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

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

koganbot was in new york at the time so will surely be able to say if bush tetras were mere g04 wannabes or independently conceived: the timing allows for the former JUST ABOUT but pat place was a founder contortion which gives her creative and historical priority surely? i thought i had a bush tetras ROIR tape but it has either vanished or never existed

[koganbot]

Bush Tetras = no wave skronk continuing to take in funk and starting to take in a dub sense of space, so no direct connection to G of 4 at all, but obviously some similarity to Go4's strip-it-down-and-start-over and take-in-reggae-space postpunk. Tetras had head-up-their-butt bitchy coolness as opposed to G04's stick-up-their-butt leftism.

But as for actual hands-on musical heritage, a whole slew of people in all these NY bands were from Cleveland, one or two in every no wave band it seemed: Miriam Linna and then Nick Knox of the Cramps, Cynthia Womersley and Laura Kennedy (and Adele Bertei, but she quit before "Creeps") of the Bush Tetras (pretty sure Cynthia and Laura were from Cleveland/NE Ohio). Adele Bertei of the Contortions, Bradly Field of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Tim Wright of DNA, Anton Fier (who seemed to play with everybody). I think Billy Ficca of Television was from Akron, but that might be wrong. Jarmusch, who was playing in bands back then, was from Akron. I'm probably forgetting someone obvious. Well, the Dead Boys, but they went in a different direction, more Stooges and MC5 than downtown no wave. (And I'm not counting later bands like Red Dark Sweet.) So a lot of these people would have known and some have played with people in the Electric Eels/Mirrors/Rocket From The Tombs/Pere Ubu/Peter Laughner axis in the early to mid '70s, or known the Numbers Band people in Kent, or Tin Huey and Devo in Akron. And then of course everyone was listening to funk jazz and free jazz and however you'd label what Bob Quine was doing (skronked-up rockabilly?). Laura Kennedy was a fan of Talking Heads, which makes sense when you think about it. Not that "Too Many Creeps" shows all of these elements, but rather that it was coming out of various ongoing musical contexts and interchanges that not only preceded Gang of Four but also the Sex Pistols. Which isn't to say that people weren't scarfing up whatever they could from Britain or felt an affinity to what they heard, but the idea of skronkified funk was established several years before any Slits or Go4 or Pop Group or Blurt records came into existence.

(Very strange reading Reynolds trying to shoehorn Pere Ubu and Talking Heads into "post-punk.")

[koganbot]

Which isn't to say that people weren't scarfing up whatever they could from Britain or didn't feel an affinity to what they heard from there...