 PreviousNextUNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR DECEMBER 2010: THE POPPEESFor Lucky 13 among these monthly entries, I am going back to 1970’s power pop, mainly because I am really enjoying Pop Goes the Anthology (which came out earlier this year), a retrospective album for one of the pioneering power pop bands, THE POPPEES. Bandleader, rhythm guitarist and sometime drummer Bob Waxman and bass player Paddy Lorenzo first began putzing around New York as part of a cover band in 1972 until they started writing songs together. They ran an ad in theVillage Voice and found lead guitarist Arthur Alexander that way; once Donny Jackrel was brought in, who had been the drummer in their earlier cover band, the Poppees were born. After a few false starts, they were signed by Greg Shaw as the first new band for Bomp! Records – Bomp is still going strong, issuing the Poppees anthology album this year among other great records, and has several allied labels, such as AIP, Alive, Total Energy, etc. The comprehensive website Allmusic (specifically, Mark Deming) says of the Poppees: “[T]hey lasted just long enough to provide a link from the first stirrings of the power pop movement to the dawn of New York’s New Wave scene.” Greg Shaw himself has said: “In its usual fashion, history has over-simplified what happened in New York; the Poppees are a reminder that it wasn’t all ‘blank generation’ posing”. (Blank Generation is the title of the first album by Richard Hell and the Voidoids). But you won’t be thinking about any of that when you hear the Poppees; what will be going through your mind is “Beatles!” In his liner notes for the anthology album, Arthur Alexander recalls that the Village Voice ad that brought him to the band mentioned “must be into the Beatles” – and were they ever! You might miss the connection on individual songs buried on a compilation CD as I did; but put two or three songs together, and there is no doubt that this band loved the Beatles as much as anyone ever has. And not just any Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”-era Beatles. Back in 1973, that was about as unfashionable as it got; but the world would soon catch up with them, and the Poppees found themselves right in the thick of one of the most exciting music scenes in rock history, playing clubs throughout the City, including CBGB, the epicenter of New York’s punk/new wave scene. At the weeklong Easter Rock Festival in April 1976 at the equally storied Max’s Kansas City – with a line-up that makes me salivate just looking it over – the Poppees opened for Blondie and Ramones on Easter Sunday. Bomp! Records released a single for the band in March 1975 (just the third single for Bomp), “If She Cries” b/w “Love of the Loved”. The young producer for the 45, Craig Leon, who also played piano on the “B” side, was the producer for the seminal first album by Ramones the following year. Their second single for Bomp later in 1975 – “Jealousy” b/w “She’s Got It” – was produced by Cyril Jordan of the Flamin’ Groovies; the first 45 on Bomp was by this band and was released in December 1974. Though the Poppees mention “our forthcoming album” during the live tracks on the anthology album, that would have to wait until this year it seems. Though I have had fun trying to pick up which Beatles song is echoing through the tracks on the album, the Poppees are not Beatles imitators or a cover band. Mostly they play their own material; in fact, the closest they ever came to covering a Beatles song is when they recorded “Love of the Loved”, an obscure Lennon/McCartney song that the Beatles never recorded. (Actually, it turns out that this song was included among the 15 songs on their famed Decca Records audition tape; Pete Best was still drumming then, so it wasn’t really the Beatles that we all know at that point). Instead, they passed it along to Cilla Black, a protegé of their manager Brian Epstein who had been a coat-check girl at the legendary Cavern Club, where the Beatles were honing their skills in 1961. Though virtually unknown on these shores, Cilla Black was the only important female artist to emerge from the British Invasion – and the second-biggest-selling recording artist out of Liverpool (after you know who) – and has been a beloved entertainer in England for decades. While “Love of the Loved” wasn’t a big hit, her version of “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, which came out in January 1964, eclipsed the original by Dionne Warwick and became the biggest selling record in Britain by any female artist in history: Cilla Black sold 800,000 copies of the single in England and another 1,000,000 worldwide. “Sad Sad Love” is one of those achingly emotional songs at which John Lennon excelled; two versions of this song are included, and the spare demo version that closes Side 1 of Pop Goes the Anthology might be even better than the studio version. “Since I Fell for You” sounds like a lost Beatles track and is one of the “obscure R&B tunes the Fabs would surely have envied” (as Greg Shaw put it). But the Poppees really hit the mark with their hot fast songs; “She’s So Bad” (recorded live at CBGB) and “She’s Got It” (the “B” side of their second single) recall the fury of the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” (their biggest cover song; the original was by the Isley Brothers). They also turn in a wonderful live version on Side 2 of the instrumental hit from ages ago, “Apache”. |
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