The Rousers - A Treat of a New Beat
#332
1980 Housekeeping
The Rousers
A Treat of a New Beat
Genre: The Japers
4 out of 5
Highlights:
Leave Us Alone
Ain’t Got a Minute to Lose
Ann-Louise
Take that mod-revival sound and rev it up and you get The Vapors, right? (Btw, The Vapors released a new album!!! in 2020 and there’s a couple really good tracks on it.) Following that model, here’s The Rousers.
This is their only release and, that’s par for the course with this style, right? The last vestiges of Power Pop’s heyday, the long tail of “Peggy Sue” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” resurged with power pop and, if we think about it, it makes sense.
You’re a 10 year old falling under the spell of The Beatles in 1966. You get a guitar and you start making music, writing songs, playing with your pals and by the time you’re 24, you’ve got a slew of songs in that idiom and it’s 1980. And you’ve been watching and listening to Dave Fenton and Paul Weller and Doug Fieger, just like the guys in The Late Show and The Jags and The Heats and Sorrows…It’s a delicious form.
And it’s coming to an end in 1980.
It will have a big resurgence by the 10 year olds who heard it but that’s about 20 years away.
“Magazine Girl” is a fine example but also points to a small sub-genre of themes in rock music: The girl in the porno mag. J. Geils’ “Centerfold” and Abercrombie’s “Porn Star” Everclear’s “Volvo Driving Soccer Mom”…there’s a ton of these…and all of them better than The Rousers’.
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