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

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Viciously hard, this one - I would have liked a few spare ticks for Ross/Springsteen/other JDivision.

First thoughts:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hip-hop jumps from scraping into the top 25 to topping the poll BUT "The Breaks" is the only hip-hop record on offer - were there really so few others? (Surely not - my "Ego Trip 1980" folder of dodgy MP3s seems well stocked). Or is this a block vote for the best one. Regardless it's quite a statement.

Lots of tracks I've not heard here - Pylon, Jim Carroll, this particular Paul Simon.

Slightly surprised to see Lipps Inc doing so well, not sure why because it's excellent, but it has the reputation now of being a bit cheesy maybe?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Carsmile OTM about Super Trouper - grate stuff.

Were grown up Tom to inhabit the body of a 1980 pazz and jop critic, Quantum Leap style, ABBA's "Winner Takes It All" would top my list.

Pol. POT. Pol. POT. Pol Pot Pol Pot Pol Pot etc etc etc

[juror8.livejournal.com]

I know there's always that "Amazing songs/douche of a human being" dichtomy in music, but has it ever been so pronounced as with Jello Biafra?

New Wave

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm not rly surprised there's such a big New Wave leaning on Poptimists.

I blame the Sound Of The Suburbs compilation.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if this will work, but I've tagged most of these songs over in last.fm. So in theory some of you should be able go to this page (http://www.last.fm/tag/pazz%20and%20jop%201980) and listen to the tracks through last.fm radio.

As if you didn't know any of these songs...

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

Am I the only person who thinks Joy Division are dull and overrated? (Though I don't dispute their influence.)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I am listening to Late in the Evening as feeble protest at Paul Simon's lack of votes.

stuff i feel is missing

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

That's The Joint - Funky 4 + 1
A song from under the floorboards - Magazine

Where is GENO ?
There there my dear wd be a strong contender as well.

old school tie mindmeld, slight return

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

On our favourite track, at least.

and these are the hands we're given

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

cis! mindmeld over supreme importance of ms ross!

WORLD KORREKT SHAPE AT LAST

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

clash and vapors neck and neck!!

bah!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

can't find NME xmas 1980 -- i think it featured the slits but that bit of my "archive" is in a big useless unsorted pile at the moment

What alternate world have I slipped into

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

where a group called "poptimists" thinks the Dead Kennedys did the fifth best song of the year?!?

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

I agree w/ Tom - Devo may be the most mystifyingly overrated group of all time, a total critic's wet dream whose actual records are dreary and unfunny

Call Me should not be winning this

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Least good (pre reforma) Blondie single?

This is all relative. They set such a high standard up to this point obv. I'll accept it's "any good at all", but it was (is) a real let down after the magnificence of Eat To The Beat.

[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.

So what does the utter failure of some songs mean?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Were voters in 1980 too caught up in the rush to recognize their myopia, that Pylon and Jim Carroll (or Lennon and Simon!) just weren't that good? Or are we seeing a split between the US-dominated Pazz and Jop voters, and UK-leaning Poptimists? Or have tastes really changed?

Whither Talking Heads?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

In lieu of posting a longer list things I was into in 1980 here, I'll just point out that Remain In Light was a key record of the last three months of that year (for me). So the absence of TH feels odd, esp. given "Life During Wartime" made the '79 P&J list.

Perhaps "Once in a Lifetime" makes the '81 list...?

Echo Beach

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Is BY MILES my favourite record on here but then again it's one of my favourite records of all time. It's one of the only moments in pop where a sax solo is actually a REALLY GOOD IDEA!

[koganbot]

General thoughts:

(1) Useful to check here if you have any questions about whether something placed in a later year, how albums were doing, etc. 1979's album winner will make you gape.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/index.php

(2) This is a terrible list in comparison to 1979's, and it tempts me to start muttering things about stupid white people, stupid journalists, stupid bohemians, critics' basic dunderheadedness when it comes to pop music, and on and on and on. But there are mitigating factors:
i. Xgau as always was trying to further expand the voter rolls beyond people like himself, getting more rank-and-file journos, and he was succeeding.
ii. A lot of the best club music (what two seconds earlier had been called "disco") was now only getting airplay in a few markets or none at all, so a lot of great tracks weren't hitting the bulk of critics. So you had to search for them specially or be part of their scene, and most critics were doing their special searches and conveying word-of-mouth enthusiasm for post-punk, not for dance.
iii. Hip-hop was bursting amazingly onto record, but mainly in New York; and even in New York, black adults were frightened of hip-hop, so only a few hip-hop tracks at a time would be allowed on black or r&b radio, and Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rapping" and "The Breaks" were the lucky ones with airplay.
iv. Punk and its relatives and friends and progeny were getting, you know, dumber and more boring.

(3) To elaborate on iii and answer Tom's question upthread, yes, hip-hop was bursting hugely and wonderfully on record, though people hadn't really figured out how to translate live DJ mix-and-cut brilliance to vinyl and make it work in short-enough-for-radio nuggets. But 1980 produced the best-ever Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five cut ("Supperrappin'"), the second-best ever Spoonie Gee cut ("Love Rap"), the best ever Sugarhill Gang cut ("8th Wonder"), the best ever Treacherous Three/Kool Moe Dee cut ("The Body Rock"), an astoundingly great DJ Hollywood track ("Rock Rock the House," which happens to be the only DJ Hollywood track I've heard), a great club take on hip-hop (Vaughn Mason & Crew's "Bounce Rock Skate Roll"), a great hip-hop take on a great club take on hip-hop (Trickeration's "Rap Bounce Rock Skate"), numerous great, terrible, fascinating one shots (e.g., there was a guy who called himself Sicle Cell who put out a track called "Rapazooty in Blue"), probably some obvious other things I'm not thinking of. But this was receiving almost no airplay anywhere, 'cept for "8th Wonder" and Flash's two follow-up singles. There's still no acceptable reason for "8th Wonder" not making this list. Maybe critics bought the crap about how the Sugarhill Gang weren't real hip-hop.

(4) You might want to keep an eye out for songs on these lists that fall into the following categories: Adult Contemporary, Country, Ballads. The numbers are usually sparse.

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

people who died is really cheap and easy, a sort of funeral mass forthe punks in carrols life, a litany of the dead and dying, i should hate it.

but i dont hate it, because of that mass bit--when you say intentions in the middle of church, and it seems like there will be power there, that talking to the heavens can actually do some shit, and then you walk outside, and some ones asking for change, or the alley smells like piss or the city is too humid that day, and you get beaten down, and you wonder, how do you get the magiv words to mean something/be effective outside of that pyschic landscape.

carroll is one of the last great catholics, and (one of the few/the only) man who managed to make (punk/pop/spoken word/?) liturgical. its a rare gift.

(xpost)