J. R. Taylor

It seems there's a new national holiday in the wake of Joey Ramone's Birthday Bash, with the concert overflowing to include a photography print sale event with a red carpet media pit. Nothing wrong with that, either. Did you know that you can leave a Joey Ramone bobblehead on his grave, and it'll sit there for weeks before somebody finally takes it? That's respect.

Sadly, that hoopla provides cruel contrast to the struggling underdog that is the Bill Popp Annual Birthday Tribute To "Daddy Tapes." The event marked its 20th anniversary that night at Kenny's Castaways, but there wasn't much of a crowd. The humble fundraiser for the American Heart Association didn't offer gift bags. You were lucky to get the giant sandwich over by the soundboard.

You won't see anyone writing about this show, either. The $5 cover usually buys folks the chance to witness the lifers of the local music scene. These are musicians the local press would rather ignore. They're the musicians who make Walter Lure seem like a rock star.

Consider that a theme, since our host has spent decades turning Bill Popp & The Tapes into a minor-league NYC perennial. That's a typical fate here for a fine Beatlesque unit that scores at least two great songs per album-although the band's still trying to finishing their third release.

Your average Daddy Tapes tribute show looks like a Folk City reunion for everyone who-unlike Pat DiNizio-never managed to write a hit song while walking home from the club at 4 a.m. This year, those types seemed to have all killed themselves. Popp was surrounded more by friends and family. He couldn't complain, since Popp is still recovering from a quadruple bypass that spared him from going out like his dad-who was the guy being honored there.

Popp's surgery postponed the big 20th anniversary. I was there to see David Poe as the night's token former major-label act. Never been a Poe fan before, but he's put together a rock band with Duncan Sheik that has this amazing pop slant on a wimp-prog sound.

Anyway, Poe was running late, so I ended up seeing fine veteran musician Anne Husick. She was the bass player in Bill Popp's band about two decades ago. It was an excuse to throw some cash in the bucket. We should all certainly pay tribute to the fathers of musicians who let their grown children live at home while pursuing rock stardom. This was once a city where we wouldn't have rock stars without them.