Paul Collins, My Revenge, Birdbath @ Til-Two Club, San Diego

Paul Collins was there at the birth of what we now know as “power pop.” As a founding member of The Nerves and later The Beat (aka The Paul Collins Beat, not the English band), Collins crafted guitar-fueled pop songs that had a rock and roll edge. Without power pop it’s possible we would not have seen pop punk evolve a few years later. Collins has been doing frequent DIY tours over the years, usually forming a back-up band from either veteran or young musicians from various parts of the country. But on this occasion he chose to do a solo tour, something he’s successfully done in Europe and which recently was the genesis of his latest album. It’s a combination of stories of those early days and the songs that came out of them. Collins brought this tour to San Diego’s Til-Two Club, and was joined by locals My Revenge, featuring Hector Penalosa of seminal punk band The Zeros, and by Birdbath, another San Diego band that blends power pop and dream pop sounds.