Pop has been SO BAD recently, that I...

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

...have been listening to Neil Young.

Does anyone have a more shameful confession?

Comments

Re: dig that crazy crate

[koganbot]

Well, I basically disagreed with Mark's connecting "pop" and "laziness." This has nothing to do with reality. It'd be like claiming that there was an inherent connection between skateboards and laziness, or crossword puzzles and laziness, or dances and laziness. The opposite of "lazy" isn't "work" but "active.

"Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her wallet's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
She gets so excited
Watch her look at her run"

But also disagree with the notion (not that anyone has explicitly stated it here, but someone might) that being pop precludes making intellectual and moral demands on the hearer, that pop doesn't ask something of you.

[koganbot]

No it doesn't necessarily mean "I AM KING OF THE INDIES." It depends on the song, what it sounds like, what you can do with it. The term "indie" isn't the only alternative to "pop." You might try the word "semipopular," coined by Xgau.

Semipopular music is music that is appreciated--I use the term advisedly--for having all the earmarks of popular music except one: popularity. Just as semiclassical music is a systematic dilution of highbrow preferences, semipopular music is a cross-bred concentration of fashionable modes. I'm not putting it down, for this is the music I am always praising ecstatically--the r&b takeoffs of Van Morrison and Randy Newman and Nolan, the easy electronicism of Terry Riley, the Wayne-Newton-with-a-bite of Nilsson, the self-conscious hillbilly plainsong of Tracy Nelson Country and (a very convoluted case) the Everly Brothers' Roots. Indeed, since writers and musicians usually prefer semipopular music, some of it even becomes popular; The Band and the Grateful Dead and Rod Stewart could all be argued into the category. My favorite examples, however, are untarnished by such associations. First is the Flying Burrito Bros., who on their first album offered the most outrageous combinations of pedal-steel and wah-wah distortion, verbal obscurity and country soul, all through the medium of a lot of ex-Byrd not-quite-stars. But even better is the Stooges, whose sole purported attraction, Iggy, continues to possess every star quality except fame.

I suppose semipopular music is decadent. It wouldn't be the first time that decadence has been the source of acute aesthetic pleasure. And indeed, the way it is so often enjoyed--quietly, stoned perhaps, in the company of a few friends, on a sound system that can convey its technological nuance--is very insular. But because it originates in a certain fondness for what other people like--a kind of musical populism much more concrete than that of the folk music of the early sixties--I think it is basically salubrious, a source of private strength that doesn't recoil from public connection.

And I'll add something about Iggy that Xgau didn't: Iggy reached for the populace and made claims on it. First three lines of the first song on his first album go:

It's 1969 OK
All across the USA
Another year for me and you

That makes the song more pop than indie even if he'd only played it once, in his attic.

Of course, it would never occur to me to say I like a song because it's pop or because it's indie. I mean, what boring reasons to like something!

[koganbot]

Oh, and here's a link to the Xgau piece:

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/obsolesc.php.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Wow! That captures this really well. My respect for Xgau has I think quadrupled in the last year or so. (And since I had never heard of him until a couple of years ago, his stock is rising fast!). I think Frank is right that what I'm describing doesn't mean indie (and I'm as guilty as anyone of polarising pop and indie AS IF THEY WERE ALTERNATIVES on this community when actually the relation is much more complex -- Tom's post later today starts to show how (in a British context at least) they're kind of imbricated in each other). "Semi-popular" allows us to take a step back from the polemics, and I like the link to decadence and to the preferences of artistic types.

I think I had an argument about your last point with someone last week (IRL!): I suggested that no-one ever likes something because it's pop or because it's indie, but if in explaining why they like something they say because it's pop or indie that's because there's some kind of social tension (probably a whole series of them) which has become crystallised into that label. This is certainly the case with the Lex, and when I use 'indie' in discussion with him I am probably still fighting some war that should have been over a dozen years ago. (With the insular musical snobs at university who would only listen to the latest imported American alternative album or whoever).

Re: ok -- possibly even worse

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It was shockingly weedy!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

how is "following the lyrics which, given that the piece in question is spoken word, are RIGHT THERE" remotely hard work?!