The History Of Jop Part 1 aka Everybody's Talking About Pop Musik

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Obviously nothing can replace the Now Polls in our hearts. But koganbot suggested doing polls bassed on the Village Voice Pazz and Jop feature, and that seemed a good idea to me.

The what and what? The Pazz and Jop poll* is an annual poll published by the Village Voice newspaper** in New York. The idea is that every rock critic in America - and latterly in THE WHOLE WORLD (sort of) - gets to vote for their favourite albums and singles of the year. We'll be looking at the singles polls here, historically the poor relation of the albums polls ftb loads of critics not bothering voting in them.

These polls will be done canon-style, i.e. you pick your favourite ten out of the top thirty singles. Or in this case, because this first one was a small enfeebled thing, you pick your favourite NINE out of 26.

The point of the polls, as well as the usual timewasting comment fun, is to get a handle on how critical opinion works and has shifted and where you agree and don't and all that fun stuff.

Without further ado - TO THE TICKY BOXES.


[Poll #809394]


*don't worry too much about the Pazz bit.

**whether there will still be a Pazz and Jop poll following the VV's recent takeover by The Man, I do not know.

Comments

[koganbot]

It was on their first album in a faster and not as good version (too herky-jerk even where part of the point was to be herky-jerk). I must say, as someone who's had a long-time vendetta against the Gang of Four, that this is a great song, and was a near miss on my ticky list. Very stripped down, taut, w/ Jon intoning at the start, half-ominous and half pathetic, "The change'll do you good/I always knew it would." In other words, it's a breakup song, the metaphor being that he's damaged goods and therefore being shipped back to the distributor to be replaced - and probably in their pseud way the band think they're saying something-or-other about the relation of all this to the commodification of whatever, but that doesn't get in the way of the hard little bent-foot dance they're laying down and the hard twisted anger/sorrow they're portraying. Obv. Go4 are no Ashlee or even Carole when it comes to the complexities of actual breakups, but they get a particular feel, and a dance/antidance that goes with that feel.