To The Extreme

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Extreme Pop discussion on koganbot's LJ - relevant to here.

Actually when I nominated Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" in the what is Poptimism??? poll I had something like "EXTREME POP" in mind - though I don't know if "POP" is quite the word I want there, but "EXTREME ROCK" means something else, and "EXTREME ROCK N ROLL" surely means something else too, so maybe what I'm talking about is "EXTREME ROCKISM" (ha ha only joking) - that moment in the second (?) verse where Bruce is describing his imagined street scene, the neon signs, the hustling, the kids, and he's willing it to be real so much that it becomes overloaded, absurd, reaching the line -

"kids flash guitars just like switchblades"

- and it's something like cosplay or fan fiction, or Peter Pan urging the audience to believe in fairies, a beautiful desperate wish to bring the dream to life, like the supersaturated Guy Peelaert pics in Rock Dreams. It's the longing that makes me like this and hate, say, PRML SCRM, whose rock litanies are more like catechisms and always tinged with a grubby self-satisfaction that they're Livin' It.

The rest of the song is all post-coital disappointment of course.

Comments

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

This doesnt explain why Feeder is Poptimism, mind you.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You'll have to ask the Mysterious Feeder Fan about that!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Or you could exclude him from the community for heresy and solve the problem that way!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

heretics are the ones who take the scriptures seriously!

i like springsteen when he is being most like bowie (= candy's room)

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

"being (most) like bowie" is the vaguest thing ever! the laughing gnome or ziggy or earthling or WOT? or many you dont mean sonics and just mean rubbish mannered voice. note i have never heard candy's room.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

no one is not better when they sound most like laughing gnome!

anyway i meant rubbish mannered voice mainly! (ie "being" = "sounding vocally")

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I like Candy's Room but I've never thought of it as sounding like Bowie! I like early Springsteen when he sounds like he wants to be Dylan.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Ill stop being a wank after this but: doing = sounding vocally, surely?

haha 'doing' sounds a bit rude etc.

ok if you think it is clearer

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i like springsteen when he is doing most like bowie

Re: ok if you think it is clearer

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

:( maybe not

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Feeder aren't but that song is!

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Springsteen does take a lot of the tropes that pop fans hold as superior over rock fans (ie, youth rebellion rather than youth angst), but then filters them through a rock, umm, filter.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Springsteen is - or was, I only know the Big Famous Ones and Born To Run the album - also pretty good on disappointment, which is the secret unmentionable behind a lot of pop and rock (though is what indie does well)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Dom, are those constant? I mean, when you say "youth angst" I think of that as rock (and especially indie), but the whole rip my shirt from my breast in self-pity as being something very post-Nirvana. (Isn't emo all about angst?) More traditional "rock" would be youth rebellion, with the angst earlier on being pop (eg., Brian Wilson).

fuelie heads and a hurst on the floor

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

BS has a touch of the thing i really like about squeeze -- which is that he looks at the adult aftermath of teenage dreams, when the reality of them is very rubbish but the lure is still intense* -- but this can morph pretty catastrophically into hornby-esque dadrockism

*cf also bowie of course

Re: fuelie heads and a hurst on the floor

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

haha SANDI THOM to thread, o noes.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have never heard a Bruce Springsteen song in my life because he is indie :D

However I have heard covers of this song called 'I'm On Fire' (apparently a Springsteen original) by Tori Amos and Electrelane - both are wonderful, especially the Amos, it's one of her finest vocal performances.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think Bruce at his best actually IS quite indie in outlook so the standard jokes cannot apply.

[juror8.livejournal.com]

I wonder what parallels (or differences) you can draw between Springsteen and, say, The Smiths or B&S in terms of working class kids from big industrial cities being disillusioned with their surroundings and wanting something BIGGER and BETTER (and, yeah, more middle class).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Girls Aloud!

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Hah, yes! Actually, that Mannie Fresh lyric "I ain't got a car/Pimpin' ridin' the bus" always struck me as the most B&S rap lyric ever.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The problem with your mini-thesis here is that I think it applies to far too many artists/groups/bands and has not very much to do with the genre or aesthetic or lyrics or sound they employ to do it.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Incidentally have you ever heard the Tori cover of 'I'm On Fire'?

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like it. I think Tori's at her best covering Important Cultural Musicians, there's more room to interpret there. So she does Springstee, Dylan, and Eminem well, and obscure mid 70s stuff not so good.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Tori as one of the finest interpretative artists I've ever heard is one of those really under-explored fields of discussion - especially how it works in opposition to but also in the same way as her own confessional work.

Yes, good at covering Nirvana, Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Prince, Slayer (!!!); not so good at covering female artists, apart from a lovely version of 'Landslide'.

ACTUALLY...

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

... I wish I could explain why Asbury Park is one of my favourite albums ever.

Re: ACTUALLY...

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

do it!