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

[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'.