Of Pop And Polls And Fun

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Following on from a discussion between Frank and Julio and I on the P&J thread about what "Let It Blurt" by Lester Bangs was doing there (you hopefully don't need to read that discussion to understand this post tho...)

Frank says: And assuming that a vote for ["Let It Blurt"] is a joke is no different from assuming that a vote for "...Baby One More Time" or "Stars Are Blind" is a joke.

But equally some of those votes MIGHT BE JOKES! Just cos we disapprove of irony or mockery as a way into (or deflection of) enjoyment doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

To look at the social context of dancing rather than the social context of polling, if you play Britney in a club full of people who mostly like credible rock or alternative or punk or dance music (not too dissimilar from the voter base of P&J), some people will dance who wouldn't describe themselves as liking it, because they're making a joke or showing off or striking a pose or whatever.

Same thing happens in a poll, and just like dancing there's a continuum: as a poll gets bigger and more formal, voters take it (and themselves) more seriously, and the ones that don't get statistically ironed out and so results which MIGHT carry an implication of private enthusiasm or private irony (same difference, statswise) become fewer and fewer. The P&J poll these days is definitely at the serious end of this continuum, the Poptimists polls generally at the frivolous end due to the fact that the social element of polling is much more explicit here.

The '79 singles results are P&J at an earlier stage in this process than it's reached now and I was delighted to see the Bangs single placing because it seemed to me to carry traces of the 'social-ness' of P&J (and 'rock criticism' itself, if you like).

Which may be just as patronising to Bangs-the-musician, but there you go.

Comments

[koganbot]

Key word "assuming" (root word "assume," as in "can I assume that 'let it blurt' is garbage?"); there is an assumption in the following sentence: "It's funny that an in-joke could get quite high in the poll." To point out later that, indeed, some votes can be for fun, or effect, or protest, etc., doesn't exactly address my reasons for being aghast that Julio assumed it was garbage and that you assumed the vote was some kind of an in joke. (Ironically enough, what came to mind was Jim DeRogatis's saying that Chuck Eddy put Teena Marie's Emerald City number nine in Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe as a joke for his rock-critic friends.)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

OK, well let me ask another question. In your reply describing "Let It Blurt" you list several skronk records that you think are better than LiB. The VV singles poll contains no other records that could be described as skronk. What was it that caused a poll of rock critics' skronk-love to apparently focus on a skronk single recorded by a fellow rock critic?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

not to speak for julio, but i would assume that an element in his assumption is -- paradoxically enough, considering -- the (apparent) fact that LiB hasn't "stood the test of time", at least in the sense of successfully entering a memorialised canon

ie the unspoken argument is "if seriously intended at the time as an entry for the ages then voters for it wd have fought in later years also, and we'll all know it better"

i think this is a suspect unspokeness argument bcz seriousness can totally be situational -- but if it comes to that so can "non-garbageness"

i still don't entirely understand how it's being an "in-joke" as a vote STOPS it being a serious vote also --- they're just not mutually exclusive (bah why didn't wittgenstein write about pazz and jop voting strategies more often)

(haha also when i read julio's post i merely laughed and moved on, bcz i assumed he was saying what he was saying to be funny and cheeky, rather making a serious assumption!!)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's also worth saying that it takes only 2 of 11 votes to be in-jokes (whether or not they were also serious votes) for in-jokeness to have propelled the single onto the poll. Given that we know 8 of the 11 votes are Lester and his friends, and given what I know about polls and people and people's attitudes to polls, I don't feel too awful making that call.

I accept though that my initial sentence, quoted by Frank, has me assuming that most or all the votes were 'in-jokes'.

Chuck's book isn't quite the same, I don't think, because in that case it's the content that would be the 'joke' (i.e. Tina Marie is actually not the 9th best metal album ever) rather than the context (a public poll is being gatecrashed by the 1979-era Noize Board).

Even so I think DeRogatis' real sin is to imply that putting something in a book because your friends will enjoy it being there is a bad or insincere thing. Oh, and maybe to assume that people reading the book would be turned off by the idea of Chuck having 'rock critic friends' rather than turned on.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

How about a serious-jokey assumption?

I could say the elements that went into the assumption were (probably) that on one hand the man and his writings had entered a canon yet his music has never even come up till now and when it does (by being placed on the poll) it was only talked about as unheard-of. Also, yeah, i thought it as a friendly vote (polls are fun anyway, and VV critics probably formulated voting for LiB as shronk-joke) for a in-reality probably bad single.

But actually I must have thought of the above in a micro-second. More like I wanted the person who voted for it to tell what it sounded like and that therefore no it isn't garbage.