The Chicago area has produced some of the most influential bands in power pop: Cheap Trick in the 70s, the Shoes in the 80s, and in the 90s, Material Issue. It’s too soon to tell if, say, Frisbie or Kevin Tihista will make the same kind of impact in the aughts, but meanwhile the local scene is apparently as active as ever. Of the 150 groups filling the 19 different bills that constitute the first Chicago edition of the International Pop Overthrow festival, a whopping 60 are local.
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Bash was initially attracted to the music as a teenager by the likes of the Beatles, Badfinger, and the Raspberries. He grew up in Poughkeepsie and New York City, and studied journalism at NYU. He continued to live with his parents after graduating, and when they moved to Los Angeles in 1982, he went too, eventually enrolling at UC Irvine to study psychology. “When I first got there it was at the tail end of the skinny-tie movement–the Plimsouls, 20/20, the Knack–and the Paisley Underground was just starting to flourish, but I wasn’t really into going to shows then,” he says. “I think during my first ten years in LA I probably only saw six or seven shows. I didn’t see the social value of going out to shows.”
In February 1996 a fellow pop fan named Tony Perkins launched Poptopia, a festival that focused on LA bands. (It’s since been renamed Pop American Style.) Bash got involved, suggesting acts from outside of the area. “A lot of those bands were turned down, and they would commiserate with me,” says Bash. “I started to feel badly for them, and I thought, why not do my own festival, which would emphasize the international pop scene?” He says the idea came to him almost overnight, late in 1997; the first International Pop Overthrow took place in the summer of 1998, with a roster of 120 bands. Bash has done it in LA every summer since. Shortly after the first fest he quit his teaching job at Cerritos College, and as of last summer he books the festival full-time. In December he put on an edition in New York with 90 bands, many of which are also playing here.
On Saturday, March 30, at the Abbey Pub, Green–the shoulda-been-famous trio fronted by pop and blue-eyed-soul auteur Jeff Lescher–plays one of its infrequent gigs.
