Interview: David Laing
Discussing The New Power Pop Box Set, 'I Wanna Be A Teen Again'
David Laing first discovered power pop as a teen during the late-‘70s and early ‘80s golden era.
Now he’s bringing a lifetime of fandom and his deep knowledge about the genre to I Wanna Be A Teen Again, the new 3-CD box set he curated. The 78-song collection—named after a 1981 track by The Toms—is available July 18 from Cherry Red Records.
“Being a fan of all manner of rock and roll, power pop is not the only stuff I listen to, and I don't have a lot of patience for average stuff, but it's probably my favorite sort of music,” Laing told me for the interview below.
“For me it has to have a strong rock and roll base, like The Beatles and The Who did, and like Flamin’ Groovies, Raspberries, Blue Ash and those great '70s bands did. I like a lot of other pop too, but to me power pop is a form of rock and roll and that has to be part of it.”
The expansive collection includes a mix of tracks by genre legends and gems by lesser-known artists.
Flamin’ Groovies, Cheap Trick, The Go-Go’s, and The Knack share the spotlight with acts like The Pranks, The Everythingers, and The Patriots. Taken all together—and contextualized by extensive liner notes—I Wanna Be A Teen Again delivers a detailed snapshot of how power pop evolved (and slowly disappeared) throughout the ‘80s.
“Given that I had 3 CDs to fill and the rule was one track per artist, it was a great opportunity to dig deep and include a lot of stuff that wouldn't normally get a look in, but again, I have to stress, it came down to the quality of the song. Some of the obscure stuff is incredible,” Laing said.
I caught up with Laing (who is an occasional contributor to Remember The Lightning) by email from Australia to discuss the new box set, his approach to choosing songs for this collection, and some of his favorite tracks from the ‘80s.
“I see power pop as a song based thing, so strength of the song was key. No obscurities were included for the sake of their obscurity. I wanted to have all the key band's represented…”
David Laing Interview
Congrats on the great new power pop collection! What inspired you to put I Wanna Be A Teen Again together?
David Laing: Basically, I've been a power pop since fan since mid-1979, when I was 14 and first introduced to the concept in an article on Adelaide band Young Modern. Being a fan of the early Beatles stuff, the concept as described in that piece (which quoted Greg Shaw's writing on the subject in Bomp! and which referenced both Flamin' Groovies and Big Star) excited me, so I went in search of it. I guess I'd already been primed by Cheap Trick's “Surrender,” although I didn't know that music had a name.
I fell in love with Young Modern (and still am), and of course, power pop was all really starting to happen then. Soon I was buying Bomp! singles and reading Bomp! magazine and obsessed. The Flamin’ Groovies' Shake Some Action LP was floating around as a cut out and that blew my mind completely (as was/did Twilley Don't Mind). I was lucky enough to score a second hand copy of the UK 2LP set with the first two Big Star records early on, and I found Raspberries' Fresh at a trash and treasure market and was so embarrassed by the white suits on the cover that I had to buy two more cheap LPs to cover it with while I was walking around. But I loved the record and soon found Raspberries Best which has the greatest four song opening salvo of any record ever. I also stumbled on the Sire reissue of Black Vinyl Shoes. Then The Knack came along—they were alright, but not my faves—and The Records, and Bram Tchaikovsky’s incredible “Girl Of My Dreams.”
“(S)ince the mid-’60s, the stuff that we now call power pop has been unpopular and unfashionable. Most of these artists are also completely obsessed about the music too, and obsession is something I find attractive in music.”
What made you want to focus specifically on the '80s? Why only focus on North American power pop?
David Laing: The '70s idea was already done as far as Cherry Red went, which still depresses me as the '70s is ultimately my favorite decade musically and I would LOVE to have been able to do that one. It would have been very different. And the North American idea came from the label too. It was originally "American,” but by adding Canada in there I was able to expand it a bit. I would have preferred to look at the international picture because, as much if not more than any other form of music, power pop doesn't really have a strong geographic base. The music that originally inspired it—The Beatles and The Who, etc.—was British but based on American influences. And one of the strongest influences that has carried through is that of the American '70s bands—Raspberries, Big Star, etc.—who took that English influence and sort of Americanized it. So, it went back and forth.
I'd love to have included some UK stuff (I snuck in Katrina & The Waves’ majestic "Do You Want Crying" on the basis that I reckon you can call them British-American because half the band was American) and I would of course loved to have included some Australian stuff, including The Innocents' peerless "Sooner or Later" and The Hitmen's undeservedly under-heard "Didn't Tell The Man." (I snuck in Radio Birdman/Hitmen guitarist Chris Masuak's sublime Groovies homage "How Could He Resist" on the basis of Chris being Canadian born and bred—he came to Australia with his family in his teens and now lives in Spain.)
The track list combines an exciting mix of well-known artists and songs with some more obscure selections. What was your approach in putting this collection together?
David Laing: I see power pop as a song based thing, so strength of the song was key. No obscurities were included for the sake of their obscurity. I wanted to have all the key band's represented and while I didn't make a point of not including the "hits" (I couldn't go past "Precious to Me" for Phil Seymour, for instance) if there was something that was less exposed but equally as good I went for that. The Romantics and The Go-Gos tracks are probably good examples of that. And The Bangles—I think their pre-hit stuff is much better sounding than the more familiar stuff. You have to remember too that with some bands such as Cheap Trick, The Knack, Ramones, Dwight Twilley, The Beat, and the collection's cover stars The Rubinoos, their best known songs were from the previous decade so didn't qualify. Which was mostly fine. I think "I Want Ya" is The Knack's best track anyway.
The Stiv Bators single that opens it is an all time fave—the great Frank Secich from Blue Ash was his musical partner at the time, they were old friends and the two Stiv singles on Bomp! are as good as it gets. Things like The Michael Guthrie Band, The Patriots, The Infidels, Flying Color, The Decoys, Eddy Best, The Wigs, Promise, and Moondogs are amongst my favorite things on there. The Fad track, which Ray at Kool Kat put me onto and was one of a handful of tracks I didn't know when I started working on this, is an absolute gem, lo-fi sound notwithstanding.
And it was great to be able to legitimately release a track by Jeffrey Foskett and Randell Kierch's band The Pranks! Oh and one of my very favorite tracks is by The Everythingers, a Toledo band who have never had anything released before. Your readers will know Steve Rosenbaum who was in the band (and who turned me onto the track) but the main guy was Tom Caufield, who I think must be a bit of an unheralded melodic genius. The track is not well recorded—it was an 8-track studio, but as Tom says he went crazy with the high end compressor—so it's weird sounding, but it's such a great song I really wanted it on there!
Anything you wanted to include, but couldn’t?
David Laing: There were a few things I wanted to include but Cherry Red were unable to secure. "Do You Say Love" by the great Holly & the Italians, "She's Just My Baby" by Artful Dodger (I was able to get a solo Gary Herriweg track so at least AD are sort of represented) and the MINDBLOWING "Bye Bye Baby" by Ohio band The Wombats, originally a 45 on Greg Shaw's Voxx label, and an absolutely untouchable, over-the-top, two-pronged rush of sugar and adrenaline; they're the three off the top of my head that I really wish were on there. Also the great "Deliver Me" by Canada's Jeffrey Hatcher & The Big Beat ( Jeffrey re-recorded “Deliver Me” when in The Blue Shadows with Billy Cowsill in the '90s and as I said in my piece on the Country-Power Pop nexus in Remember The Lightning—A Guitar Pop Journal, Vol. 1, that track deserves to be covered by every 12-string slinging group on the planet.)
Oh, and "Way Over My Head" by Flamin' Groovies, which was originally released on an Australian-only 45 when they toured here—unbelievably—in '86. That tour was a huge thing for me, even if it was a new and perhaps not as great line-up. At the first show I saw on that tour—I got a lift to Adelaide to see them with The Huxton Creepers who were opening—I saw they were selling fully signed copies of a new single so I blew all my beer money for the trip and bought 10 copies. I still think that's a killer single. And The Lemon Twigs seem to agree, so it would've been doubly great to include it, but Cyril Jordan said no to any recordings by that line-up so I got the B side of the last single by the classic Chris Wilson line-up instead.
There are also three, maybe four artists on there that I sort of felt compelled to include to keep the cognoscenti happy. Bloody peer group pressure. Their tracks are fine, but not up to par with the other 74-75. I'll let you or your readers figure out which if you could be bothered.
“(B)y the second half of the ‘80s power pop was a real rarity. I remember hearing things like ‘Dear Friend’ by Flying Color and ‘I Can't Make You Mine’ by The Infidels and the first Someloves single on Citadel for the first time and it felt like a big deal...”
The press materials describe late '80s power pop artists as "the pop equivalent of the soldiers lost in the jungle after the war had ended…" Can you expand on that?
David Laing: Ha. I'm pretty sure that phrasing came from Cherry Red's marketing department. But I know what they mean and that's always been part of the appeal to me. I've always instinctively loved artists who go against the grain of what might be popular or fashionable, and for most of the time since the mid-’60s, the stuff that we now call power pop has been unpopular and unfashionable. Most of these artists are also completely obsessed about the music too, and obsession is something I find attractive in music. I appreciate that sort of commitment. (Not for nothing are Flamin' Groovies one of my all-time faves!)
I guess, though, it depends on what you mean by power pop. Shall we talk about that?! Ha ha. To touch on that, I must admit that, unlike those who seem to find it impossible to acknowledge that the likes of Kiss or Boston ever had a power pop bone in their body, I find something similarly appealing about an artist like that giving us a glimpse of this side of their influences. It doesn't happen often, and I'm not a big fan of the more AOR stuff that some people consider power pop like The Babys—because it's too mature to have that rock and roll spirit—but when a dumb hard rock band decides to let people know they might dig Raspberries or The Easybeats, I'm all for it. Those folks will be happy to know, however, that I was unable to get “Talk to Me,” one of Ace Frehley's finest Move-inspired moments for Kiss, for the compilation.
If you had to choose one '80s artist/song that optimizes power pop in that decade, who would you go with? Why?
David Laing: Hard question. I actually tend to like ‘70s stuff more, so my favorites tend to sound more '70s, like the Stiv Bators and Knack tracks I previously mentioned. And really, the early '80s stuff is kind of a hangover from the late '70s anyway—the big power pop explosion was roughly '78-'82 or so—and the first two discs in this set take up 1980 to 1982. So what is more or less the real '80s stuff (7 years of it only takes up one CD). And that stuff shows the broader influences that were coming in anyway, like Beat Rodeo's country influence, The Windbreakers' and Sex Clark Five's indie jangle, Redd Kross's glam... so it's very diverse. Maybe I'd pick "Turn Me On" by The Riff Doctors which has a Mitch Easter production and thus a southern indie thing but it also has a glam stomp to it and it rocks. So that covers most of the bases.
It's weird, actually, because by the second half of the ‘80s power pop was a real rarity. I remember hearing things like "Dear Friend" by Flying Color and "I Can't Make You Mine" by The Infidels and the first Someloves single on Citadel for the first time and it felt like a big deal—it was a rare occurence at that point... Also the Big Star influence—the source of the southern indie thing really, as filtered through the likes of Mitch Easter, Chris Stamey, and then REM—was a dominant sound in the '80s, but maybe more in indie/college rock circles. So maybe that should be a bit better represented on this compilation than it is, but I think a lot of it veers away from power pop.
And speaking of Big Star, I don't remember ANYONE thinking The Replacements were a power pop band back in the day so I wasn't fussed about them, even though “Alex Chilton" might've qualified at a stretch. A great track of course. The Game Theory track "Too Late For Tears" is another possibility for the epitomizing of '80s power pop. They weren’t Southern but had the Big Star thing and Mitch Easter producing and that one really sounds like Scott Miller trying to write a power pop song, so maybe that get's my vote...
In your opinion, who are the current bands doing the best to keep '80s power pop alive in the 2020s?
David Laing: Another hard one. Again it depends on which part of the power pop spectrum you're looking at. The Whiffs definitely have that '78-81 thing down well. The Tinted Windows were what, 10-15 back? But they definitely had it down. Locals for me, The Prize definitely sound early '80s in a power pop Ramones meets power pop Blondie kind of way.
Maybe Redd Kross, who, although they have never been 'just' a power pop band, were there in the '80s and have sort of defined themselves more now with the pop side of thing. Another Melbourne band, Lava Fangs, also have all the early '80s elements and do it well, as do Perth's Rinehearts. I'm sure I'll think of more later...
Is there any chance that we'll get a '90s collection next?
David Laing: I would like to think so and I've thrown my hat into the ring, but by the sound of it others have as well since this one was announced. So, who knows?
I'd really love to go back and do another ‘70s one, and not one that was just with American stuff. We'll see, I guess.
Gah! Great interview and a terrific read but dammit, no Fools Face. Maybe it's just a regional thing but they did get to Los Angeles, they did work their asses off, and they did make three of the finest Power Pop albums EVER. Here to Observe, Tell America, and Public Places are lifeblood to me and should be for everyone else who embraces terrific song craft.
rock and rave on, dave laing!!! cheers, from up over, xxxcm