What made Milwaukee Smile---The Blow Pops' American Beauties

 

 

I always find it astonishing when I stumble on a great pop band years after the fact. That is exactly what has happened to me with Milwaukee's Blow Pops.

They only released two albums, Charmed I'm Sure, and the topic of this post, American Beauties, which was their sophomore full length, released in 1994 on Get Hip Records. Some groups have an amazing ability to inhabit a sixties pop template years after the fact. I did a post a while back on The Beatifics, a terrific band from Minneapolis, or a band with an advanced degree pop smarts like Champaign, Illinois products Velvet Crush.

I wouldn't say anything groundbreaking on American Beauties, but The Blow Pops have created an album chock full of catchy pop songs that sound like mystery 60's songs that were found on reels in some recording studio vault 20 years after the fact.

When I was a teenager, that was a seemingly tangible musical fantasy. I used to pray that there would be lost Who songs or Beatle songs that would suddenly appear out of mothballs, songs of the caliber of the Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy anthology, or the peerless Revolver. Usually I was listening to those very albums when I thought like this, with the special sort of enthusiasm you have when you fall in love with music for the first time. You're enjoying the music, but you wish there was more!





Unless Neal DeGrasse Tyson is correct about the existence of multiverses, albums like American Beauties are the next best option, the closest thing to an archaeological musical breakthrough we can reasonably expect. If you like The Beatles (I know there must be a few of you out there), Hollies, Byrds, Raspberries, you really can't go wrong with these guys. They make it seem so easy, like pushbutton pop.

Tim Buckley: Guitar, Vocals
Jack Rice: Bass, Vocals
Mike Jarvis: Vocals, Guitar
Nick Randazzo: Drums




Hearing songs like All Night Long, I'm not entirely surprised that Mike Jarvis was at one time a member of Green, the 80s-90's Chicago pop band led by Jeff Lescher. (Their 1st album was reissued by Lion Productions a few years ago)


An essential pop album, which I listened to a lot in the 80's.


Unfortunately, The Blow Pops albums have been out of print for awhile. If you see them being sold for a reasonable price, I would not hesitate. A saving grace is that three of the four members of The Blow Pops have released several more excellent albums of pop music as The Lackloves. The Blow Pops had a reunion back in 2009, but not much has been heard from either band in a while. But they certainly have put together an impressive catalog of pop pearls, well worth your investigation/investment.

Green's 1st Album reissued on CD!!

I'm very pleased to say that Green's eponymous album from 1986 is finally out. Some things are just hard for me to understand. I bought this album on vinyl when it originally came out based on a Christgau review in the Village Voice. Why this has not been available sooner is a complete mystery to me. As far as I know this Chicago band has only been out on CD in the Netherlands and that was many years ago.

This album is an indie pop tour de force, with tons of youthful enthusiasm, giant hooks, fantastic melodies--almost every song is excellent on this cd. Other albums followed this with great reviews, but this is my favorite. Some critics take too much stock in "production values" and use this as a way of being dismissive of this album at least in comparison to Elaine MacKenzie and White Soul lps. These songs are terrific in any form.

Gotta Get A Record Out is an over the top pop song which reminds me of being in a band and dreaming of fame and glory--it reminds me of that scene in "That Thing You Do" where the band and the big elf girl hear their song on the radio for the first time. (I still can't believe Liv Tyler gave up her immortality to go on tour with that one-hit band.)

She's Not A Little Girl Anymore is a classic pop song which sounds like it should have come out in the 1960's. The melody is just perfect. Curry Your Favor and She, Probably are also gems, two aching yearning ballads. For You is probably one of my favorite ballads, period. In descriptive shorthand the band could be stylistically described as a pop oriented Replacements, though certainly there are a lot of other influences going on here (Beatles, Kinks, Byrds).

Other Notable songs are the rave-ups Baby Why?, the excellent Better Way, Big In Japan, I'm Not Going Down (Anymore), If You Love Me, & I Don't Wanna Say No. Also included are 7 bonus tracks including their 1st ep.

I found out about this recently because they were advertising this on the website Parasol records and that was the first place that I had seen this release. And this Lion Productions LLC release has a copyright of 2009 on it. I'm kind of surprised that more hasn't been made of this, reviews in music magazines. Jeff Lescher and the rest of the band really made a terrific album here and people who love pop music will really love this release. Hopefully other Green releases will eventually follow.

Actually, it seems Green recently released their first new album in many years entitled The Planets. I don't have it, but it may be something well worth looking into also.