A kung fu fighter in a disco

I dunno, in my experience it can be momentary but it can be more sustained, especially in a group, or where there's a dance involved, or something.

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hoshuteki.livejournal.com

My experience of reading the Voice and other NY media sources for a few years, was that the opinions of NY critics with respect to what was worthy in the world of the arts seemed to be markedly different from those in the rest of the US (this is with reference to their film critics anyway, since I used to read American critics very diligently, but I daresay it goes for music as well). It may well be that voting for Bangs wasn't considered a joke -- or even an in-joke -- by them. Perhaps they did consider it a great single, or at least didn't want to be seen by their peers not to 'get' it.

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yes i find frank's response odd, or anyway overly defensive -- first it's not as if people making jokes don't have to take the making of jokes seriously in order for them to be good jokes -- second, sometimes jokes are more serious than an activity that's taken seriously as being serious -- third, the dimension of joking within and about it may be what brings seriousness to an activity that considers itself serious (but is in fact a joke) (like, say, rock-writing) (lots of meltzer's serious writing is made up of jokes and some of them are jokes-meant-stone-seriously -- gulcher, for example -- but still full of "just a joke" jokes, and also jokes where the joke is that you can't tell if they're jokes or not)

*is* always there such a gap between "dancing seriously" and "dancing for fun" and "dancing as a joke"? seems to me if you say yes you're kind of missing the point of dancing (or at last some kinds of dancing): what's the "seriousness" status of a
disco tex (http://tashtunnel.pitas.com/) "olé"?

i don't think i've ever heard "let it blurt"

[deleted and reposted w/o HTML blunder] [third time lucky]

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chezghost.livejournal.com

Tom this is a feeble attempt to justify your ticking of Richard Ashcroft in the NOW polls that one time. J'accuse!

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chezghost.livejournal.com

stevem78 = MECHA

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my votes in various wire and nme polls back in the 80s were "serious protest votes" in the form of backing for singles or records which had no chance of winning, to make a point about the odd head many of my fellow writers seemed often to put on when it came to voting -- ie they would tend to vote for "the kind of thing that ought to do well in polls like these", which is what THEY thought of as taking the process seriously (and to me was exactly the opposite)

if by some weird eventuality a boyd rice locked-groove single with more than one off-centre hole drilled HAD ended up in the nme top 10 singles of all time that would have been a VERY GRAND JOKE INDEED which wouldn't have affected the seriousness with which i played my prank, or the seriousness of the reasons behind it

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giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com

I've not heard the Bangs single in question - doing a bit of googling, it apparently features members of the Patti Smith Group and the Voidoids - but some of his other songs, esp. 'I'm in Love With My Walls' from the 'Jook Savages on the Brazos' alb he made w/ the Delinquents, are pretty good - nervy new wave that doesn't esp. scream rock-crit-vanity project. In fact there's a good case to be made that critics on the whole make pretty excellent musicians (Gay Dad excepted, obv)

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The "odd head" is not so odd really. Whenever I vote in (free vote) polls, eg ILM ones, yes I'll throw in a few curve balls that have no chance Just Because I Can but ultimately I want most of what I vote for to do well. I want to feel as if I'm part of the community innit.

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what i guess i was protesting -- without quite having the words at the time to pin it down -- was how voting "seriously" turns into "second-guessing what will stand the test of time"; i think there's a pragmatic element to this (wanting things you quite like which others also like to do better than they otherwise might, even if it means neglecting things you love that others known nothing of)

but it also -- to me anyway -- has an element of taming pop energy by yoking it to grown-up PROVEN BY SCIENCE data analysis; to put it in a slightly oldskool way, i want the poll to BE ROCK AND ROLL, not just to map it

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Polls aren't your best medium for that. Democracy = not very rock and roll.

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i disagree -- i think the notional quasi-scientific sobriety makes them an excellent context for playful disruption!

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blue-russian.livejournal.com

wanting things you quite like which others also like to do better than they otherwise might, even if it means neglecting things you love that others known nothing of

This is ANTI-POPTIMISM! to me.

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hmm, but it's not the disruption YOU planned is it? (unless it's something like the example Tom mentioned on the other thread of Stylus poll voters plotting in advance to get Schnappi in).

At best it's an accidental result - and more likely it's the New Conformity or the New State (of Pop) that already existed but you didn't realise existed until the results appeared.

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accidental result (ie something none of us expected) = the best possible outcome under any circs HURRAH!!

which only becomes the "new conformity" when we revert to worrellist bean-counting to keep it this way next time!!

(actually by "disruption" i don't necessarily mean a result publicly visible in the poll afterwards -- i just mean something which energsies and destabilises the process as it proceeds)

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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.)

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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?

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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!!)

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see i think this (http://web.pitas.com/tashpile/cecilT.html) argues for an at-least somewhat bangs-esque perspective on "seriousness" in the jazz avant garde (which LB loved): i'm certain the clue to taylor is perfectly balanced undecideability in ref vanguard masterpiece vs put-on, and i think that i think that taking bangs seriously means recognising a similar compacted response -- of passionate earnestness and goofy pre-prog rock mischief -- in his writing (hence in his music; hence in the response to his music inc.votes for it in polls etc)

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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.

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I suspect my 'Any Good At All' definition at that point was "increases the gaiety of the nation" not "is something I want to listen to".

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Yeah this is getting to a question I'm not sure I can answer: "So why isn't the Pretenders vote an in-joke?"

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the original or ours?

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

note to self: use phrase "increases the gaiety of the nation" MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY :)

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Further researches (http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/wedge/2004/07/the-gaiety-of-the-nation/)

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tom I usually think of sukrat equivalents whenever a poptimist scenarios comes up. sukrat to yr 'Britney in a rock club example' might be when I read this review of Merzbow at this electronic music festival and the reviewer noting that one person danced to it for about half an hour before giving up.

(All descriptions of a Merzbow show make him sound like some kind of wedding DJ -- like he presses a button and DJs and merzbow music comes out)

Just saying.

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

haha, that is number one google hit for "gaiety of the nation", man google loves us at the moment...

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"In fact there's a good case to be made that critics on the whole make pretty excellent musicians (Gay Dad excepted, obv)"

See I always thought that this wouldn't be the case just as many musicians are v off-putting when it comes to writing about music (this is mainly from reading booklets in classical/avant records) (obv there are exceptions to this and a couple come to mind).

I always meant to check this set of Adorno compositions that were recorded and came out on HatHut a couple of years ago. The reviewer didn't like them and noted how it was interesting that his music was so boring while what he liked and wrote about was so good.

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

a-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, i think i might have worked out what it is. if you look at this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:freakytrigger.co.uk+%22gaiety+of+the+nation%22&hl=en&lr=&filter=0

you'll notice that "gaiety of the nation" appears, in the vast majority of them, as a RELATED ARTICLE, not in the piece itself thus linking back to the original piece and boosting our search ranking.

it all makes sense now :)

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This thread made me think of the Lester Bangs piece on MMM!! You know when he talks of ppl (well, a couple of ppl) posting sides of MMM in their readers poll ballots. I think he talks of this correspondent who posted side-B of MMM as best rhythm and blues single, and posting side A and D as best singles.

I always wondered whether it was actually true or a joke.

This is as good time as any to tell you all that, when we do a poll for poptimists record of the year, you should all vote for Jakob Ullmann's excellent "a catalogue of sounds". You don't need to know what it is, or what it sounds like - just take it from me and ASSUME its great.

Lets get it in the top 10.

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this post needs more coffee.

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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.

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