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

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, very interesting! Not to get all dissensus but there are a lot of theoretical implications that flow from this, especially with Max Weber, although Weber would actually work against the analogy sometimes--if the state has a monopoly on violence, and we are "working" for the state, who is the state in this scenario? The music industry? This suggests that the indie counter-argument would be that the labels that release pop do not have a monopoly on distribution and therefore we are actually choosing up sides even though we think we're not.

It's especially interesting to me since here in the US we've been seeing over the last 10 years one party pretty much purge all the civil servants that don't agree with (or are related to, or gave money to) them. Wonder what the analogy would be to this in music history? Is there essentially a purge going on now with rock's death?

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Although Weber also supports the poptimist stance. From his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber):

A politician must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic", understood by Weber as being the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, that is to say, the injunction to turn the other cheek. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood to be a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. The political realm is no realm for saints. A politician ought to marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility, and must possess both a passion for his avocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).

Pop is no place for purism!