The History Of Jop Part 2 aka Clap your hands everybody if you got what it takes

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The second instalment of this poll series takes us to the Pazz and Jop poll of 1980 - if you don't know what Pazz and Jop is, refer to the previous episode (or ignore it and do the poll anyway). You get to pick NINE of these.


[Poll #810979]


And now here's the results of the 1979 poll: the Joptimists Top Ten

1. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough (44 votes)
2. Rapper's Delight (40)
3. We Are Family/Greatest Dancer (37)
4. Good Times (34)
5. Pop Musik (31)
6. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick/Reasons To Be Cheerful (30)
7. My Sharona (28)
8. Dreaming (26)
9. Hot Stuff (25)
10=. Gangsters (21)
10=. Life During Wartime (21)
10=. Damaged Goods/It's Her Factory (21)

Comments

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Not only have I never heard "Echo Beach" but I have never even heard OF it. I guess I'll have to track it down if y'all like it so much...

Also, maybe this is covered in one of the threaded posts above, but: I understand how JD seems more important right now, but stack the number of records that stem from the DKs next to the ones that stem from JD and the DKs win in a pop-punk avalanche.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Haha yes very true but REMEMBER WE'RE BRITISH (or a lot of us are).

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was gonna say. Still, "Rapper's Delight" won and it hasn't exactly had a lot of effect on British music either. Maybe the DKs just haven't been properly rock-historically canonized? (Or I'm just wrong?)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well it had the same effect as it had on US music i.e. bringing hip-hop to public awareness. Was a huge hit here. There wasn't the grassroots movement to follow it up, but a lot of people listened.

POL BOSH POL BOSH

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

as regards canon, the DKs followed up the EPOCHALLY TREMENDOUS HiC with "Too Drunk to Fuck" (which = hook-free antipop of the most cynical kind) (I PAID REAL ACTUAL MONEY FOR IT JELLO YOU CROOK, and THIS I DO NOT FORGIVE) and "Kill the Poor" (which = pretty super-minor)

but yes, HiC is better than any joy div single (and indeed any clash single, any bruce single except candy's room, any jam single...) -- it is a NOVELTY HIT (except sadly it wasn''t a hit)

but to answer the question

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

DK were central to the US hardcore sotyr (along with ver flag blah blah); but had next to NO presence in the UK (local indie network couldn't pass across internationa boundaries; in the UK, JD after IC's suicide were similarly seminal i think, and similarly parochial

Re: but to answer the question

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think "Too Drunk To Fvck" gave them some kind of presence - when I was at school a few people had DKs shirts, or DKs tapes, or something, but that was why, and so "HiC" was kind of a bonus!

Re: but to answer the question

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Haha, and thus: indiepacolypse on the UK charts!

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Plus it wasn't competing with Joy Division, true.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I would still question how much you can credit the DKs specifically. I mean, this is 1980 we're talking about.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Who else would you credit? I'm just struck by how much punk bands sound like the Dead Kennedies, still, and I'm not sure who actually sounded like that before. (The east coast/midwest punkers were too explicitly 50s/60s-inflected.)

[koganbot]

When were the Germs in relation to DKs? My feeling is that Germs, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains would've sounded the way they did with or without DKs, so DKs in themselves were not that crucially important. But then again, I picked Kurtis Blow for representing the most important musical movement, even though said movement wouldn't have been changed at all by his absence. So DK is a reasonable choice.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

(Plus, and again this is maybe me being American, but everyone I know owned Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables when they were a teen, which is not the case with Joy Division. Maybe I just have goofy friends.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Partially this may be a split between coasts, partially between, well, let's say "punk punk" and "crit punk." I've seen a lot of DK posters on walls, but people actually listened to Ramones, Clash, Pistols, etc.

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

Again this may be another histo-cult divide, but the Dead Kennedys were, relatively speaking, HUGE in the UK for a while - California Uber Alles, Holiday in Cambodia, Kill the Poor, Too Drunk to Fuck and Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables were all number one, semi-permanent fixtures on the NME alternative/indie charts for a v. v. long time. Whereas eg the Germs meant almost nothing over here.

EDIT: Doin a bit of googling I find that Fresh Fruit reached no 37 in the UK album charts, and that the Too Drunk to Fuck EP got to no 31 in the singles chart. The power of Cherry Red! (Black Flag eat yr heart out)

[(Anonymous)]

The DKs – mostly the early stuff – were very big at the posh school I was at in the late 80s. Big fans included the heir to a very grand family, who played Kill The Poor to his dad, but I'm not going to stumble to any trite conclusions about the futility of satire here. – Mark M

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, all the people who I knew who liked them were posh too. I think they might even have been played at the "punk rock" concert given by a student band in the 14th century dining hall - o that robincarmody shd have seen this day etc etc.