O My Soul

Lets talk music, and my favorite genre, pop.

I'm listening to a live Big Star show from Columbia, Missouri. If you don't know Big Star, and shame on you if you don't, but if you don't they are kinda like poppy Rolling Stones, Faces, Replacements, REM, some Matchbox 20, got it? If you've seen That '70's Show then you've heard them, they do the theme song, "Hangin' Out, Down the Street/Same Old Thing, You Did Last Week!

The point of this is to declare that I will always love pop music in its many forms, from bubble gum, to standards, to power pop to punk pop, from Mowtown to Sun and Stax to IRS and Sub Pop to Def Jam. It gets such a bad name, but if you think about it everything you see on TV or hear on the radio is pop. Like it or not pop, short for Popular is sold in mass retailers, so if you get your White Stripes album home in a Wal Mart bag or download if from MSN you've just bought a pop record. And there is nothing wrong with that, you're dumb friends might give you a load of crap, but look at their CD shelf, I bet there's a Gin Blossoms record. If not just slam 'em for liking The Beatles.

Everybody wants to like someone that isn't mainstream, so you can be all edgy and fresh. So I did an experiment, without even knowing. I decided to check out Target's CD section. I do this from time to time at my local record store, but at Target its different. I want to see what the chain's are pushing, and I wanted to price some albums I wanted to buy from Monster (formerly Manifest) my locally owned and operated disc dealer. So I look around and thought, oh you know lets see how much Coldplay's X&Y is... $11.99 I paid two dollars too much in some people's eyes, but in my eyes I have just given two dollars back to the balance. I bet I got Bright Eyes for cheaper than anyone. While most were shilling out $8.00 I got mines for $6.00.

Here comes the real tough one though. I want Ben Harper's latest and the live album from Hollywood Bowl. Target doesn't have a Ben Harper section. I thought he was a little more mainstream. And I still do, when 15 year old girls are singing Jah Work... I figure he's gone into a level of Phish and DMB, not that there's anything wrong with that. I bought my first Ben Harper record, his second before it came out. I got a promo disc, from Manifest in Cola, my freshman year, ten years ago. I remember bringing him into my circle of friends on the way to see DMB and Ben Harper. Turns out Ben Harper opened the first half of the tour, and current blues man Corey Harris opened the second half. Oh well, I still won, I discovered Ben Harper and watched his growth into supposed underground giant.

So I started wondering after I day dreamed about Ben, do they carry Ben Folds (Five)? No, Sonic Youth, no. Okay that was stretching it. But thirteen years ago, I bet some Target's had Sonic Youth, when Nirvana made them popular. Are my tastes that off the regular pop landscape, I don't think so. They had rows of Coldplay, Joss Stone, Jack Johnson, even some Chris Isaak, Rob Thomas, and U2. My kind of pop knows not about popularity, just about the definition, I suppose. But here we come back to Big Star. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe not. While looking around the B's I see a familiar title. Big Star: #1 Record/Radio City. You can't find Big Star on the radio, but there they are at Target. Granted it was only one copy and there wasn't a plackard declairing its position, but it sat their just as unpopular to Hillary Duff as George Benson sits looking at Alicia Keys.

O My Soul -- Big Star