PowerPop: A Review

Like so many members of the blogosphere, Steve Simels is a fairly unknown and obscure toiler at the blogging arts. His blog, PowerPop, is a place for him to explore his love of music while taking time off from his day job: occasionally review popular music for Ziff-Davis's Sound and Vision Magazine (Formerly Hi-Fi Review). He also is known for his frequent contributions to the political blog/social chatroom Eschaton. He is joined every once and a while on the blog by fellow bloggers NYMary and Kid Charlemagne.

To fit within Simels' pop music vision, PowerPop has to it a bubblegum feel; in fact the background resembles nothing more than a bubble gum machine. Ingratiating to say the least, it makes the blog a difficult read, as words become jumbled falling into a sea of bubble gum balls that seems never to end. More gracious is when Simels cuts his verbosity short, focusing primarily on the primary purpose of the blog: showcasing YouTube videos.

How Steve Simels whiled away his days before the invention of YouTube I have no idea, but PowerPop is the offspring of his illegitimate love affair with the popular video sharing site.

When he isn't chatting with the guys and gals over at Eschaton, or writing up another mini album review for Sound and Vision, he is perusing YouTube, looking for the most rare and obscure videos he can find so that he can share them with his PowerPop readers. When he can find nothing of interest, he falls back to one of his standbys, such as the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and whatever unusual cover they might have produced this week.

The video selections on PowerPop span a myriad of decades, although the majority come from the 60's and especially the 70's as Simels hearkens back to the days when he was at his prime. There is little rhyme nor reason to the selections, them being primarily whatever happened to strike Simels' fancy at any given moment.