astute enough to cover Grant Hart's "2541."

Also love how MC screwed up the lyrics ("big windows, to lay in the sun") but rolled with it anyway...

Does he still use the wrong lyrics when he plays it live?

Had to ponder for a second to recall what the real lyric is. “Big windows, to LET in the sun,” no?

That's right, though I have to admit I had, for years, misheard "we had to keep the stove on all night long so the mice wouldn't freeze" as "so the PIPES wouldn't freeze"...