Hard to believe that 25% more time has passed than the entire period covered by this book. In honor of its 25th-anniversary, we are offering Scribd users this book for free. Every Power Pop record for two decades! This guide is designed not only to help youfind information on a recording you may belooking for, but also to arouse your curiosityto sounds you may want to try on YouTube. Our philosophyis ''the tune's the thing''. We have made everyeffort to ensure that every great pop songthat we know of is in here in at least oneversion. The book will probably not representthe final resting point for one who is seekingany and every conceivable recording of a particular song or band (for that there's AllMusic or Wikipedia). This is especially trueof artists who have had major record deals andconsequently have a lot of singles off ofalbums and/or non-U.S. releases.The following explanations are offered in thehopes of making a journey into the book asfruitful as possible.ARTISTS are listed alphabetically and head upeach listing. BACKGROUND NOTES are interjectedaside the artists name but occur only whenextended information is needed or available.TITLES are in the next column. Lengthy titlesare left off, usually with an ellipsis, andcontinued across at the end of the listing inthe COMMENTS column. If a single we review isa ''promotional'' or ''radio station only''review copy, and the actual B-side, if any, isunknown, to save space we will not reprintthat A-side title but, rather, just indicate''[SAME]'' for another version exactly the same as the A side or ''[MONO]''for a monauralversion of the same song. As for that peculiarcreature the EP, we use a general titleif one is printed or is in common usage, e.g.''The Singer Not the Song EP'' and, failingthis, we print as many of the actual titles asroom allows. When there are many titles forone given artist the titles are grouped alphabeticallywithin groupings of short-players(first) and long players (last).FORMAT includes 7 11, 10 11, 12 11 singles (the "mark will be left off, however), EP, LP, CD orCAS. The size of all EP format discs (usuallyfour to seven songs) will be given under thecomments section. CD is listed for all CD-onlyor, CD and casette-only, releases (e.g.Shoes' ''Stolen Wishes''). Unless the existenceof a vinyl or ''record'' format is indoubt, we use a conventional record assignationsuch as LP or 12 11•YEAR OF RELEASE AND CATALOG NUMBER will beindicated whenever possible. A 198 or 197 indicates a guess at the decade (there is spaceprovided for you to write in the actual yearif you have any firmer idea than we do.)RATINGS are an estimation by the author of thequality of the release (and has nothing to dowith the condition of the record we may havelistened to.) For long players, the first ratingis for the BEST SONG on the album (since we know pop fans will buy an album for that one''nugget'' even if the rest of the songs aremediocre.) The second rating is the OVERALLrating for the piece as a whole. Ratings aredone on the American school system marks of A+to F . A-/B+ is halfway between the two grades.Oddly enough an A-/B+ record usually startedwell but then excitement tapered off whileB+/A- songs finished stronger and showed morepotential to '' grow on you''. Mathematically,however, they are the same grade. Time and unavailabilityof a review copy foced us to leavemany records without a rating, an oversight wehope to cure in large part by the next edition(send us your suggestions!). Records withoutratings come only with the guarantee that theyare pop. A lot of the unrated records are possibleA plus records but bear in mind that inmost cases the disc is unrated because: a) wedid not think to buy them ourselves or, b) norecord company in our canvass bothered to sendthem to ''Power ' Pop guys'' or, c) we may hav
