Welcome to my personal blog where you'll find stuff I like: music, science, atheism, politics, 8-bit art, robots, and more. I enjoy making gifs, especially Soda Stereo gifs because there aren't nearly enough of these in the world. I love The Beatles. Looooooooove them. Other bands I like tend to have members that are themselves Beatles nuts: XTC, Soda Stereo, The Police, Elvis Costello & The Attractions. You'll find some NSFW stuff on here sometimes. I'm 33. I'm Male. I'm Married. 2 kids. Barranquillero, obviamente hablo español. Manejo FYeah Soda Stereo, un blog dedicado a... Soda Stereo.
My 5-year old Whovian turns 6 tomorrow. My wife made this birthday cake for him.
Red TARDISes
My 5-year old calls red british telephone booths “red TARDISes” because of course he does.
One of the (many) interesting things about tumblr is how it reveals hyper-specific details about people’s tastes. Seems like anything can become an obsession here: very particular slashfics, pugs, redheads, Roger Waters’s arms, children’s television from the 90’s, fandom crossovers, porn gifs, jennifer lawrence, … you get the idea.
So here’s one of my obsessions: Power Pop.
The AV Club’s description of power pop is better than most so here it is:
Picking up the baton dropped by the recently disbanded Beatles, a horde of British and American bands in the early ’70s rejected hippie noodling and arty prog and focused instead on crunchy, catchy songs with jangly guitars, chugging rhythms, and sugary choruses. Power-pop was like bubblegum with balls, but as with the late-’60s bubblegum craze, power-pop quickly became the chosen genre for workmanlike musicians with sheaves of simplistic lyrics about cars and girls, and a storehouse of melodies so sweet that they could give Willy Wonka a bellyache. In short, power-pop in its basic form is often exhausting and off-putting, like a commercial jingle stretched to 10 times its natural length. Great power-pop—and there’s a lot of it out there—has to be more idiosyncratic and regionally flavored, with a touch of grit. Separating the good from the gooey can be a tough task.
This being my birthday month I decided to dump on you all a bunch of power pop songs spanning 1972-2009. Songs that I believe are very much part of the “good” and not the “gooey.”
Some of the bands that will be featured are pretty solidly power pop (Big Star, The Knack, The New Pornographers). Some of the other bands perhaps had a power pop period but weren’t in general considered power pop bands (Soda Stereo, Sahara Hotnights). Some other bands had maybe one or two power pop songs on their catalogue (The Replacements). Of course, genres of music are fuzzy sets. You’ll find that some of the songs I’ll post maybe don’t fall under your definition of power pop. That’s fine. At a minimum all of the songs will be catchy as hell and have crunchy guitars.
31 days in May. 31 songs.
3 bands will have more than one song featured: The New Pornographers, Sloan, and Sahara Hotnights. Everyone else gets one song.
Marshall Crenshaw didn’t make the cut. Not because he’s not good (he’s amazing) but because his sound is a little too clean. Not enough power/crunchiness. Again, this is debatable but there you have it.
Another brilliant artist that didn’t make it was Elvis Costello. I considered including “I Hope You’re Happy Now” but thought better of it. Not sure if it fits with the rest. It kinda hurts to have Fountains of Wayne in the list and not Elvis Costello, but again, there you have it.
No Weezer.
No pop-punk.
Along with the songs I’ll also post some pictures and make some gifs. I’ll tag them all “power-pop-month” and add a link on the left of my blog for archiving.
Here’s the link as well: Power Pop Month
This should be a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy the songs and perhaps discover a band you’d never heard before!
There aren’t many Arcades left in the US. We’re lucky we have one 20 minutes from our house. It’s called Pinball Wizard Arcade, in Pelham, NH.
My 5-year old and I are Whovians. We were overjoyed when we found this Doctor Who Pinball machine. We played it and it’s actually a lot of fun. When multi-ball engages you’re bombarded with the voices of Daleks yelling, “We’re under attack!” ”EXTERMINATE!” “Get the Doctor!” Awesome.
Here’s some more info on it:
Soda Stereo - “Primavera 0” (1992)
1000 posts. Let’s celebrate this “achievement” by revisiting the tags I use the most:
And a GPOY with a Colombian pressing of The Beatles double A-side “Hey Jude/Yesterday”, with “A Hard Day’s Night” as a B-side. Yeah, I know, random selections by EMI Colombia right there.
