Show #150 June 16, 2016

ALL KINDSA GIRLS Episode 150 is dedicated to Maria!




Maria- Blondie Maria 
West End Girls- Pet Shop Boys West End Girls 
I Hate Myself For Loving You- Joan Jett & The Blackhearts Greatest Hits
5-7-0-5- City Boy 5-7-0-5 
I Wanna Be Sedated- The Ramones Road To Ruin 
High School Nights- Dave Edmunds High School Nights 
Buddy Holly- Weezer Weezer (Blue Album)
I Love You, Suzanne- Lou Reed New Sensations 
Echo Beach- Martha and The Muffins Metro Music 
Let's Go- The Cars Just What I Needed - Anthology
Moneytalks- AC/DC The Razors Edge
Only Happy When It Rains- Garbage Garbage 
Saturday Night- Bay City Rollers The Definitive Collection 
I Want You Back- Hoodoo Gurus Stoneage Romeos
I Don't Like Mondays- The Boomtown Rats The Fine Art Of Surfacing
Too Much Passion- The Smithereens Blow Up 
Starry Eyes- The Records The Records
Do The Bartman- Bart Simpson Do The Bartman 
It Must Be Love- Madness The Business 
Life of Surprises- Prefab Sprout Life Of Surprises 
Vuonna '85- Eppu Normaali Vuonna '85 
Under The Milky Way- The Church Under The Milky Way 
17- Avril Lavigne Avril Lavigne 
The Wall Street Shuffle- 10cc The Wall Street Shuffle 
Annie Get Your Gun- Squeeze Singles: 45's and Under

Show #150 Special:  ALL POWER POP PEAKS!  

Wow- 150 episodes!  Tonight we celebrate that milestone with a show of all Power Pop Peaks- a rare episode of (mostly) familiar music.  You may think one of the artists above does not "fit" on ALL KINDSA GIRLS but the older I get the less I care about musical labels and what is

SS Decontrol from Boston

or is not perceived as "credible" by fans and critics.  In my college days I had a passing interest in hardcore, but not enough to be a regular reader of uber-fanzine Maximum Rocknroll.  I'd occasionally check out the Boston "Scene Report," which often seemed like like a High School "who's hot/who's not" list like when they dissed my friend Michelle's radio show on WERS.  Even so, when I moved to San Francisco in 1993 I quickly became obsessed with Epicenter Zone on Valencia Street in the Mission District.  Nominally it was a record store, but you never knew what to expect when you went in- a

Tim Yohannon at Epicenter Zone

hardcore show, poetry slam, Food Not Bombs meeting, makeshift homeless shelter, etc. yet I kept going back for the records. Epicenter Zone, Maximum Rocknroll and world famous Berkeley punk performance space 924 Gilman Street were Bay Area hardcore's "Holy Trinity" and all three were started by legendary sh*t-stirrer Tim Yohannon.   

Epicenter Zone became a destination for punk rock fans from all over the world, which meant there was always a ton of great stuff in stock.  The key thing about Epicenter was that it was a non-profit collective.  The staff were volunteers and the records were priced to cover expenses with maybe a little left over.  This was in the mid-90's when the prices of collectible punk records were soaring thanks to the release of the Killed By Death series and other copycat punk compilations.  Every time I went to Epicenter I'd see some obscure rarity on the wall behind the cash register- it was pretty thrilling.  On my fourth or fifth trip to the store there it was-  a mint copy of DOA's Hardcore '81 for a VERY reasonable $30 (it was $100 or more every other place I had seen it).  I freaked out because I didn't have the cash on me but thankfully the super cute pierced and tattooed young lady behind the counter agreed to hold it for me.  After a quick trip downstairs to the vintage clothing shop to hit up my wife Jaime for cash I was back and Hardcore '81 was, and to this day remains, MINE!

My first introduction to punk philosophy came courtesy of

the Sex Pistols- anarchy: complete freedom, no rules, do whatever you want.  Back in the day my friends and I would scrawl the anarchy "A" on bathroom stalls throughout Duxbury High School.  This concept didn't seem to resonate with Maximum Rocknroll, however.  Man they had a lot of rules!  Endless arguments about what was and was not "punk" and no one was quicker to throw out the dreaded "sell out" and "rock star" slurs than Tim Yohannon.  Credit where credit is due, the man was an incredible community organizer, but what a hardass!   

Yes they are totally serious. Always.

When it comes to unyielding doctrine the MRR crowd give religious fundamentalists a run for their money.  I have no doubt that on a daily basis young punks around the world were asking themselves- WWTYD (What Would Tim Yo Do).  And not just regarding music- it was politics, clothes, consumer products- you name it, Tim and his people had a strong opinion about it.  And God help you if your favorite band got signed or even got a distribution deal with a major label  because then you could expect a sh*tstorm of hate to rain down on them in the pages of Maximum Rocknroll.  The Clash were on a freaking major label for God's sake!  

I saw this first hand when Green Day signed to Warner Brothers and it wasn't pretty.  Dookie is an amazing album but in MRR there was no

Green Day in 1994

mention of the music, just the money.  924 Gilman played a major role in Green Day's history, first as fans going to shows then as a band playing shows, so it must have hurt to have the scene turn on them.  My band V.O.I.D. (Vain, Obnoxious, Ignorant, Degenerates) played Gilman a few times in the 90's and it was a tough crowd- they did not take kindly to our suits, ties or music.  Still, I noticed that one of the first things you see entering the space is "Sweet Children," the name of the Billie Joe and Mike of Green Day's first band, spray painted on a rafter. 

924 Gilman

 
Bands come from all over the world to play Gilman and the Green Day story is part of that draw.  I took my son to a show there for his 16th birthday and we saw a punk/metal band from Indonesia called Navicula (who were awesome) and they talked about realizing their dream of playing Gilman.  And the bands they name checked?  Bad Religion and Green Day!  It seems a little disingenuous to hate on a group then milk their legacy by keeping the "Sweet Children" tag in place- if they hate Green Day so much they should have painted it over years ago. 

While they would probably burn my house down for saying so, Maximum Rocknroll's focus on money rather than music mirrors what I saw happening in film and sports journalism in the 90's.  Rather than write about the content, the movie "news" was all about budgets, deals and opening weekend grosses while the sports pages were all about contracts, agents and salary caps.  There is still a lot of that going on in the media to which I say  "No thank you."

So, as I said at the beginning of this post, I care less about the labels than I do about the music.  In the end all of this boils down to a long winded justification for why I played "17" by Top 40 pop star Avril Lavigne tonight.  Because it's an awesome song is why!  C'mon just check out these lyrics:  

He was working at the record shop
I would kiss him in the parking lot
Tasting like cigarettes and soda pop
Seventeen
He would tell me I was beautiful
Sneaking in the neighbor's swimming pool
Yeah, he taught me how to break the rules
Seventeen

Hey, those days are long gone
And when I hear this song it takes me back

We were on top of the world
Back when I was your girl
We were living so wild and free
Acting stupid for fun
All we needed was love
That's the way it's supposed to be
Seventeen

Stealing beers out of the trailer park
Flicking lighters just to fight the dark
My favorite place was sitting in his car
Seventeen
We laid a blanket on the roof top
That time I knew I wouldn't make him stop
The nights were cold but we kept 'em hot
Seventeen

Hey, those days are long gone
And when I hear this song it takes me back

We were running red lights
We were going all night
Didn't care about anything
'Cause it was you and me
We were living our dream
And we were seventeen

Oh, oh, oh, oh...
Seventeen
Oh, oh, oh, oh...
Seventeen

I remember what it felt like
Just a small town kind of life
If I could only just go back in time,
Seventeen

Seventeen
Seventeen
Seventeen 

Compared to other songs on commercial pop radio, the simplicity and the sentiment of "17" have more in common with The Ramones which, combined with a super-catchy tune, makes it a perfect fit for ALL KINDSA GIRLS!

Click the link below to stream/download tonight's show:
ALL KINDSA GIRLS SHOW #150

Show #149 May 28, 2016

This one's for Maryann and Bruce Brodeen's Not Lame Records! 

Maryann- Cherry Twister At Home With Cherry Twister 
In Search of Alter Egos- The Well Wishers Under the Arrows 
Praises- The Rooks A Double Dose of Pop!
Hologram Sam- Martin Luther Lennon Music for a World Without Limitations 
Dragonfly- The Sun Sawed in 1/2 Fizzy Lift 
Good Day to the Night- Myracle Brah Life on Planet Eartsnop 
Show Me Your Love- The Chevelles At Second Glance 
Smile- Wanderlust Wanderlust 
^Not Just Another Pretty Face- The Rubinoos The Basement Tapes Plus 
Disarray- Tommy Keene Drowning 
Goodbye California- Hawks Perfect World Radio 
RU Recieving- The Shazam Godspeed the Shazam 
Angels and Helicopters- Mockingbirds Mockingbirds 
Train- Flamingo Flamingo 
You're the One- Michael Carpenter Baby 
Everytime You Are With Me- Idle Jets Atomic Fireball 
Second Dimension- Cliff Hillis Be Seeing You 
Saccharine- Receiver Inspiration Overload 
Stain- The Dons Dawn of the Dons 
This Is What You Get- The JTG Implosion All the People Some of the Time
Nanny's Caddy- Model Rockets Tell the Kids the Cops Are Here 
Sixteen's Gone- Barely Pink Last Day of Summer 
Time Won't Come Back- The Deal Goodbye September 
>I Remember A Time- Blue Ash Around Again 
Helping Hand- Reddy Teddy/Matthew MacKenzie Teddy Boy
Beautiful One- Virginia Sisters Last Pathetic Fool 
Good Rumors- The Toms Simplicity 
More- Doug Powell More 

^Power Pop Peak (a stretch, but hey the band had Top 40 hits)

SacroSet[s]:  ALL (Every song is from a Not Lame Records release)

>Power Pop Prototype:  1973

The mid-90's are kind of a blur for me music-wise.  My San Francisco radio station was sold out from under me in 1994, we moved to Sonoma for my new job in April 1995 and my son was born in November of that year.  It was about this time that I completely lost touch with underground music- don't judge unless you've lived in a small town with a high-maintenance infant.  It was a big deal for me the following year when I first heard Sloan's One Chord To Another while shopping at Nuggets in Boston with Cousin Rich.  (I still LOVE that record!)  Looking back now, I think Sloan and Fountains of Wayne were the only two new bands I discovered in my first two years of fatherhood.  I'm not complaining, but it was a pretty big change from the way things had been when I was living in Boston, Rochester and San Francisco.

I had always loved Power Pop as much as Punk Rock, but by the early 90's I wasn't buying many punk records anymore. During our courtship, Jaime and I bonded over our mutual love of Matthew Sweet's 1991 opus Girlfriend, regarded as one of the genre's top records.  One of the many things I love about the movie Diner is how Eddie's fiancee has to pass a Baltimore Colts trivia test before he will consent to marry her.  While Jaime might not have passed a similar music-themed challenge, it didn't hurt that Diner was her favorite movie and she loved both Girlfriend (her favorite song is "Winona") and Big Star's #1 Record (her favorite is "Thirteen").  While its title, as well as the band's name, was meant to be ironic in 1972, I am not alone in my personal ranking of #1 Record as the greatest Power Pop album of all-time. 

Despite a nearly lifelong love of Power Pop, in the chaos of new fatherhood I was not aware of the debut of Not Lame Records in November 1994.  A record label dedicated solely to Power Pop and I missed it completely!  To be fair, this was before the Interweb and I was 3000 miles away from Cousin Rich, who always seems to be able to keep up with new music.  Needless to say, in Sonoma we weren't talking about the new Jellyfish album on playdates because all new parents EVER talk about is their kids, myself included.  Not Lame was based in Ft. Collins, Colorado and started by a guy name Bruce Brodeen.  

Researching the Not Lame label for this show, I came across a few patterns in its releases.  Along with records by existing bands (The Rooks, The Shazam) and debuts from new discoveries (Cherry Twister, The Well Wishers), the Not Lame catalog includes :

• Demos/B-sides/Rarities/Unreleased tracks by artists that had varying degrees of success on major labels including Dwight Twilley,
  The Rubinoos, The Posies, Jellyfish, Tommy Keene and Blue Ash.

• Second albums by bands that were major label "one and dones" like Wanderlust (RCA), Myracle Brah (whose leader Andy Bopp was in the Interscope Records band Lovenut), and Parthenon Huxley (Columbia).

• Singer/Songwriters like Michael Carpenter (4 Not Lame releases), Doug Powell (2), Martin Luther Lennon (2), Bobby Sutliff (2), Ken Sharp and Joe Giddings (1 each).

• Compilations, tons of great compilations like the one at the top of this post, the annual International Pop Overthrow albums and my favorite, Nashpop. 

And from out of left field comes what has to be one of the most obscure releases on the label (and one of my favorites): a two-CD compilation of Boston band Reddy Teddy called Teddy Boy.  The group was Boston's answer to the New York Dolls and their self-titled 1977 debut would likely be gone forever had Bruce Brodeen not rescued it from the dustbin of history.

Bruce Brodeen's Not Lame Records released over 100 Power Pop albums in the 16 years of its existence and he continues to support the genre with his website Pop Geek Heaven.  No one has done more for Power Pop than Bruce Brodeen.

THANKS BRUCE!!

Click the link below to stream the show or to download, right click and "Save Link As"
ALL KINDSA GIRLS #149