In a message dated 6/8/2004 2:02:22 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
audities-owner@smoe.org writes:
 
<<Well, I'd agree up to a point, although I think that  power-pop is one genre
which actually revels in NOT making claims of sounding  original.  Other
genres have many acts who would have you believe that  no-one has ever
sounded the way they do, even though their claim is patently  false.  Like I
said before, I don't think this self-referential stance  is a bad thing - if
I did, I'd never buy as much stuff from NotLame as I  do!  I just sometimes
think that someone out of the power-pop loop would  find it curious.>>
 
 
 

I would also like to add that I think a big difference is that most of what  
is being "referenced" by the majority of power-pop groups is fairly old--25  
years at least, if not 40--and very rarely do you find a power-pop group that 
is  primarily influenced by anything more modern. That may be a big difference, 
 because if you compare power-pop to a different genre, like, say, rap, or 
any  sort of electronic music, then you'll find groups who are influenced 
by/somewhat  imitating groups that are either still around or were around not as 
long ago.  This, I think, is the only real problem--if someone wants to sound 
like the  Monkees or the Zombies or whatever then I think that's cool--but I 
think that  the fact that the power pop universe cut itself off sometime in the 
late '70s  means that a lot of the new stuff sounds a little too much like it's 
trying to  recreate some type of golden age. I guess the stuff that I 
personally like best  (and listen to the most) is cognizant of all those classics but 
sounds  distinctly modern--someone like Bleu or Fountains of Wayne, for 
example, or  people like Adam Marsland and Mike Viola who have a very distinct 
personality  and could never be mistaken as imitators. 
 
I definitely don't think that the "referencing another group" thing is  
unique to power-pop, nor is it bad, it's just that because the references  
themselves are so old it sometimes creates the feeling that power-pop is a  dead 
genre, no longer evolving on its own.--Jason