(Ricki C.'s Rock & Roll Videos You Oughta See will be a continuing feature in pencilstorm, at least until Ricki gets bored or the readership finds a way to make him stop. Videos will be mainly little-seen or off-the-beaten-rock-&-roll-path. Click here for part one.
They're not exactly my answer/reply to Wal Ozello's Top Ten Rock Vocalists, but they all ARE rock & roll songs. None of them are show tunes.
Ricki will provide an intro to the videos of not-more-than-500 words, because we all know it’s impossible for Ricki to try to tell a simple story without going off into 10 different tangents and then forgetting altogether what he’s talking about.)
The Pop! were a mid-to-late 1970’s L.A. band led by Roger Prescott & David Swanson. “Down On The Boulevard” was featured on their self-released indie album released in 1977, and that record is as great a slab of 12-inch vinyl as you’re gonna find coming out of the punk & New Wave days of late 1970’s Los Angeles. They later signed to Arista in the post “My Sharona” FIND-US-THE-NEXT-KNACK-NOW! signing frenzy in the great power-pop boomlet of 1979 & 1980. Arista inexplicably tried to turn a fundamentally great power-pop band into Talking Heads or The Cars, and the resulting album – GO! – was cold, sterile & overproduced. The Pop! were never the same again. This song, however, is great.
Reasons They Never Made It In America – Too long-haired & pop for the punks (plus knew how to tune and actually play their guitars); too punk & not Kiss enough for the great unwashed rock & roll masses.
Optional Extra-Credit Additional Viewing – Enter "The Pop!" plus “Shakeaway” on YouTube.