Even More Freebies From the Archives - Downloadable Bandcampers - Phase 3

Perhaps you doubted us. Perhaps we doubted ourselves. Perhaps we waited too long. Perhaps we didn't wait long enough. But here we are, hat and fappy and thrusting and bursting with more free & legal downloadables we've rounded up from the Powerpopulist Archives. We just now checked each and every and verified that all are indeed available for either Free or Name-Your-Price Download. Clicking /////bc will take you to the appropriate Bandcamp download page. As before, if you get to Bandcamp and find a song has a price attached, do one of three things: 1) Click "Buy the Full Digital Album" and be taken to the page where it's downloadable for free or name-your-price (in which case, type "0"in the pricebox); 2) Click the album name just under the song name at the top left-hand side of the Bandcamp page; 3) Pay money to buy the song. We attach no particular importance to the number of songs in this Phase 3 playlist (69); that's simply the way it turned out. Most of the songs are powerpop, indiepop. janglepop, and other kinds of hooky, melodic pop, but this list is a bit more varied than the previous two. It includes some shoegaze, some crunch, and even has a wad of bubblegum stuck in there somewhere. We hope you find plenty to cop, feel, and flow with dopaminiacally. Oh, and, yes, we do have the aforepromised SoundCloud and straight mp3-linked downloadable playlists pretty much ready to post, and when that will be done is anybody's guess. Doubt us do ye? Good move. Click appropriately to find the 50 free and legals in Phase 1 and 50 more in Phase 2.

More Freebies From the Archives - Downloadable Bandcampers - Phase 2

As promised, here are 50 more free and legal downloadables from the Powerpopulist Archives. Most are powerpop, janglepop, indiepop, and other kinds of hooky melodic pop.  Clicking /////bc will take you to the Bandcamp page where you can download the song. If you find a pricetag attached there, click either a) Buy the Full Digital Album or b) the album name just under the song name at the top left of the page. We tested all 50 songs just before posting and found them all to be either Free Downloads or Name Your Price (in which case, simply type "0" in the price box). The first 50 freebies are available here (along with some blather about this From the Archives project). If you'd like to work from the playlist in a larger format over at Playmoss, click here. Happy listening, smashing, and grabbing.

Freebies From the Archives: Downloadable Bandcampers - Phase 1

We prowled back through the Powerpopulist Archives and found a bootyload of free powerpop, janglepop, indiepop, and other hooky melodic pop favorites still alive and ready. At post-time, all of the 50 songs below are available for free download. Clicking /////bc will take you to the Bandcamp page where you can download the song. If you find a pricetag attached there, click either a) Buy the Full Digital Album or b) the album name just under the song name at the top left of the page. We tested all 50 songs just before posting and found them still to be either Free Downloads or Name Your Price (in which case, simply type "0" in the price box). Oh, and if the widget below feels a bit cramped, here's the full-size page at Playmoss. We've got more to say but are saying it below the widget.

We already got too wordy up there but wanted to say a little more.

We started this "From the Archives" feature in the early days of Powerpopulist. New visitors kept arriving, and we wanted them to be able to hear freebies we'd already posted that they might like to hear and/or download. We did the feature fairly regularly, but once the Age of Widget took hold, we for some reason let the feature slide.

So we've just spent--and are still spending--many hours combing back though old posts and frankly feel rather well-groomed. There's still tons of tuneage that continues to please us and might well do the same to you. We've picked up quite a few followers and visitors via Facebook, and many of them probably aren't a) aware of how much music we've posted or b) enthusiastic about digging back through twelve years of posts to see what's there.

We've found it to be an endeavor pleasing, yes, but not for the short-of-patience or faint-of-heart. Along with the pleasure came much pain. Cherished favorites had dropped their links or (gasp) completely disappeared from sight. Embed codes had been scrambled so as to create chaotic visuals and deformed widgets. . . . Sorry, just give us a minute. . . . All right, we're okay now. We'd say more but it's just too fucking painful. And fortunately, there is the music that lives on.

Historical Footnote: After posting here a number of our Playmoss playlists, this is the first in which every single song is clickably and easily, freely and legally downloadable. We like that. It takes up less space and it gives you the chance to click through quickly, listen at length if you like, and grab the ones you want for your music library. We're gonna do more of it. (See below.) So, like, TA-DA!

Yes, we've got more of these From the Archives posts coming in the near future. After one or two more Bandcamp-based posts, we've got one coming of SoundCloud freebies, plus one or more of the old-fashioned word-based mp3 links that were the staple of this and other music blogs earlier in the century. Then came the Age of Widget, at Powerpopulist on Monday, May 16, 2011. (So bravo for M. Thibault Stillinrock, who carries on the venerable tradition over at . . . Still in Rock!)

We've said this many times before, but in case we didn't include songs that plunk your particular twanger, clicking /////bc will often take you to other songs and albums by the artists that might suit you better. In the case of compilations, you'll be exposed to oodles more artists, as well.

We also say it ad infinitum but ad reallymeanitum: Abundant thanks to the artists who made and continue to make their fabulous music available, whether for free or for purchase. Because, yeah, we do purchase quite a lot of music, as you can see here (another feature we perhaps need to revive) and at Bandcamp. We also buy from labels, online stores, Amazon and, as a last resort, iTunes.

Spaced-Based Powerpop Playlist

Over at the Facebook I Love Power Pop group, Adrienne Meddock of The Beef People issued a challenge: "Can you pick 5 power pop songs with a space theme for my contest over at my blog?" The answer: Why, yes, yes, we can, and then some. Since she herself came up with a list of 13, so did we. It could have been much, much longer, but this'll do for now. BTW, we realize that final song isn't really pure double p, but it's close enough and besides, it touches our tiny, alienated hearts.

Update, a few hours later: A hearty "ribbit" to one TubaFrog for the recommendation of Zolar X, now snuggled into and pushing the number of songs in the mix to 14.

2017 Powerpopulist Faves

Tired of end-of-year lists? No? Well goody goody 'cause here's one we think you'll like. We sure did because it's, like, ours, duh: our very favorite powerpop, indiepop, janglepop, psychpop, whateverpop songs of 2017. Every song's a personal eargasm, so that's a groovy skyrockets-in-flight kind of thing. As suggested below, this is not a ranking but more of a chronology by release and discovery.

"Whaaaaaaat, only 109 songs??? You're a piker, pp."

Yeah, but we've listened to (or sampled) thousands of new songs this year and cried crocotears leaving out dearly beloveds from the list. So this is actually quite a winnowing, a harvesting, a curation, if you will. Only the choicest numbers for y/our delectation. Plus also there's actually more than 109. (See below.) Plus you can go to our Powerpopulist Playmoss Collection to see/hear monthly favorites and genre-specific playlists. Oodles of them.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy. The songs are listed pretty close to the order in which we discovered them, although songs by the same artist are grouped together. And btw, Playmoss wouldn't show the artist name for some of the songs, so here is that valuable information

#8 - Tobin Sprout - Future Boy Today/Man Of Tomorrow

40 - R. Stevie Moore & Jason Falkner - Horror Show

42 - Wiretree - J. F. Sebastian

45 - Alain Pire Experience - The Sun Don't Shine

78 - Walker Brigade - Voodoo Doll

Also, Playmoss wouldn't smoothly play some of our faves, so we're adding them below. So, yeah, there are actually more than 109.

Bandname = Free Machines

Here's wishing you a Great New Year, musically and otherwise.

Not Peeved at The Peeves, No, No, Far From

For some reason some body just followed us on Twitter, and through them we were led to a really fun power pop radio show blasting out of Northwestern University's WNUR in Evanston/Chicago. It's called The Power Pop Shoppe Radio Show, and make no mistake, DJ Gil serves pretty pure platters of the double p.

We were arrested midshow by Chicago band The Peeves and found it necessary to track them down and see if they'd cooked up any downloadables. Well, guess what: we found the very one that got us chuffed and cuffed, along with three more name-your-pricers, all available within the widget below .

The Toms - Think About Me

Free download & excellent review at 

Still in Rock

From: Las Vegas

Bandcamp Discography

Facebook

OUTTACONTROLLER, Double P's, & Quad P

Below are our favorites by these excellent Halifax poppunkers. Now that powerpop guru David Bash has given the double-p imprimatur to The Ramones, we feel all kinds of freed up.

We also rather dig #'s 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, & 14, fwiw!!!!!

I think we found the following up in Pop Geek Heaven, so most of you have probably already seen them. This blog being what it is - or isn't - though, we're embedding them here, too, just for, you know, the historical record. They got us deeply involved in The Best Show for a good bit of the past year, much to our bemusement.

And since the voice of the caller is that of Superchunk's Jon Wurster, we feel compelled/inspired to play our favorite tune by the 'chunk. Whattasong.