The History Of Jop Part 7 aka We're Rockers And Rappers United And Strong

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Pazz and Jop polls take us to the fairly unheralded year of 1985, and the selection is.....well, judge for yourself and discuss below. You get NINE votes, cast them wisely.

Notes: The John Fogerty song that got in last time rose to #3(!!) this time. It was excluded.


[Poll #826538]


The Joptimists 1984 Vote Verdict:

1. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (38 votes)
2. When Doves Cry (37 votes)
3. Jump (31)
4=. I Feel For You (28)
4=. Time After Time (28)
6. Let's Go Crazy (23)
7. What's Love Got To Do With It (21)
8. Dancing In The Dark (20)
9=. Free Nelson Mandela (19)
9=. Let's Hear It For The Boy (19)

Comments

i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Seriously that lead Madge has over one of the WORST BANDS EVER who are unaccountably in second place is NOT NEARLY COMFORTABLE ENOUGH.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What makes them worse than other boys-with-guitars? As someone who was a Smiths obsessive (tho arrived to this just as they were breaking up) I'm intrigued.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

my perspective is slightly biased because my introduction to the smiths was via a group of pretty appalling people.

it always seemed very wet and wimpy to me, which is obv kind of the point, but wet and wimpy indie boy music has always repulsed me a bit - i feel like shouting GET 1X BACKBONE at them. i never got the supposed 'humour' which was meant to have leavened this with the smiths, either. the lyrics make me cringe more than most because they're so arch and mannered and self-pitying, and above all i cannot listen to morrissey's voice.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, yeah, the 'humour' thing was always a little bit of a red herring, in that few people first fell in love w/the Smiths because the band were funny.

There was a Taylor Parkes piece once where he said that he hated the Smiths and Smiths fandom (speaking I think as a former fan) because it seemed an admission of defeat, a glorification of a certain kind of loneliness. You can take this analysis too far but there's definitely truth in it (and it applies more widely than the Smiths). However Smiths fandom - like most indie fandoms - was usually INTENSELY social, so the idea was more "how to live happily and morally without a backbone" rather than "oh woe is me i haven't got one".

How Soon Is Now is a great record because it bothers to actually sonically dramatise the singer's loneliness, rather than just stating it.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

yeh, the big hrashy guitar twang is like a stroppy teenager going "Aaooorgggh! S'NOT FAIR!"

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I am with the Lex on this one. I find Morrissey's voice nigh on unlistenable and it puts me off anything he's had anything to do with. Despite the fact the backing to HSIN is really kind of great really.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

the solution is to just listen to Soho's 'Hippy Chick', or the TaTu cover maybe.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

morrisey's voice put me off teh smiths too. you get over it.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

not compared with the tatu cover it's not.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

haha there the trouble is that I first heard the tATu version which is approx 9999999 times as dramatic as the Smiths version!

i give more credence to the humour thing because the 'humourless'/'depressing' accusation is one often levelled at Tori, and one which as an obsessive i Knew To Be False, though possibly that was more allied to identifying so closely with the performer that you start laughing along with her private in-jokes.

I would agree with Taylor Parkes based on the Smiths fans I knew.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The problem with smiths fandom from my POV - and again this goes for a lot of indie fandoms - is the shift from

"Hurrah us backboneless people can band together with pride!"

to

"Let us disdain the backboned scum and their crass vertebrate ways"

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

the logical thing should surely be "i am backboneless because i am not self-confident and feel alone" => "there are other people like me" => "i am no longer alone and am more self-confident" => "I HAVE GROWN A BACKBONE"

this sort of happened with me (although i always had a BACKBONE, it was more general teenage angst) but it does not happen to many other indie fans! backbonelessness is perfectly acceptable when you're 15 but not after you've graduated.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

is it just a logical extension (in the same way you could argue that extremism is the logical or rather inevitable conclusion of any faith/belief if followed intently enough) to turn to hate or can it be avoided completely?

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

much as i like the tatu cover, no.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The tATu cover is more dramatic yes but that's not really the 'point' of the Smiths song.

i.e. when I said 'dramatises the loneliness' I meant 'brings the loneliness to life' rather than 'makes it dramatic' (the vocals are doing that). The counterpoint of the big guitar swoops like giant sighs or shoulder shrugs and the grinding undercarriage like the monotony of his everyday loveless existence ect ect.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths --- they were LOLZ

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

"the 'humour' thing was always a little bit of a red herring, in that few people first fell in love w/the Smiths because the band were funny."

I'll say I'm one of those. The words of a song weren't something that really jumped out at me then so much, so when this did I really took notice. And it really ws a line here or there, all the wider 'issues' as discussed elsewhere weren't something I 'got' into so much at the time. Its a wordplay quality where I bracket MORRISEEY w/ CAPTAIN BEEFHEART.

At the same time those issues did slip through, I distinctly remember thinking I had 'got' what England and the english were kinda like. Did anyone have a look at the Folk Britannia doc on BBC2 the other day where guitarist Davy Graham talked about of Shirley Collins' voicings as something very English and a particular type of English (Thomas Tallis, green fields, etc.) so in the same way I think of Morrissey and his voice as something out of high rise flats and er, Thamesmead, or whatever the Manchester equiv of that would be.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

my introduction to the smiths was via a group of pretty appalling people.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA do you mean mayer_n?

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I mean exactly THOSE PEOPLE!

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Arf! Did you hear that Tibbles is getting MARRIED?

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

!!!!!!!!

to WHOM???????

Christgau reviews the Smiths

[koganbot]

Meat Is Murder [Sire, 1985]
It makes a certain kind of sense to impose teen-macho aggression on your audience--for better or worse, macho teens are expected to make a thing of their unwonted hostility. These guys impose their post-adolescent sensitivity, thus inspiring the sneaking suspicion that they're less sensitive than they come on--passive-aggressive, the pathology is called, and it begs for a belt in the chops. Only the guitar hook of "How Soon Is Now," stuck on by their meddling U.S. label, spoils the otherwise pristine fecklessness of this prize-winning U.K. LP. Remember what the Residents say: "Hitler was a vegetarian." C+

(I had a convo a couple years ago w/ xhuxk where he said he and Xgau had been talking and agreed that the Smiths were a group they'd each missed the boat on, underrated; and I'd have to include myself there. Which isn't to say I've gone back and discovered what was good and what not, but there's actually some authoritative singing/performing there.)

Re: Christgau reviews the Smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

At school they INFURIATED people who didn't like them, more than any other band. I loved that, of course, but equally there is no way I'd have talked to the people infuriated by them to unpick why - I suspect they'd have offered reasons along similar but less articulate lines to Christgau.

The one hater I did talk to at length about them - someone even less cool than me and so not frightening to approach - explained that he hated them because they were technically sloppy players, and as a tit-for-tat made me listen to all of Dire Straits' very long "Telegraph Road".

Re: Christgau reviews the Smiths

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

I like to think someone at the record company probably agreed that as an albums group they weren't so good therefore releasing all those compilations ws, as well as a way to making more cash, the best way to have get a 'look' at this group.

Re: Christgau reviews the Smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

BRILLIANT. That is exactly how I feel.

The Smiths = making a virtue out of being SOCIAL RETARDS.

Re: Christgau reviews the Smiths

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

lex i am reposting this EXCHANGE on my MORRISEY = NU-BYRNE thread, which i want you to expound on