Ho ho, I bet you didn't think I could finish this week's show on time, but I have n't. But that's because it's not time! I have until noon tomorrow! & I'll be finished with it then! I hope.
No one's really ever asked me about my fascination with indiepop, & where it began, & why I would want to do a never-ending series about it. I'm not sure if I could answer satisfactorily if someone did. Certainly my obsession with alphabetization & with order have something to do with it, but I could easily have done a "postpunk a to z" or a "garage a to z." Why indiepop?
It probably had something to do with a show on KOOP radio called "Ear Candy." It began when I was at KVRX under a person named Tina whom I met only once or twice, but when the two Jennifers took over, it was, for many years, the best thing on a station full of great radio shows. When I became involved at KOOP, I would often sub the show, doing a shabby job no doubt, but generally being nice enough to the women in charge that they let me help out from time-to-time.
But before I knew what "indiepop" was, I did like a lot of twee, naïve music, especially Jonathan Richman. Friends who knew me for years as a fan of the Smiths, Joy Division, Leonard Cohen, etc., thought I had gone crazy when I fell for Jonathan Richman. Because every angsty teen appreciates the first Modern Lovers record, but not too many people can stomach the eight-minute-long version of "Ice Cream Man."
Indiepop was a world with beautiful melodies but often rather dark lyrics. A sprightly song might have some depressing undertones. One friend of mine, who doesn't care much for lyrics, thinks the music is too happy. He once asked me, "Is that all you listen to now, upbeat music?" & trying to explain that to someone who can't hear what I hear is like trying to describe color to the blind.
What strikes me most about this experiment is how good the music is. I'm sure there are some terrible indiepop bands - I mean, if I reject a band for the series, I must not think they're very good - but the ones that make the cut have an excellence that belies their overtly simple trappings. I hope tomorrow's show demonstrates that. I hope all the shows in the series do!
Another entity to give thanks to is Napster. For the few years (or was it months?) that it existed, it enabled me to sample other people's music libraries, including tunes unavailable - or expensive & rare - in the United States. Indiepop is an international phenomenon, but its roots are in the UK. People shared stuff way out of print, & I gobbled it up greedily. Though ethically dubious, it was a grand time for people like me who otherwise wouldn't have known so much existed.
Well, the two Jennifers knew. & I took notes when I listened to their show. & some of those notes, I hope, are what I'm reading off of when I do the Indiepop A To Z show, although one time one of those Jennifers, when I was doing the show with her on Ear Candy, said, "Ugh! This will never end!"
She was right, but, like Edwyn Collins said, just like the Four Tops, I can't help myself.
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