Power Pop: Flamin' Groovies/ Dwight Twilley/ the Knack

IN THE MID SIXTIES, within the music of groups like the Kinks, the Byrds and the Who, musical aggression and melodic invention had co-existed. But with the rise of 'underground' rock music later in the decade, pop became increasingly clean and unthreatening. Harsh, powerful sounds were now the preserve of the hard rockers and pop could offer little more than lightweight tunes and studio artifice. In Britain, raw teenage pop made a brief – and contrived – re-appearance with the glitter of T. Rex and Sweet in the early Seventies but in America, the form slumbered.