Reviewed by Allen Lulu / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
Released: 1981 The Bings Power Pop Planet Genre: Power Pop Rating: 4 out of 5 Highlights: Please Please Please Oh No! Don’t Stop Dancing (I really love the whole thing) I’m not sure what’s more fun about music besides listening to it. Is it the sharing or the discovery? My experience with The Bings was an explosive combination of the two. One evening, as I was scrolling videos on a kids’ dancing/lip syncing app (yes, I know it’s become a lot more since then, but for the purposes of illustrating how the antediluvian managed to find each other, best to describe it thus) I happened upon a gentleman talking about his band, The Bings and their new CD, Power Pop Planet. Now, mind you, I had taken great pains and a whole lotta time convincing the algorithm to push me stuff I enjoyed: vinyl records, comedy and anything nontroversial. And here was Quint Randle, telling me about this record that had been unearthed thanks to quarantine, tapes that sat dormant and assumed recorded over many years since they were first used, 40 years ago. No, really, the tapes were sitting in a filing cabinet and they took them out, dusted them off and remixed everything. I didn’t scroll past, instead I listened. And then I followed the links down the rabbit hole. And one day I decided to reach out. Because in the age of social media, sometimes you just gotta say, “Hey, this is great!” I was now a fan. When I say that I ‘reached out’, I mean I just slid into his DMs and, with unearned authority, started offering advice. At first Quint was reticent, as he should have been. But, after a while we picked up a nice little relationship. I made some suggestions as to where to submit and I made some entrees, first sending the story to David Bash and then to SW Lauden and I suggested a couple blogs for Quint to submit this amazing discovery to. Enter Quint into the labrynthian yellow brick road of Power Pop. A place where the denizens write furiously about their favorite genre that is ill defined and fought over. First Faster and Louder got their hands on it and Lord Rutledge told his world about this amazing archeological relic on a Sunday night. Next, SW Lauden’s interview appeared in Ride the Lightning. And before you could say, Please Please Please, the band had been invited to play their very first show in 4 decades on David Bash’s estimable International Pop Overthrow. In the tradition of The Shivvers and Sorrows’ Love Too Late, the Power Pop world has been gifted another reminder of just why we loved the sound of guys in skinny ties writing tightly wound, melodic nuggets of pop that has power. I have it on good authority that The Bings’ Power Pop Planet will be getting a vinyl pressing from Bachelor Records. Did the video I made about them help? Did the fact that I tagged Bachelor records on that video and that Bachelor “liked” it help? It didn’t hurt. 😉
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