Josh Fix, my latest powerpop obsession.

Josh Fix. Oh, man.

This goes back to my musings on one-man-bands… I’m just in awe of these guys who can pull off everything with aplomb. I first heard about Josh when he released his EP “Steinway the Hard Way” a while back (2004?) — but I didn’t buy it (dumb-ass). Now it’s OOP, of course.

Live and learn.

Jesus, as I sit here I’m listening to it on his site and I’m wondering why I don’t yet own it… let’s rectify that, shall we?

So I see a mention of him here and there… his new album drops, and NPR makes one of his tunes “Song of the Day” back in July. And then a friend shoots me an email about his video on YouTube. Sweet Christ, this is good. Like a slushy, sugary blend of Elton John, Spirit, Jellyfish, Ben Folds, Owsley, and lots and lots of Queen (the latter part of “Jethro” just oozes that swaggering Mercury/May/Taylor vocal arrangement, and “Whiskey and Speed” ends with a May-esque layered guitar mini-symphony coda). What more could this blogger want? Umm.. the bass chair in his band?  OK, asking too much, I realize.

Free at Last

Obscure Pop Artist Watch — KC Bowman

I’m in San Francisco for work a bunch of years ago (late ’90s). I went into a much-too-hip-for-me CD shop near Union Square, and I heard some terrific Beatle-y pop playing on the store’s sound system. I was hooked on KC Bowman immediately.

One-Man Bands

My favorite “sub-genre” of pop music is powerpop (which I’ll address sometime soon—in fact, you’ll get sick of me talking about it). For some reason, this style of pop seems to attract one-man band artists more than any other.

It’s a pretty new phenomenon, if you think about it: one artist who plays every instrument on a recording, arranges and sings all the vocals, and in some cases, engineers the entire album. Les Paul and his multitrack recording technique/equipment advances certainly paved the way in the 1940s and 1950s, but I don’t think anybody did it as a truly one-man effort until Paul McCartney (solo) and the woefully unsung Emitt Rhodes. Both their albums came out in 1970, with Emitt proclaimed a “new McCartney” (and to be honest, the album is an obvious Beatle-esque pastiche, no matter how well done it is).