It's the tunes that got small

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"thebopkids esp.will (rightly) note existence of a actual real live danbcing till dawn community who believed that what constituted indie in (say) 1984 was the same as and would again soon be pop's idea of pop"

sez Mark.

I was thinking the other day that the Poptimist position is kind of like a civil servant's - you have to work with whatever regime the public hands you, however reluctantly. The alternative is a fannish secession as outlined above, keeping alive an idea of 'perfect pop' (cf also Bomp! fanzine in the 80s). You can work out for yourself where this leads.

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Interesting analogy. The problem with the 'pure pop' revivalists is their denial of the historicity of pop -- i.e. that works may become more or less pop in time, and there is no going back! Foolishly thinking they may bend the forces of pop to their will they in fact ghettoise and destroy the pop-ness of their chosen icons, so that if they do re-emerge from the precious hipster circles it is in a horrible form i.e. we get Teenage Fan Club and the Thrills. (Does this apply to non-rock pop? revived old-school hip-hop or R&B? I wonder if there are different ideas of time and history in different genres (just as there are different ideas about love, loss, art etc.), which mean different relations to an idea such as 'pure pop'.