The GoAllTheWays - Silly Girl (Video Premiere)

Welcome to another IDHAS Video Premiere and this is a cracker. The GoAllTheWays are a Supergroup, a Power Pop band, inspired by a book about Power Pop bands. The debut single Silly Girl B/W Tourist is released tomorrow (Friday 11 October) as part of the wonderful Big Stir Digital Single Series. Incidentally, I've just filed an article on that Digital Single Series and an abbreviated version will appear here after publication.

The single is released in partnership with Rare Red Books. This fast and furious project sprang from the pages of Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation of Power Pop (Rare Bird Books). The idea was to flip the 'punks covering pop songs' trope to exploit the hidden harmonies and hooks in a couple of the group's favorite bashers. More reasonable musicians might have had a few punch-drunk laughs about this concept and moved on with their lives. Not this assemblage of LA pop scene veterans.

The band consist of Jeff Whalen (Tsar, The Brothers Steve); Rex Broome (The Armoires, Big Stir Records); Tyson Cornell (Rare Bird Lit); Marko DeSantis (Sugarcult), and Steve Coulter (aka S.W. Lauden, who co-edited Go All The Way with Paul Myers). This LA-based stupor group immediately booked time at a hidden recording studio and got to work.

The result is a jangling re-imagining of "Silly Girl" (by SoCal punk heroes The Descendents) and a wistful take on "Tourist" (by Florida underground legends The Pink Lincolns). TheGoAllTheWays lovingly reconstructed these 80's cult classics with Rickenbacker guitars, stacked vocals and driving rhythms, all adorned with backing vocals galore, thunderous hand claps and furiously shaking tambourines.

Without further ado, here is the IDHAS Video Premiere of Silly Girl for your delight.

If you've read this far, you probably have your own definition of power pop. The band don't claim to be experts, but their money's on this quote from Pulitzer-winning author Michael Chabon's excellent Go All The Way essay, "Tragic Magic": "Finally, power pop at its purest is the music of hit records that miss."

You can buy the single for the bargain price of a dollar. That's 50 Cents a song. Just head here to make your purchase. You can find out more about the book "Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation of Power Pop" and make your purchase here.

The Brother's Steve album is released on CD tomorrow. You can find out more from the IDHAS Review here and purchase the CD here. The vinyl edition is still available here. Finally, you can buy the new album by The Armoires here and find out more about Big Stir Records here.


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