Jangle Pop: "Little Rage," The Mice (1987)

Cleveland based mid-'80s jangle pop and/or power pop trio. Brothers Bill (guitar/vocals) and Tommy Fox (drums/vocals) and Ken Hall (bassist/vocals) start a band, specializing in covers of The Beatles, The Who, and The Ramones. The underdog superhero vocals are key. Peak moment for the band: "Little Rage" featured on a joint single with Yo La Tengo in 1987. Another golden jangle pop moment, another non-one-hit-wonder come and gone. 

Jangle pop goes back to 1964-65, Byrds and Beatles (Jackie DeShannon and Carol Kaye), and is based on but not limited to the sound affects of a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, or according to novelist Michael Chabon anyway. I'd still vouch for his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000); and enjoyed his novel Telegraph Avenue (2012) about a record store always on the verge of going under. But I don't know anything beyond that and I didn't like the Wonder Boys movie. Nonetheless, after spending an evening with his 100 song playlist of jangle pop history I'm ready to thank him for a sweet tour through this sub-genre of often maligned guitar pop and conclude Chabon knows jangle pop a lot better than I do.

My introduction to the jangle pop timeline was the late-'70s, early-'80s window, Tom Petty, Shoes, REM, The Dream Syndicate, Soft Boys, like that. In 1980 I felt like Chrissie Hynde doing "Stop Your Sobbing" was the single perfect capsulization of jangle pop history as far as I'd come to know it at that time. I loved that electrified "The Bells of Rhymney" folk rock sound, and even better with some Mod max r&b new wave energy like The Pretenders underneath it. Come to think of it, I felt more or less the same about the Pretenders' Kinks cover as I did about The Records "Starry Eyes" from 1979. This was a jangle pop/power pop golden age for me; uptempo jangle pop, Punk/new wave jangle pop that pushes tempo. I loved that stuff. 

So I know most of Chabon's jangle pop playlist from its beginnings up to REM or the Smiths or The Jayhawks, even if I might have gone sometimes myself with different songs. But to be honest, the formula of jangle pop (and power pop, for that matter) did eventually wear out on me some and I began somewhere in the late '80s or early '90s to tune a lot of it out. After that when some jangle pop (or power pop) would come to my attention I was more jaded and harder to please. With old crank cliche attitudes about the most popular stuff of the day, none of whom I will waste your time by insulting again now.

Bonus then that Chabon's 100 song playlist not only includes a lot of the old classics I already knew and loved but some sweet new discoveries for me too. This gem from '87. The Mice from Cleveland. A 2003 release on Rough Trade from the Delays, the lead guy has since sadly passed, called "Hey Girl."  Heavenly vocal group jangle pop. And Warren Zevon, of all people, from 1966, Lyme & Cybelle, "Follow Me."  Chabon appears to be a serious fan and excavator of the deep jangle pop tracks. 

There are probably such playlists out there that find more contemporary 21st century jangle pop but this is a big drink of the 1960s through 1990s stuff. Check out Chabon's fun history of the genre and overview of the guitar sounds that make jangle pop on substack. 

Take Two: "Red Lights," Marbles (1976): 

"I would sell my mother for a chance to play guitar in his band

We're still playing all the old songs in the garage but it's just a mirage."

Whose band? A song about wanting to make hit records or play with the kind of guy who makes hit records. They want to play with the guy with the "Red, Red Lights in his eyes," in "his band"; not so much Joey Ramone but this mythical figure with the Red Lights of rock stardom in his eyes. This could be the singer, Eric Li, but he sounds doubtful.

The Marbles stardom constituted being regular headliners at CBGB's and Max's Kansas City in NYC 1976-1977. They made a shambolic power pop garage rock sound, serviceable, running on amateurish enthusiasm and proficiency. It works but it's not the special part. The special part is the lead vocal and multi-part harmonies; the call and response between them. The contrast of the slow building and frail lead vocal lifted up by the rough multi-part vocal harmonies, including two brothers. A total knockout. 

The group harmonies are triumphant. Beatlesque in the best sense; a whole greater than its parts. "Red Lights" is a power pop, jangle pop, woulda/coulda/shoulda been smasharoo from 1976 but it came out on a small independent record label, Ork Records, and disappeared. Not that I'm blaming Ork Records. They deserve credit for documenting this fragile retro-futurist gem of a record, and nearly four dozen other punk/new wave/power pop songs orbiting around CBGB's in the late '70s.  

Also ROIR Cassettes, where I first heard "Red Lights" as a standout track on their 1982 comp called The Great New York Singles Scene. In 1976 the Marbles were pre-Knack proto-New Wave band in their ties and Beatles' haircuts. There is a whiff of Sha Na Na oldies about them but the rough uncut diamond glitter of their 4-part harmonies makes it new and eternal rock & roll. 

I can't find much else by the Marbles. Try "Computer Games" or "Fire and Smoke." The bassist, Jim Clifford, shares ten songs the Marble's made between 1975 and 1978 and might be the only guy in the world trying to keep alive their memory. The lead singer, Eric Li, the contrast of his downcast vulnerability with Howard and David Bowler's brother harmonies absolutely key to the heroic underdog Marbles sound, dies of a drug overdose in 1989. Impossible now not to hear this as his song. 

Hot Tub Time Machine

 

"Old Guy," Wimps (2015): Kill Rock Stars. House party in a rec room bar; mustachioed and non-mustachioed peoples strutting their stuff. Old time rock&roll as in Amerindie cross-dressing punk rock thriftshop nerds. Also, the Wimps are "The mountains are out today" true-blue Seattleites. Making the most of your frustrations; post-punk power pop. 

"Yes I'm the old guy
at the party, alright
All the stuff you have done
I've seen one thousand times before
No, I'm not your dad
No, I'm not the landlord shutting you down
No, I'm just a man with no plans 

trying to spend some time at night getting out of the house"

Liberatory Zambian 1970s interpretation of American R&B, 1950s-1970s, vocal groups, hard rock, and electric garage jam band soulfulness. WITCH stands for "We Intend To Cause Havoc." Makes me think of Eddy Grant's '60s group, The Equals ("Baby Come Back," "Police On My Back) or The Wailers doing "Simmer Down" (1963). Original Zamrock. 

"It Happens Everyday," The Lemon Drops (1966): From Chicago, formed in high school. Hard-edged sunshine pop. The fuzztone guitars are exquisite. The vocal group next door Nuggets attitude another psychedelic pop ideal in single form. They don't want to hear about it anymore but bash it out with punk style nonetheless. 

"STOP," B.W.H. (1983): Also known as Blackway and Helene; a Dj-producer and his film actress wife. The groove is impossibly tight but it's the spare woozy vocal chorus that throws everything off kilter and gives it that trippy psychedelic feel. Minimalist electro funk masterpiece. Some of the best of Italo-Disco. 

Jazz Dance: The Story Of American Vernacular Dance

By Marshall & Jean Stearns (1966)

"Describing an incident at the Savoy [dance ballroom in Harlem NYC] in 1937, Leon James [Lindy Hop dancer] remarks: 'Dizzy Gillespie was featured in the brass section of Teddy Hill's screaming band. A lot of people had him pegged as a clown, but we loved him. Every time he played a crazy lick, we cut a crazy step to go with it. And he dug us and blew even crazier stuff to see if we could dance to it, a kind of game, with the musicians and dancers challenging each other. 

One of the reasons for the early development of great big-band jazz at the Savoy was the presence of great dancers" Jazz Dance, page 325 

Largely written by suit & tie Ivy Leaguer Marshall Stearns, but when the writer died suddenly before finishing Jazz Dance, Jean Stearns, also a recognized jazz buff, and Marshall's wife, finishes and publishes his historical opus. I can't even recall for sure where I got the reference but the title definitely came up in one of my turtle-slow reading projects investigating, in this case, the roots of 20th c music in 19th c music. Going in I expected a snobby ballroom dancing take. And wasn't entirely disappointed when Stearns dismisses all rock & roll dancing as sloppy ripoffs of the great dance crazes of the Jazz Age (1920s) and Swing Eras (1930s and 1940s). But by the end of the book I've fully forgiven him. Jazz Dance is a rich history, largely first person (from copious interviews); a history of Black song and dance entertainers and their contributions to Jazz music, going all the way back to the minstrel music performers of the 1830s and 1840s. Actually, Black stars rarely appear on Broadway or in Hollywood up to the 1950s but by the 1920s, despite the racism and segregation, Black music is stylistically dominant in popular music. If it's not Black people playing and performing the music then it's white people trying to play like them. Hot Jazz and the Swing Era were a pinnacle for tap dancing, and another American invention. Few dancers could keep up with the frantic changes in Bebop in the 1950s, though. And tellingly one of the few that could, Cholly Atkins, of Atkins & Coles tap fame in the 1940s and '50s, went on to become the house choreographer for Motown and coached the dancing of such rock & roll stars as the Cadillacs, Shirelles, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Little Anthony & the Imperials, all the way up to the O'Jays and the Sylvers in the disco 1970s. Curiously, there is a chapter devoted to Fred Astaire, who is given his due as a first rate "hoofer" with his own style. But barely a mention in the book of Gene Kelly, maybe because by the 1950s jazz music isn't scoring the big musicals the way it was in Astaire's 1930s? The ending feels abrupt, not surprisingly, given Marshall's premature death. And all the dance crazes while curious wash over me, leaving few to memory. But the power of Black music and dance in the social history of America, overcoming racism to dominate the Jazz Age and Swing Era is a heck of a story and told here with unassuming legibility and dedicated enthusiasm.  

Norma Miller tells the story of how she came to dance at the Savoy when she was 12 years old. 

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson does his "sand dance" on a river boat loaded with cotton bales, transcending his shuffling minstrel image of the happy slave with his own irrepressibly joyful dancing and, coincidentally, the invention of the pogo or pogoing dance style. A 1940s version of Ska-Punkers Fishbone provide backup. From Cabin in the Sky (1943):  

Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin" in peak form but sadly he dies shortly after the release of Stormy Weather (1943). This version of his hoary classic is a long sly blues windup, Fats mugging for the camera, and then an all out boogie-woogie and '20s hot jazz blowout. A living legend at likely his most florid on film: "The joint is jumpin'." 

Fred Astaire says the Nicholas Brothers "Jumpin' Jive" dance with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather is "the greatest movie musical number he'd ever seen." 

The Lindy Hop scene in Hellzapoppin' (1941): A mini jazz history lesson culminating and amalgamating in a dance craze at or near at the pinnacle of the Swing Era. 

* To be honest, I can't whole heartedly recommend any of these movies. Stormy Weather comes closest, for its sheer volume of strong musical performances. But these are big moments in the story Stearns tells. 

Proto-Punk Rock from the Pacific Northwest

 "Baby, you're driving me crazy/I'm going out of my head/you turn me on/then you shut me down/PSYCHO!"

"Psycho," The Sonics (1965). Garage rock from Tacoma, WA and proto-punk rock before the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix & Dylan takeover. The musical inspiration is hard R&B. Richard Berry's original "Louie Louie," a proto-punk rock standard, sports an insistent Afro-Cuban beat; and was made a hit in 1963 by The Kingsman from Portland, OR. The Sonic's put a Little Richards' cover on the B-side of their first single. Honking saxes go back to the Wailers, also from Tacoma, and hot traveling '50s R&B bands. Chuck Berry was an iconic model, although Berry wrote songs about teenagers and these guys actually were teenagers or barely beyond that age. Anyway, they turn up the aggression, or sexual frustration, or spastic psychotic reactions like teenagers. And what they lack in the musical virtuosity of Berry (either one) or Richards they attempt to make up for by banging it all out with a smirky, brash, sneering and slurring swagger. The pounding tempo or "force-beat" on "Psycho" is one bridge between the punk rock classes of '65 and '77.  

Bonus track: "Kicks," Paul Revere & The Raiders (1966); from Boise, ID. First anti-drug and alcohol Straight edge punk rock song?! Fully embracing the British Invasion, the cosplay can be a bit much, apparently, helped the Raiders get on TV and they ended up about as popular as proto-punk rock ever got. Originally "Kicks" was written for The Animals but Eric Burdon turned it down, which off-hand seems like poor judgment. 

"You Keep Me Hangin' On," The Supremes (1966)

The Billboard Disco chart began in late 1974, Gloria Gaynor's "Never Can Say Goodbye," based on a template already established by a Philly Sound, with a big assist from the Temptations/Eddie Kendricks, in 1972. But what was the first disco song or what pre-disco song hinted most at the classic disco sound to come? Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" has some claim, essentially because it got big at David Mancuso's Loft in 1972, generally recognized as the NYC private party danceclub where disco started; or an important early model, anyway. Archie Bell & The Drells were an early disco staple, from "Tighten Up" in '68 to "Let's Groove" in '75. The Isley's "It's Our Thing" in '69 deserves some attention. Uptempo, insistent, even stomping, funky rock & soul was showing the way. But this Supremes nugget-- 1966!-- should not be overlooked. Pathbreaking proto-disco, if you ask me.