One of the best quotes I’ve ever read about power pop.

Image from noexpiration.blogspot.com

From Patrick Schabe at popmatters.com:

Fans of pure pop (a/k/a power pop) often act like they’re a tiny breed of specialist music lovers, obscured by mainstream commercial acts and forced to justify their love for, and definition of, “pop” against the media-saturated impressions promoted by the Mickey Mouse Club. And this is basically true. But it’s also true that the pop underground is actually a fairly crowded place, and a fair number of labels and musicians cater to we much-beleaguered popsters. This double whammy of minimal exposure and proliferation of artists working in the cracks of the industry often means that exceptional music gets overlooked as often as pabulum gets derided.

And then there’s the pop fan’s rallying cry: “If there was any justice in the world, (insert band here) would be on the radio every day!” But commercialism and corporations rule the day, and many bands that have all the right combinations of talent, style, and a killer melody/harmony one-two punch are shuffled off to the sidelines to watch media magnets gain all the fame and glory. So it’s left to us, the rueful and world-weary pop audiences, to assemble our own small community networks to fight the power. The best that we can hope for is to draw each other’s attention to bands that we may have missed.