You Don't Want to Tell Your Children You Missed Scott Miller

It's a rather tired critical commonplace to say that a
band is "shamefully underrated" or "shamefully ignored," or some other words to the effect that there is a wide gulf between the critic's estimation of the band, and the general, music-buying public's. It's been said so often now that it doesn't carry much weight. But if it's shameful you want, I'll give you shameful. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Scott Miller, one of the great rock and roll talents of our epoch, and a man who could never quit his day job.

Back in the 80s at UC-Davis, Scott, a native Californian, drew together a band that he called Game Theory, with a peripatetic lineup, though each version stayed together long enough to learn Scott's groove. Game Theory began to attract an audience of college kids and local skaters. They were beginning to hear something ecstatic crackling through cheap amps. It was the sound of a kid who'd been working out in his head (and on his guitar) since early childhood how the Beatles made magic with two guitars, bass and drums, thought he saw the answer in Alex Chilton and Big Star, and absorbed a lot of sophisticated songwriting and production tips from Todd Rundgren and Bryan Ferry. There were other things you cold hear, too, hints of bright pacific sand and surf and a cloud of Jefferson Airplane fog-bound San Francisco melancholy.

It was always too easy for music biz folks and music geeks, hung up on categories as they often are, to associate Game Theory with power pop, or "quirky pop," or New Wave. But paying closer attention, you heard and felt that Scott Miller and Game Theory were the Platonic ideal of power pop. Having fully interiorized the lessons of the 60's, he was free, deliciously free to explore zones of lofty, stratospheric melody, tossing off heartbreaking melodies, finger-popping hooks with manic prolificity. As for the power part of the equation, Game Theory were always a rock and roll band first--the melodies and hooks a sweet counterpoint to the tense, compressed frenzy of the band's rave-ups. As a lead guitarist, Scott was always a combination of balls and invention. (His break on "Jimmy Still Comes Around" with The Loud Family, a later Scott aggregation, sounds like what Pete Townsend might be doing if he'd just turned twenty.) Game Theory got signed to a record label, put out a string of records to good critical notices, and started building a little national cult, a promise of bigger things in those heady days of college radio.

Part 2 Tomorrow