When Britain refused to listen

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'Not heard it' is one of the more common comments read when the Top 40 polls are posted. Which is perhaps the most unsatisfying answer that can be given. Lots of people can say they've heard every single in the Top 40, provided they'd listened to JK & Joel that particular week. Although they may not necessarily remember all of them the next day...

But, if you 'haven't heard it', bloody why not?! I personally stopped listening to the Top 40 countdown in full around the same time as I started University - some ten years ago now. As you grow up it seems life gets more and more in the way, preventing you from having the same ease of control you may have previously enjoyed when it comes to making choices as a young viewer or listener. So far so obvious, and it seems this is the real reason why the Poptimists electorate are often at a loss to decide whether a recent Top 40 hit is good or bad based on how it sounds. There are other factors too such as the nature in which media has changed since then - dedicated music video channels, t'internet (esp. portals/filters/resources such as youtube and itunes) and downloading facilities...all things intended to make the pursuit of hearing music easier. But, it's not really working that well is it? At least, not for 'people old enough to know better' who seem to be ageing faster than the technology is progressing, and that's pretty terrifyingly fast. It's all too much. But, really, aren't these just excuses? Is this sort of reasoning good enough? Should we take it as a given that the charts are reasonably constant in terms of quality (regardless of the ebb and flow of sales figures)? Should a Poptimist be putting more effort in? It's not meant to be a chore after all.

I'm interested in any serious views people may have about the whole thing, so the question(s) be as follows:

What is your current attitude to pop (however you define it) and new music? Are you keen to hear as much of it as you can or do you prefer to revel in nostalgia (or perhaps some healthy balance of both)? Where do you turn to, specifically, now to find out about new music anyway? If you DO know every song in the top 40 any given week does this just make you a Chart Geek rather than a Pop Lover now? Do you even care about music or are you just one of those disgusting poll-fetishists I've heard about?

EH?

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Listening to the radio a lot doesn't currently fit into my routine -- I often try and listen to the charts and catch some or all of it, but while doing something else. I don't feel particularly upset if I haven't heard some current 'hit' record: I listen to radio 1 often enough that the really good things (or really irritating things) stand out. I check the interweb most at work, and briefly; whereas in the past I would have been able to dl something someone had raved about instantly (unless they YSI it), now I'm likely to forget about it and it will take a while for something to register as an 'essential' listen. All this might change if for example I start working from home a bit more over the summer.

My notion of poptimism does not revolve around a slavish devotion to fashion, and I have a deeply conflicted position with regard to contemporary opinion and popular culture -- I tend to react against it, while being aware that it's not exactly wrong. I will not apologise for it, since this seems to me to replicate patterns of response to something like the public realm of chatter found in almost all of the modern (i.e. post-romantic, i.e. post-Rousseau) intellectuals I admire.

I don't watch much TV and we only have free video channels and I hate adverts so tend to turn them off; I often see videos on MTV in the gym but I would rather listen to my ipod there so can't always connect music to pictures (this happened with the Fallout Boy single).

I think the idea -- which I think you're half joking about -- that we all ought to be obliged to spend 'enough' time chasing the cultural forth of capital is insane and deeply unpleasant; I'm repeating myself I know, but I take poptimism to be as applicable to someone who only listens to 70s prog rock or only likes hair metal and Mozart, as it is to someone who gets all indie about the charts. The cult of the new, the attempt to be 'with it', 'up with the latest trends', 'down with the scene' etc. seems to me a bit wearing. One of the good things about the web communities I've interacted with is the way they generate their own cultural world based on a combination of new and old things. The polls presumably build in to this, but I see them more as an excuse for a natter than anything in themselves. (Heresy! I've never been as into lists and formulae as freakytigger for example...)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, the polls are good mostly cos they regularly generate huge clouds of chat - which occasionally brings up other interesting issues that might have lain fallow or been phrased vaguely if they hadn't emerged from a specific context.

Once we finish the Now polls I'm toying with using the format for Virgin's "Best...Ever" albums which would allow us windows onto more specific genres.

[koganbot]

No, once you are finished with the Now polls you must start again from the beginning with the American Now releases, or even better the Totally Country series, which only has had five so far. Or even you could do the Pazz & Jop singles list, which due to an Xgau blindspot doesn't start until 1979. (Top 5: Ian Dury, M, Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, the Pretenders.)

Hmmm

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Pazz and Jop revisited would be great!

Re: Hmmm

[koganbot]

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/index.php

Best...Ever

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The Best...Ever stuff has a LOT of cross over with stuff done already, esp the Dance ones (which I know very well indeed, obv). Would we be better with Now $year?

Re: Best...Ever

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

There's even more Xover there. Anyway I was thinking of the Best Air Guitar Album, the Best Prog Rock Album, etc etc

Re: Best...Ever

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

progtimists

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

"but I take poptimism to be as applicable to someone who only listens to 70s prog rock or only likes hair metal and Mozart"

I don't know if I agree. I can see that having some sort of devotion of indeed fanaticism like that fits with notions of Poptimism...but 70s prog rock, hair metal or Mozart are Niche aren't they? And restricting yourself to a niche - worse, an OLD niche, seems to go against my own notion of Poptimism as it stands.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding though! But what makes the niche fanatic a Poptimist or popist? Surely Poptimism can't/shouldn't be 'I only love this' but more 'I love everything (ha ha), BUT some things more than others'? If it's wrong to try and dictate the manifesto/ethos in this way, why work under a banner like Poptimists/ism at all?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I think of poptimism as more being about 'I don't care what YOU think about what I like'. Or even better 'I have no criteria by which I decide in advance whether or not I will like something'. In the case of someone living in prog-rock world, my example was chosen to suggest that they are not in a 'trendy' (defensive) niche but something more like the 'land that time / taste forgot', and I guess I was assuming that this is not a case of a deliberate rejection (I will ONLY listen to X) but one of circumstances (I HAPPEN to only listen to X). With 'at the moment' understood: liking one thing but not ruling out having the socks knocked off you by whatever you might happen to hear next. Which puts you under no obligation to go out and FIND something else to listen to IN ORDER THAT it can knock your socks off.

That banner in full!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a community for people who believe that pop music is a good thing.

The definition of 'pop music' is left up to you, but it probably includes at least some stuff that gets in the charts.

I am still quite happy with this blurb.

Re: That banner in full!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I should also clarify that when I say poptimism I probably mean something different from poptimists the community, and that in general I refuse all banners and manifestoes. I also have a particular dislike of whatever the plural of ethos is. I am as happy to define it in ways that irritate poptimists as in ways that please them. < /kogan >

Re: That banner in full!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

That should probably be manifestos, but I like the idea of manifest-toes.

PAGIN MR NIETZSCHE

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

plural of ethos = ethics

Re: That banner in full!

[cis.livejournal.com]

ethoi?

(i think i might disagree with you in almost every way! and yet may well end up at the same place.)

Re: That banner in full!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

You mean you don't like the idea of manifest-toes ;-)

Re: That banner in full!

[cis.livejournal.com]

horrible wriggly things.

Re: That banner in full!

[koganbot]

'I don't care what YOU think about what I like'.

Seems to be the opposite of how my mind works. (See WMS vols. 1 thru 13, ILX from Spring 2001 on.)

Re: That banner in full!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

It was the irritant within the poptimist wagon circle that made me think of you (c.f. some of yr descriptions of yr aims on ILM) rather than the bit you quote. That's just me trying to figure out what I was saying to stevem.

Re: That banner in full!

[koganbot]

Oh, I didn't think the "I don't care what YOU think..." remark was related to your mention of me (I'm not that self-centered), just was noting how different it is from the way I tend to do things. Also, looking again, is there some irony in the way you stated it? The all caps "YOU" seems to be deliberately self-contradictory (i.e., it's your way of pointing out that the speaker wouldn't be so emphatic about saying he didn't care unless he did care). In any event, I'd think that the people attracted to the Poptimists site would be likely to think that the use of music as a social marker and the constant comparing of tastes and attitudes are things that enrich the music and are intextricable from the music - in fact that's what I'd expect you in particular to think.

Re: That banner in full!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I agree in general -- but the YOU here would be directed from prog-rock guy to people who might say he's somehow stuck in the past (because their criteria for greatness = 'Now-ness' (by which they think they mean something like public approval but actually mean something more like hipster-critical consensus)). As opposed to all the other Yous who don't have such exclusive criteria (I like what I like, you like what you like). So yes, it's social. BUT: is it social at the point where guy is living in his sound-world, and before someone comes up and tells him 'dude the seventies are so over'? I guess so, but in a kind of latent way, which is sort of activated when someone challenges / questions him.