An old California band offers a prelude to an A.V. Club writer's future pop-punk dementia
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In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.
I’m convinced that, should I suffer the misfortune of dementia or Alzheimer’s late in my life, I’ll spend my days babbling about obscure punk bands from the ’80s and ’90s. (“Oh that’s Mr. Ryan. Just put him in a corner and play this album by an old band called ‘Face To Face.’”) Case in point: As I left the el the other day, I inexplicably got the leadoff track from Schleprock’s 1994 debut stuck in my head. I haven’t thought about the band in years, but I used to rock Propeller all the time. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for poppy, melodic punk, and Schleprock did it well back then: big, hooky guitars; catchy choruses; slightly angsty lyrics. Hearing it again, I might as well be back in Wolpers Hall at the University Of Missouri. Schleprock took a wrong turn toward generic, ska-influenced rock on the major-label album that followed Propeller, but I still have a lot of fondness for this song.
