I Must Find Atlantis - Vinyl Record Reviews

When I hear the term "power pop", I generally think of the late seventies/early eighties version of what is retroactively called such. Although the style draws from 60's garage and popular rock, the actual definitive genre, to me, took place in the late seventies and into the eighties. Rock groups from this period can be obsessively categorized into a number of sub-genres, but again "power pop" to me, is a very specific sound.

Power pop has a new wave feel a lot of the time. You have groups like The Knack, The Romantics, and even The Jam, who took a garagey sixties sound, threw on some skinny ties, and whipped their drummers to perfection. The "pop" in "power pop" is what makes the genre so interesting. Many of the power pop groups of the early to mid eighties received little recognition despite their somewhat ironic failed efforts to become popularly known.

A couple years back, my friend and I bought out an entire basement of 45s from a then defunct record shop. We sifted through the central Jersey collection and found some real pieces of history. In this heap of some - several thousand records - we found a 45 by a group called "Gett Sett". The record was on a label called ULTRA RECORDS out of Edison, NJ. There are two tracks: A) "Without Care" and B) "Between Us". The songs remind me of a more square group of guys in their mid to late twenties, wearing sunglasses, and laughing about a business deal gone way too well over pricey cocktails. Regardless of who these guys were, or how much coke was involved, their licks are pretty impressive. This is 1985.

Gett Sett - "Between Us"