Pure power pop, 20/20 style

Some of my seminal music moments occurred in the garage of my childhood home, where as a teen-ager I lifted weights in hopes of adding muscle and weight to my very slim frame (what I'd give to be so frail and skinny again). 

That didn't work so well, but because I lifted at night I was able to get the faint signal of K100 out of Porterville, a country station by day and adventurous rock at night.

Thanks to the nighttime K100 DJs, I was introduced to new sounds from an L.A. band called 20/20, and in particular, a song called "Yellow Pills." While I was too naive to know what yellow pills were, I was sharp enough to recognize that this music was special.

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“Robert Christgau: Rock n’ Roll Animal”

I stumbled across a fun half-hour 1999 documentary on legendary music critic Robert Christgau the other day (videos below), and thanks to YouTube, was able to watch it in four segments over the course of four days. Consider it snacking rather than bingeing.  

As the documentary suggests, Christgau can be an acquired taste, although the extreme hatred from Russ Smith, publisher of The New York Press seems extreme. I first discovered Christgau in the 1980s, not from reading Village Voice, where he worked for decades, but from his Christgau Record Guides, once-a-decade overviews of popular music.

Above all, the man has enormous passion for his work, and effectively balanced quality with voluminous production. Remarkably, 15 years after this documentary, Christgau is still going strong, feeding his personal website, a seemingly endless trove of remarkable work. 

Amen for that. 

Oasis: A Side and B Side

2014 marks the 20th anniversary of Oasis debuting to the world, and as is often the case with such round anniversaries, we're seeing a stream of 

Two examples worth watching: 

1) "Oasis: Definitely Maybe The Documentary," an hourlong look at one of the great debut albums in rock history, a Beatles-inspired masterpiece powered by two antagonistic brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher. As is the case with many celebratory documentaries, there's an A Side polish that puts the band in a positive light.

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