The 1981 Listening Post - The Plimsouls - The Plimsouls

 The Plimsouls - The Plimsouls

#275

1981 Housekeeping LISTENING POST ADMIN DISCOVERY 

The Plimsouls

The Plimsouls

Genre: Why the fuck doesn’t this stream??

4.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Last Time

Now

Zero Hour

Hush

I Want You Back

Requisite 80s Cover: The Easybeats’ “Women”. Not a lot of people know just how great and important the older brother of Angus Young was. Not only did he produce his brothers but he was a pretty damned terrific songwriter and singer. I love that The Plimsouls covered this tune and gave it just the right amount of PP. (Rick Springfield would cover their “I’ll Make You Happy” in the mid-00s and that cover is excellent, too.)

The Nerves. 

Do you know The Nerves? I’ve asked this before. If the answer is “no.” then you ned to drop what you are doing and go listen to that collected record b because they are the pinnacle of Power Pop Perfection.

Peter Case was a member of the Nerves. 

The follow up to this is a 5 record.

This is almost as close. 

Not a bad track

The damned shame is that, as quickly as everyone fell in love with Power Pop, the anti-Knack backlash was bigger than “Disco Sucks!” And had a more lasting effect. Disco came back, as House and Club and Rave, etc. Power Pop never caught the imagination of the public again. Not like it did in 1979. 

So, why is this a “discovery”? Because I missed this the first time around and that’s the whole point of this archeological dig. What did I miss?

I missed this. 

Even tho I loved The Nerves and Paul Collins’ Beat and had a bunch of this stuff through Soulseek, etc, I never got my ears on The Plimsouls. 

Rectified. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhIFh-xR27w

The 1983 Listening Post - The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

The 1983 Listening Post - The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

#222
1983 Housekeeping
The Plimsouls
Everywhere at Once
5 out of 5

Highlights:
Shaky City
Lie, Beg, Borrow, and Steal
A Million Miles Away
My Life Ain’t Easy
I’ll Get Lucky

I’ve actually never heard this record…
You know the name of one the least heralded but (I think) most influential bands of the 70s? The Nerves. Look em up. Then look up The Beat. Then come visit Peter Case’s The Plimsouls and wonder, why didn’t HE get the kind of props that, I dunno, Marshal Crenshaw did?
This is College Radio Rock at it’s finest. Whatever Greg Kihn has been trying to do for the past decade or so, he should have dropped his guitar and kissed the feet of Case and Jack “Hanging on the Telephone” Lee and Paul Collins. This is the music that the likes of Tommy Tutone was trying and, for some reason, hit records eluded them. They should have been bigger. As should Dwight Twilley…Shoes….20/20….The Records…the list goes on. I miss this kind of music.
I’ve put some highlights up there but, to be honest, there isn’t a clunker on this album.
The production is a bit muddy, but that’s the 80s. Had this been recorded at Sound City it might’ve been a classic. I know the rating is high. Because there isn’t a bad track on this and I find myself thrilled to hear each new track and I will revisit this sooner than any other album on this list.