The 1980 Listening Post - Elton Duck - Elton Duck

 Elton Duck - Elton Duck

#496 LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

1980 Housekeeping

Elton Duck 

Elton Duck 

Genre: Lost Classic of Power Pop

5 out of 5 (I might be biased)

Highlights:

She Won’t Answer the Phone

Make it Up to You

All the Way to the Bank

Ordinary Guy

Runaway

No Looking Back

Requisite 80s Cover: Their version of “White Punks on Dope” turns it from theatri-rock into real pub rock. Like Elton John got his hands on a Tubes record and made it…better and more honest than Fee and Bill and the guys ever could. If Elton played this at The Troubadour, The Tubes would have had a hit many years before “Talk to Ya Later”. In fact, this makes me want to hear it covered by Tom Waits now. 

I’m sitting on a stool in The Boathouse, a garage that was converted into a recording studio. 

My band has agreed to frame a door in the booth as a trade off for help producing our album. 

That producer/engineer/drummer/genius arranger is Robbie Rist. 

The first time I met Robbie was as he was walking in to The Gig on Melrose. I introduced myself to him and told him who my band was. 

“Rubberburner,” he said, naming the song we had submitted for a festival CD., “Right?”

I was blown away. He knew us?? Robbie Rist knew who we were??!

I learned later that Robbie had sat in for SEVENTEEN bands the year before during the International Pop Overthrow festival. Drums. Guitar. Bass. There is nothing the guy can’t play. He’s a power pop savant. A certified genius. 

With his band, The Andersons! He wrote one of my favorite songs of all time, “She’s Probably With Him Right Now”. If you don’t know it, go listen, I’ll wait. Because it’s a perfect song. Rob sang an acoustic version of this at Music Night at the theater company I belonged to. A night where he played drums on a ton of 1979 tracks. An evening of music I produced. 

There is no more generous musician than Robbie Rist. 

Period. 

So, we are in Robbie’s studio and I mention one of my favorite Power Pop albums of the 80s (because I feel compelled to prove that I know…something): Martin Briley’s Fear of the Unknown.

Rob gets up and leaves. He goes to his beat up rock and roll van in the driveway and comes back in with a CD. 

Written on it is: “Fear of the Unknown”. 

NOBODY IN THE WORLD KNOWS THIS ALBUM BUT ME!!!, I think. 

Nope. Rob knows it. Because of course he does. 

Robbie is the kind of person who heard Working Class Dog and decided not only to learn to play guitar like Tim Pierce but got in touch with Tim Pierce to learn how to play like Tim Pierce FROM TIM FUCKING PIERCE!

My personal bucket list includes playing on the same stage with Robbie Rist, pouring out Power Pop tune after tune. 

Why am I going on about Robbie Rist? 

Well, because the Wikipedia entry for this album says, “Legacy: After its initial shelving, Elton Duck was a difficult album to obtain, yet quietly celebrated as an overlooked power pop classic by musicians such as Robbie Rist. “

And you know what? 

It is that fucking good. 

One perfect little power pop confection after another. 

“Ordinary Guy”? Yeah, add that to the list, Rob. I’ll happily sing backup. 

Or “Runaway”, which is as lovely as anything The Everly Bros ever recorded. In fact, I think they would have sold a gajillion of that if they had that single. 

“He Will Never Love You Like I Do” is as good as anything Raspberries ever wrote. It’s got Eric Carmen all over it.

Anyone in any Power Pop band that doesn’t listen to “Last Tag” and doesn’t think…”yeah, let’s close with that” isn’t listening. 

This album is so rich and also out of time. It’s too late to catch the wave it was intended for and 20 years too early to be heralded as a new classic, the way so many of those terrific revival bands (Like The Andersons and Sparklejets U*K* and Chewy Marble and Martin Luther Lennon and Wonderboy and The Wondermints and The Masticators would be) but, boy it’s damned good. It’s like discovering the band Candy for the first time. 

Reminds me of Teen Machine inasmuch as it’s a great power pop album that nobody knows about. 

But I do. 

Robbie’s cover of “Make it Up to You” absolutely crushes. https://youtu.be/YU1BRnA4BP8

The only way to get this is if you are in the know. You gotta ask. If it’s still even in that dropbox.