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

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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah but - this is a really key thing about 80s indie - if you associate having a backbone with lots of hugely unpleasant things viz sexism, racism, Toryism, then yr loneliness takes on a somewhat political angle and the easing of that loneliness by joining with the similiarly lonely begins to acquire a utopian angle.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

So what did stuff like Madonna, Jacko, Prince etc signify politically? I can well see how they might be representative of KAPITALISM but surely sexism and racism and so on couldn't be tied into that?

WELCOME TO THE HIPHOP WARS

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

... where no side had a defensible position >:(

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent question! Indie when I got into it (c 1989) was a lot less ideological (cos various luminaries i.e. David Gedge! had attempted to SELL OUT) but the basic motor of lonely-people-attempting-community was still kind of there (I think MADCHESTER may have ruined it though).

There was a sense that the Pop Machine was inherently bad and corrupt - I never really fell for this but it was there in some of the fan discourse - but at the same time Prince was officially A Genius, Jacko and Madonna also quite respectable things to like (the NME gave Like A Prayer a big fat 10 as lead review).

I'm guessing - can Tim help me out here? - in the Smiths' heyday (84-86) Prince especially would have been OK within the indie community, the "some of my best friends are pop" candidate, but pop and soul were the music listened to by the backboned 'enemy' and tarred with his brash brush.

A complicating factor is that Morrissey himself - whose words carried unfortunate weight - was VERY VERY AGAINST soul, reggae and videos.

As I say though I wasn't "there" so only caught the distant end of these conflicts.

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes what few pronouncements on music I have read from Morrissey have all had me foaming at the mouth with the word RACIST on my lips. (Talking of racists I have some v amusing news which is not for the internet!)

Outkast really are the new Prince! I guess Jacko might be equivalent to Justin now and Madge to Xtina (though Justin and Xtina still very much baby versions of them), in that they have widespread public acceptance, by and large they're critically successful as well, and many people seem to be OK with them without compromising a general anti-pop stance.

I was thinking the other day that part of the thrill of finding an indie community back in these days (and in the 90s too) would have been the difficulty in finding it: the necessary period when you were the only person you knew who liked a certain band. And now this can't possibly apply!

Re: i REALLY REALLY hate the smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It was surprisingly undifficult to find it! You saw a band you liked on the front of the NME or Melody Maker, started buying it, and then could get as much or little involved as you like via the classified ads, fanzines etc. Finding the records was more difficult if you lived outside a big town, I think.

hiphop wars (further observations)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the war against soul was waged more by MELODY MAKER than morrissey -- i think the post-punk landscape was very open to soul 84-85 (as it was to afropop and jazz and ... ) but c86-ism vs the hiphop hitlers w.their "soul-cialism" shut this down totally

Re: hiphop wars (further observations)

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

this is exactly like Rumsfeld insisting the CIA were at fault for not detecting the nuclear submarines the Russians didn't actually have, or something.

Re: hiphop wars (further observations)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

it is certainly not very clear -- we have plenty of time to clarify matters! 1986 will be voted on next week -- but it is in essence true: the split in the nme office was VERY bitter and on both sides (see above) VERY poorly argued through ideologically; BOTH sides were pro-soul; the c-86ers were not esp.well-versed in the 80s forms of it but they were not anti it either (they WERE anti-hiphop)

the smart kids at MM saw their chance and attacked very effectively, in favour of hypermodernist sensory assault and an extreme critical narrowing of what "we" were meant to be discussing -- it was fantastically frustrating being on the wrong wide of that attack, and feeling avenues closing off as a result (bcz ppl on "my" sdie were so stupidly caught up in an intra-office squabble)

on the other hand it's why i ended up at wire so (ultimately) RESULT!! but it is also why i think of simonR as a kind of SEKRIT NEOCON

Yuppie Wars

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think the role of Sade in this business is being overlooked. Come on ppl, she was named after a famous TORTURER! Did the indie kids not loathe her as the ultimate symbol of 1) having too much money 2) saxophone middle eights?