Via maura

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2007/10/22/071022crmu_music_frerejones

- I would imagine there'll be lots of blogtalk about this one. It feels to me like he's fighting old battles, or maybe telling old war stories that aren't quite as tightly relevant to now as they should be. But the point about the shift from imitator to fan seems an interesting one.

Meanwhile there's still a couple of hours to vote in the Pop Open.

The Pop Open Seventies RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Here are the results for the 70s group - turnout down a bit in part because of the shortened voting time I guess (and relative lack of reminders). Still a close group though (well, past the clear winner)! Congratulations to the qualifiers, commiserations to the losers, thank you all for playing. 80s up tomorrow (if my PC is working).

FIRST PLACE: "Move Me No Mountain" by Dionne Warwick (9 first-place votes, 38% of total points) - mackromackro WINS!

SECOND PLACE: "Nice Mover" by Gina X Performance (5 first-place votes, 24% of total points) - anatol_merklich QUALIFIES!

THIRD PLACE: "I Can't Stand My Baby" by The Rezillos (4 first-place votes, 19% of total points) - lisa_go_blind is OUT!

FOURTH PLACE: "The Ballad Of Arivederci" by Kavaret (2 first-place votes, 19% of total points) - mcatzilut is OUT!

Moar news about the third round: as I said before, it'll be a series of one-on-one votes, and these will be freestyle, i.e. NO THEME - submit anything you like. The details of who is 'battling' who will be revealed after the 00s group finishes.

real men don't eat niche

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

just to pursue this a bit, since it's gone beyond 50 posts and clenched up

reasons for the hardening of niche boundaries:

i. niche-media -- i wz reading a copy of FOLK ROOTS over someone's shoulder on the bus last night, it wz my bugbear 20 years ago when i wz writin abt african pop and sent a shiver of dislike thru me yesterday also... the attention and aprpoval paid artists successful in a niche means (i) they don't have do any work to be paid attention by the "centre"; (ii) the centre can hive off any attention it wants to pay to them -- in other words the success of THE VIBE actually diminishes the likelihood of ROLLING STONE needing to write well about the vibe's target subject (and any interraction) [this can be expanded to niche-business as a policing mechanism, i think, the niche-media as the platform for the niche-market]

ii. relative availability for comparison -- in the 60s, the only ppl who knew how the brit blues boom players sounded in comparison to their sources were the players themselves, which allowed them a scope to develop and change and explore, and make something strong (on its own terms) out of something maybe quite clumsy and bad (on the terms of the stuff it was copying) -- ppl who heard it didn't think "crossover", they responded to merely the phenom itself, not the phenon in relation to its source, and the phenom evolved in response to this (naive, uninformed) enthusiasm, far enough to become a thing in itself... today the source is a download away, you don't need a copy to avail yrself of it and will judge the copy accordingly

iii. the language of "appropriation" and cultural ownership -- this is an understandable response to the depradation of the "quasi-imperialist centre", but it's not, in the long run, a strategically intelligent one (vanguards should want to seize the centre, or to operate from it, not to creep off into their own safge no-go zone)

iv. even so the "centre" is simultaneously ruinously contested and not believed in -- not believed in as a civic value in itself, let alone as an untainted possibility

v. practicaly speaking, platforms-as-centres have dissolved -- newspapers, pop mags, whatever, all hive off their various functions into specialist sections so large that you don't have to negotiate "other material" to reach them -- the physical collage-juxtaposition of newspaper layout (which is a basic structural element in modernism-as-a-new-mode-of-thought), complete with impulse to cut, to crisp up, to shorten, is disappearing as the infinite space of the net beckons

[ok that's my starter for 5]