Tommy Keene - Performance - Rockin' The IOTA

 

It has been 7 years since the sad loss of Tommy Keene. Plenty lay claim to the King Of Power Pop, but to me, Tommy was it. A fan since his 80s debut and when I started Blogging, it was largely in the Power Pop world and over two decades on, I still think of the support and encouragement that he gave me.

Many talk glowingly about an artist when they die, sometimes inaccurately, you will never hear a bad word about Tommy during his career and since. He was the nicest man in Power Pop and it is the Power Pop that people talk about, although there was far more to him than that.

Our conversations were about everything but Power Pop. Our love of Prog, particularly King Crimson. How much we both adored Be Bop Deluxe. But mainly about our dogs. It has been delightful to see his back catalogue appear on Bandcamp keeping his memory alive and also seeing albums such as this appear.

Unusually for Power Pop artists, Tommy enhanced his reputation via his live performances. He had all the chops, big riffs and choruses and that unmistaken vocal, but he oozed melody and harmony. Killer songs across a great career and also capable of some splendid cover songs.

Here we find him in 2002 in Arlington VA with a magnificent performance from the soundboard. Newbies can hear how good the man was at what he did. Power Pop can be maligned as a one trick pony, not in the hands of an expert.

His anthology was called Tommy Keene You Hear Me, both a great description and a command. No one did more to show life affirming Power Pop could be. He's really missed, both an artist and a person. You can discover the delights of his career on Bandcamp and there is more to come.

You can listen to and buy the album here.

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Tommy Keene R.I.P.

Tommy Keene is one of those artists that won't mean a lot to people outside of the Power Pop world that I inhabit, but in that world he is a God. Like so many of the Power Pop Greats, the simplicity and hooks of his songs masked his technical ability. He was an awesome guitarist and a lover of music, much of it far different from what he was noted for.

Many will know him better personally than I did, the UK and US distance ensures that, but I can only tell you about what he meant to me and mention the few conversations that we had over the past decade or so.

He never really understood how beloved he was. He'd be concerned about filling a small venue that was always gonna fill, than realising how good he was. He talked about diversifying on whatever album was next and would eventually release an album of what people wanted, great Power Pop and how we wanted it.

There was plenty of Power Pop before Tommy hit the airwaves, but I always looked at him as a godfather of the genre with Dom Mariani. I once joked that I'd love to arrange a UK Power Pop Festival with Dom and Tommy as joint headliners, he laughed and said build it and they will come.

We shared a love of Prog, Mike Oldfield and King Crimson especially and of our dogs, Crash and Coco. My conversations were only occasional, but in them, he was always charming and interested and incredibly modest. I certainly didn't know him as much as others, but he treated everyone as a friend.

On returning home from my heart scare last year, Tez posted a picture of me and Crash on my return home. Tommy was one of the first to message me with a simple You OK?

In the early 80's, post UK New Wave, I was falling out of love with music. I hated the New Romantic scene and turned to the States for motivation. It wasn't easy in those days to discover new music abroad, the one thing the internet has done has brought those fans closer together.

You had to scour the Rolling Stone or Record Collector Ads and I stumbled on the IRS scene from there developed an interest in all things Mitch Easter and in 1984, I was told about Tommy Keene. The Places That Are Gone 12 Inch, opened up a whole new world to me, this was Pop but not as I knew it. I grabbed everything thereafter.

The advent of the UK Music Monthlies and greater music coverage than the now, led to the wave of Jellyfish and Material Issue etc and then Not Lame and Kool Kat. The internet changed everything for good and bad, but you realised that many others loved the same sort of music that you did.

Power Pop is a dividing label, it always seems a hard thing to sell and a genre that loads love but few buy. There was far more to Tommy than the consistently great albums that he released. In My Anything Should Happen days, he was revered as a Rock idol. Live, he was incendiary and his Keene Brothers album with Robert Pollard remains one of my favourite albums ever.

Other musicians knew his Technical ability and he was an axe hero for the likes of Robert Pollard and Paul Westerberg. No one could match bitter sweet lyrics with big guitar hooks as well as Tommy Keene.

I rarely write pieces such as this. A simple acknowledgement is usually all I offer. However, when I look for musical heroes, Tommy is one of the few. I would not have discovered Power Pop and all the wondrous people around it without that 1984 EP. His music has never let me down and his warmth only made me admire him more.