I've been a fan of Jim Basnight’s eclectic power pop ever since I first heard it. I'm rewarded every time I listen. You will be too. I strongly urge you to get Pop Top and his other albums.

Jim was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: Is there a backstory to Pop Top?

Jim Basnight: Pop Top was a cross section of the best of the latter stages of the Moberlys and the band I put together after the Moberlys (Toby Keil bass, Glenn Oyabe guitar, Dave Drewry drums, and Roger Burg keyboard) hung it up. Some of the tracks were ones I cut with the Moberlys, which I worked on after the band broke up, and others were ones that were finished (outside of some re-mastering that I just did in 2022) by the Moberlys. The majority of the tunes on Pop Top I recorded after the Moberlys.

That band, which went by The Jim Basnight Band, The Skyscrapers, and Crank on various live gigs in Seattle and L.A., was primarily former Concrete Blonde and Moberly bassist Al Bloch, former Fuzztones drummer and longtime writing partner Mike Czekaj, and former Perry Farrell band mate, guitarist Kelly Wheeler. There were also a number of important contributors to the album, including producer, backup singer, and guitarist Rand Bishop, producer Peter Buck (REM), producer and bassist Jeff Eyrich (Plimsouls), engineer/producer Ian Gardiner, engineer Mike Morongell, backup singer Carla Olson, percussionist Arno Lucas, pianist Ted Bishop, guitarist C.J. Buscaglia, keyboardist Fred Mandel, guitarist Tim Pierce, harmony singer Jimmy Garcia, and songwriters Joey Alkes, Ted Myers, and Patrick DiPuccio.

When I moved back to Seattle in 1992, to be with my ailing dad, who outlived the three months he was projected to last by 15 months, I compiled the album and then finally released it on CD in early 1993 on my Precedent Records label, which I formed in 1977, when I cut my first 45 single.

AW: Your songs cover very diverse subjects, which I like. Love, politics, life – they’re all there. Which one do you like to write about the most?

JB: The one that inspires me to write a good melody to the words, or the music which best fits the words I’ve written if that’s the way it goes. I’ve written songs many ways. Sometimes it happens all at the same time. Sometimes I write some words and play some music which I think will fit the feeling behind it. Sometimes I write music, with no words, then go through a few possible topics for that song until I find the right one that fits it best. Sometimes I help other people finish my song ideas or add sections from one of their songs. Sometimes I finish other people’s songs or take them and change them fundamentally. Sometimes I take pieces of songs which are good and merge them with pieces of bodies of other songs of mine, or sometimes other people’s tunes.

I guess my songs are about those topics, because that is what’s on my mind when I happen to be writing songs.

AW: Your music is also diverse, which is great. I hear the blues, pop, rock, punk, and even some boogie-woogie. Do you find that all of them come naturally to you?

JB :To the extent that I am able to perform them, I believe so. Over time I have become more proficient as a musician and singer. I have grown to understand more about the blues, in no small way from my extensive research on “Sonny Boy” Williamson over the past ten years, but I’ve always had a strong respect and affinity for American Roots Music, especially the blues. I love pop and have always had a soft spot for a catchy pop tune. The Beatles were the first band I really obsessed over and to me they defined pop rock and laid the groundwork for power pop, more than any other. I love rock and roll. I feel it brought people together and changed the world in its first two decades of mass popularity (1955-75). That’s when punk and, at roughly the same time, funk and dance/disco pretended to go a different direction, but essentially extended its life.

The biggest change happened when digital technology shifted so much of the focus away from it from the late ‘90’s until today. This was as earth shattering as the introduction of amplification, records and radio to American Roots Music in the 1920’s and 1930’s, also technological in nature. Whether it was rock and roll electric blues, country and western (as we knew it going back to the era when the early rockabilly artists went country and brought with them electric guitars and drums) or soul music, it’s all been boogie woogie, a style which derived from African Americans in the late 19th Century, as played on a very European instrument, the piano. Rock and Roll alluded to “rockin’ the boat,” a term also from the African American lexicon, which meant upsetting the social order and its norms. I love all this music and that’s why I’ve done my best to learn to play it. That and because it makes people happy on live gigs, which gives me the most satisfaction of all.

AW: Who did you draw on the most musically when you made this album?

JB: Of course I tried to be myself. I’ve had a lot of role models over time in music.Too many to name, but the Beatles will always be the ones who got me going to try to learn songs and sing and play them. If I made a list it would have to be way too long to make much sense, but the Beatles were the ones who got me started. When I wrote my first songs in 1975, just after graduating from high school, I drew inspiration by playing Beatles songs for an hour or so, before I dug into finding the inspiration in my own soul. The Beatles stood up for good things, despite being flawed individuals. Their hearts and souls were good, they were incredibly talented, and they worked as a team until they couldn’t, when they had the good sense to not continue.

AW: These songs are from the 90s, and don't sound dated at all. Did you think about that when you recorded them or wrote them?

JB: Yes, just as I did when I recorded Not Changing, my most recent all original material album. I’ve always tried to make music that would sound good in the future and avoid fad technology. Every time a producer has convinced me to try it, I’ve been disappointed and it has devalued or eliminated from consideration the work. I seek to record music which is not pigeon-holed to a time in history, even if it’s “The Cutting Edge.”

AW: How did Power Popaholic come into the picture?

JB: Social media, in the case of Power Popaholic’s Aaron Kupferberg, was how we connected. I saw his name on one of the power pop pages on Facebook and asked him in a private message if he was related to the Fugs' Tuli Kupferberg. Aaron said no, but that started a conversation about music, which led to me working with him on all my intangible album releases to this point. I did do one deal with the NY-based Disclosed label in 2008, which was also available intangibly, that being my career retrospective at the time, We Rocked and Rolled.

At the time I started working with Aaron, I also started working with Big Stir for intangible singles, as well as a few compilation CDs. Big Stir has been a major reason for whatever success I’ve had in the online music world over these past few years. I sincerely appreciate the work that Rex Broome and Christina Bulbenko have put in behind my music, as well as Irene Pena, who got involved on my most recent single release with them, “Rebel Kind” and “Middle of the Night.” I was introduced to Big Stir by my longtime friend and songwriting partner Patrick DiPuccio, who I mentioned in regards to my songwriting partners on Pop Top. In fact my first single on Big Stir was a song from Not Changing, “Never Get Lost,” and “Restless Night,” a song from Pop Top co-written with Patrick, or “Pooch,” as he is often called by his friends.

AW: Do you have any plans to tour?

JB: Yes, I am constantly playing, though not at the same pace as before COVID, but at a steady rate in the NW US. I’m looking at Summer 2022 to go to Europe and the British Isles to play dates, and hope to continue to work there on a regular basis, once COVID is down to a dull roar. I also hope to play dates in other regions of the US and possibly Canada. I had a run of dates scheduled in NYC for April of 2020, which have yet to be re-scheduled, but I hope to do that at some point in 2022.

AW: What would you tell someone who’s had success with their music, going forward?

JB: Be yourself and deal with the fallout if what you do isn’t good enough to get what you think you deserve. That is much better than trying to be something you are not, just to get a gig or have a successful record that you probably shouldn’t have.