D.I.Y.

For no particular reason, I've been listening to a lot of my various artists CDs lately. In particular, the last two have been part of a series called D.I.Y. In the early '90s, Rhino put out a series (10 or 12 discs, I think) of punk/new wave/pop music from the late '70s and early '80s, really good (and often obscure stuff). The only two I have are "Shake it Up: American Power Pop II (1978-80)" and "Starry Eyes: UK Pop II (1978-79)." I really like these discs. They're full of 3-chord, 3-minute power pop tunes, mostly dealing with that ever-present pop song subject, love. It's not really too "punky." The only known act on the U.S. version is the Romantics ("What I Like About You") and the U.K. disc features Joe Jackson, Squeeze, and XTC. Definitely more pop than punk. I'm pretty sure these are out of print, unfortunately. I'd like to find the entire set of them, but I never see them in used CD bins (and believe me, I look frequently). It's a lot of music I missed at the time, and was really glad to get into later on.