I guess crunchy guitars, mellifluous melodies and angelic harmonies have always been in my musical wheelhouse, dating back as far as the first time I heard The Beatles, The Hollies and The Byrds. But I do recall a period in the early 90's, soon after Jellyfish released their debut, when this brand of powerful pop was all I wanted to hear. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that Jellyfish really got the ball rolling.
As we prepared to open our shop, we bought dozens upon dozens of CDs to stock the shelves, by bands we had never heard of before, because the Not Lame wholesale catalogue had brilliant descriptions of what these unknowns sounded like. Almost every band description ended with something like "if you like Big Star, Jellyfish, Queen and XTC." SOLD!
So here we were ordering records by Myracle Brah, Tubetop, The Shazam, The General Store, Starclub and Beagle. And we loved them all, though truth be told, few if any lived up to the hype of sounding like any of the aforementioned bands for more than a quirky Andy Partridge melody here or a Big Star chord change there.
Jellyfish employed those Queen harmonies better than anyone, and to my ears, songs like "New Mistake" and "Now She Knows She's Wrong" might as well be Queen parodies. But I started to fall out of love very quickly with the power pop genre as a basis for collecting. I still loved the sound, the melodies and the harmonies. But I needed something with a bit more depth. It was just too easy to end a song on a major seventh chord and be compared to The Beatles, or use a 12-string Rickenbacker and suddenly you are The Byrds. These CDs were piling up and they were hard sells to your everyday music lover without a long intro that ended with "if you like Big Star, Jellyfish, Queen and XTC."
I was thinking about how every one of these bands had at least one or two truly amazing songs on every album and how I'd love to own all of those perfect pop singles as vinyl 45s. It's 30 years too late, and so many of these bands have since been either relegated to cult status by those who say things like "The Shazam were much better than The Who," or completely forgotten. But I do wonder how these bands felt being lumped altogether across pages 12-15 of a wholesale catalogue, being described as the same four bands over and over again, most of the time incorrectly.
Myracle Brah, Tubetop, The Shazam, Starclub, Beagle and countless others were never going to be Big Star, Jellyfish, Queen or XTC. But they were all solid enough and deserved a fighting chance on their own.
7 comments:
Beagles’ “Sound on Sound” is one of those albums that just stood out for me when it comes to 90’s power pop alongside Jellyfish.
My mother passed away in 1998 and I needed a musical pick-me-up out of that quicksand so I managed to stumble on a Not Lame catalog and went to town: Myracle Brah, The Lolas, DM3, The Shazam, The Rooks, Jason Falkner and on and on.
You're right on target with the Not Lame reviews - they pretty much said the same thing with Bruce describing one group as The Byrds, Beatles and Badfinger and then substituting The Beach Boys, Big Star and XTC for another.
A few of these artists still have heartbeats - 2021 releases for The Lolas, The Grip Weeds, Andy Bopp of Myracle Brah.
Just for the record, I never came close to considering Badfinger a power pop band.
Randy
I'm listening to Ian M Bailey – Songs to Dream Along To as I read this post. He qualifies as a 2021 contender for "if you like the Byrds, you'll like this".
I missed most of these during the 90's (other than Jellyfish).
- Paul in DK
I discovered most of these bands (other than Jellyfish) well after the fact (like the mid 2000s) when they had all broken up or the songwriters gone on to solo careers.
IMO, there's a wealth of joyful material in all the bands mentioned in the original post and above. But it's like a well-balanced diet. If the Not Lame catalog was all you listened to -- then it became somewhat interchangeable (but still great!) I usually put my iTunes library on random shuffle and when songs from these groups come on, my ears definitely pick up still! Man, DM3 was great!
But it was like (to crib from Mitch Hedberg) having a stack of pancakes -- starts out great but after a while you are sick of them and want some broccoli to cleanse the palate.
Yes! Beagle was good!!
I was knee deep in the Not Lame world and loved the power pop sound. There are bands that put out some quality music. But I have to admit While the music had a lot of the right components I can't think of one band or song writer who came close to the height of the bands they were being compared to. You can add The Nines, Sugarplastic and Cotton Mather to the list.
I'd never heard any of these bands before, but listening now made me feel nostalgic for the '90's anyway.
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