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. 

"The Lady in the Front Row,' Redd Kross (1993)

 

I became a fan of Power Pop very early on; Beatles, The Who, Badfinger, the Guess Who, like that. My young love for the stuff peaked in the late '70s with Cheap Trick; their album Heaven Tonight (1978) is a platonic ideal of Power Pop in my book. So a version of Beatlesque remains a constant to this day in my affection for the stuff but with a few formal refinements to the prototype formula. Ringing guitars are good but more important than whatever instrumentation is the uptempo insistent and urgent (with the occasional heartbreaker slow one) Mod or rocker-like '60s tempos; The Shoes, The Records, The Bangles, The Veronicas, all still power pop. To be honest, I often find a lot of latter day power pop, neo-Power pop or Pop Punk, too formulaic. But it's still power pop. Power pop doesn't have to have a British accent for me either; although an accent, say, Big Star's Memphis drawl does add welcome flavor. My bare minimum for power pop rests on vocal group harmonies, even if mostly the creation of studio multitracking. I want a group of voices blended together in big chorus harmonies and sing-along hooks. Power pop has to have stacked vocal group harmonies and be semi-fast or hard; not hard like hard rock hard but hard like a Jolly Rancher. So important are the harmonies that they often put over otherwise by-the-numbers 1980s-1990s neo-power pop like this Redd Kross single from their album Phaseshifter (1993). It's those bubblegum sweet rave-up harmonies. Still works for me.