The 1981 Listening Post - The Rousers - Touched

 The Rousers - Touched

#573

1981 Housekeeping

The Rousers

Touched

Genre: Power Pop Punk

3.25 out of 5

Highlights: 

My Girlfriend’s Mother

You’re in the Import section of Bleecker Bob’s. 

You’re thumbing through the (very) expensive (to you) albums in thick plastic covers. 

Most of them are bands you’ve read about in Trouser Press. 

One of them looks like a band that you think is a Clash wannabe group. 

“The Rousers?” You ask yourself. 

And then you just keep flipping.

You leave with the Killer Pussy maxi single of “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” and a Ben Vaughn Combo single. 

This didn’t happen but it’s the only way we would have known about this Dutch rock band that sounds a little like Power Pop, a wee touch of garage and a handful of Joe Strummer. 

But you will love this sound when you buy your first Libertines record. 

25 years later.

Ok. This is weird. 

In the 1980 list we covered their debut but wrongly indicated that they only had one album. After writing this review I went back and read it and discovered something strange: That is one of the few reviews I wrote in the second person that year. 

Something about The Rousers manifests this in me. 

Weird.

The debut is better. 

Missed?: the Killer Pussy single was the correct choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ia7db15Cm0

The 1980 Listening Post - The Rousers - A Treat of a New Beat

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’. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7mWo6Yrq28