Pop Premiership Week 8 RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I've not been flooded with Week 9 entries but no worries, it's only Wednesday.

Here's what katstevens has to say about the tracks you backed. Reveals at, oh, 3-ish?

""Thanks everyone for a great CD! I'm very hard to please and you all did admirably. More guitars than I was expecting though... Prepare for my brutally honest opinions!

( The Verdict )

wahey!!

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Shine compilations 1-9 plus BEST OF SHINE 97! It's already had four bids and is at £25 - four days left to go, dere readers!!

Flagplanters v Cogitants

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I pulled this out of the ILX EMP thread. It's by Scott P, who is a senior editor at Pitchfork (he edits my column, conflict of interest fans). He's summarising a current hot topic.

( No future for you )

Thoughts? Comments? This is a huge topic, obviously.

Update

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

League Of Pop tracks and players now updated: http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/354650.html

Also time to talk about the play-off system. The top 3 players in each league will go into the play-offs. #s 2 and 3 in the league will play each other for the right to meet the champions from the other league: the two winners of the resulting matches will play in 1x grand final. Details of 'scoring' to follow later.

In the Pop Premiership, Inhibitorylinks how has a clear 3 point lead at the top, on 18 points. Strange_powers is second on 15. Xyzzzz has (I think) 13 and a game in hand. Dubdobdee, Zenith and Lockedintheatti are also still in it.

the impulse to group-historicise vs the causes of bad writing

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

follow-up to:
(a) a post i made on freakytigger's thread
and
(b) the part of my EMP paper which i actually pussied out of and didn't explore (as requested by dickmalone


(a) i was wondering about the social context "ver kidz" are downloading all this material INTO, and suggested that the impulse to group-historicise what's shared is going to catch up with every new generation as it gets older (probably sooner as the mass requiring retrospective organisation will be massier)

by this i mean that there comes a point -- an age -- when things in yr life (like interaction w.yr own kids, or death of parents, or mid-life crisis) cause you to take stock of yr life so far and the choice you made; but -- while in its full effect there is an atomised, solitary just-you element to it, there is also (always) a social element, as in did "i dodge my generation's bullet?" vs "haha what were we thinking?"... the social aspect will be responded to, media-wise (at its most basic, this is what nostalgia-media is about, and there is LOTS of it, catering, often very differently, to a succession of different generations)... my speculation about the sheer quantity of information the young'uns are processing leading to a speedier mnedia of recapitulation'n'revision is exactly that, speculation --- but i do think that if the carousel is whirling ever faster and noiser, then more ppl will step off or fall off sooner, and their consolation-needs will kick in more urgently

(b) specifically what i meant by "results in bad writing" (which thus goes on to create bad music) -- tho as i say i pussied out of this part of my paper and ended up not thinking it through -- is rock after punk created a language of critical success that stresses lines of established influence, as well as innovation and breakthrough within those lines (form being thus: "xyz, influenced by green on red and pigbag, is the first band to combine ska and salsa with indie hiphop")... this is bad writing (to me) bcz it immediately goes on to evade the important bit, which is to answer the question "SO WHAT?" in respect of this analysis (viz my war on the word "influence", which to me is the touchstone of this failure: a shared understanding of the significance is taken for granted right at the point it should be being explored)

my conclusion in ref.good writing was that maybe the TEST OF SPACE can be formulated (in the extreme abstract) thusly: "Does it matter to you that it matters to me (and vice versa)?"

what does it mean for "an idea to be completed"?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

provocative claims:

i. in science it means it is moved beyond by being proved wrong
ii. in art it means it is moved beyond by being established as the unspoken "condition of possibility"* for an artform/genre/field/discipline to persist in stand-alone quasi-perpetuity

*in quotes bcz frank distrusts this phrase (and bcz i only have a very hand-wavey idea what i mean by it)