#302/1427
July 1986
The Smithereens
Especially for You
Genre: Power Pop
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Behind the Wall of Sleep
Blood and Roses
Crazy Mixed Up Kid
We don’t do EPs here at The Listening Post so something like this record, by a band that had been putting out music and touring it for 5 years prior, is the first representation.
There is a song by the Smithereens in the movie, “Class of Nuke ‘em High”. That was my first exposure to the band. We saw it in the theater. Because our manager at the video store wrote it. He was somewhat embarrassed. I was in awe and brimming with envy. I adored fringe movies, cult movies, underground music, the stuff that existed in the edges. Maybe it’s because I related. I don’t know.
It wasn’t until years later that The Smithereens came back upon my radar, when Pat DiNizio was tapped as a programmer/Curator for the newly minted XM Radio.
Sometimes DiNizio sounds like he desperately wants to be My Aim is True era Costello. Can’t say I blame him.
Side One is good. Side Two is spectacular.
Are The Smithereens anything more than a revival of Power Pop? Isn’t this what Shoes were doing just 7 years earlier? 20/20? The Records? The lines can be traced backwards to The Bay City Rollers and Raspberries 14 years before and forward to Jellyfish and The Andersons and Chewy Marble and a host of others about 14 years later. Smack dab in the middle? The Smithereens. Not as great as either of those sides of the previous or next decades but a pretty fair placeholder.
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