Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been....?
Sep. 25th, 2006 11:42 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
freakytigger.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poptimistsOne of the battlegrounds in the Hip Hop Wars was NME's "C86" cassette, a tape compiled by some of the paper's writers, later described as "the most indie thing to have ever existed". While many of the bands were later embarassed by it and while it suffers from the usual post-facto "OMG it wasn't a scene" backlash (sure, it wasn't a scene in the sense of bands working and collaborating together, but it captures a mood quite well), its legend lives on.
Here's a poll about it:
[Poll #829524]
SHAMBLE ON.
Here's a poll about it:
[Poll #829524]
SHAMBLE ON.
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:oooooo
Date: 2006-09-25 10:53 am (UTC)clarification
Date: 2006-09-25 10:55 am (UTC)Fuzzbox
Date: 2006-09-25 11:03 am (UTC)Jang jang jang.
Date: 2006-09-25 11:06 am (UTC)Thinking about it, like the Lex I only own stolen PRML SCRM. Apart from "Rocks", which is on Now 27 which I bought with my own pocket money.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 11:19 am (UTC)Re: clarification
Date: 2006-09-25 11:19 am (UTC)might suprise some to see
Date: 2006-09-25 11:22 am (UTC)Re: clarification
Date: 2006-09-25 11:23 am (UTC)Re: might suprise some to see
Date: 2006-09-25 11:23 am (UTC)What I said on ILM about C86 a few months ago
Date: 2006-09-25 11:24 am (UTC)some c86 resources for you
Date: 2006-09-25 11:30 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C86_(music) - making the fair point that C86 now sums up bands more from 88/89 (sarah records i'm looking at you)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C86_(music) "A blog keeping C86 alive and championing new bands!" good grief
THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 11:30 am (UTC)i. as a non-retro promo it was taken to be saying the Shambling Scene has our FULL EDITORIAL APPROVAL -- to be a manifesto just as c81 had been
ii. but not only was its sound-range WAY narrower than the impossibly eclectic c81 (which sed EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE AND RELEVANT) but the no.of ppl who were in on the choice was very small also -- roy carr, neil taylor, adrian thrills, plus presumably ed and dep ed ian pye and danny kelly -- so other BIG BEASTS were angry their imprimatur was co-opted
iii. the NME freebie cassettes were (absolutely justifiably) very well-regarded, as primers to jazz, old soul, country, nuggets-type psych; as a library repositary to the past -- or the off-mainstream present -- carr had good instincts, good ears, good connections and GREAT licence-negotiating skeez
iv. the hiphop faction -- stuart cosgrove, paolo hewitt, sean o'hagan, lucy o'brien -- were FAR more aggressive polemicists, fighting for a "music plus broader social context" coverage in the mag (to battle eg the face, arena etc); quite rightly they argued that hiphop was a popular, dynamic, important new music wave -- quite WRONGLY they chose to dress this up in a punk-style kicking-over-the-statues rhetoric, which then had to be woven into a never-going-to-succeed marriage of soft-left pro-kinnock anti-thatcherism and Public Enemy-esque confrontation
v. the locus for angry debate every week was -- of course -- who gets on the cover (black artists were "artistically valid" and "politically correct"; white rockstars pulled in readers, at time when circulation was declining badly, but were very much the "conservative" choice
vi. i think cosgrove's instincts were largely correct -- broaden the topic-base rather than narrow it -- but the delivery was ROTTEN: the writing was often offputting -- it treated a key part of the nme constituency with open contempt without making very much serious attempt actually to bring in new readers (UK hiphop fans -- soul fans, clubbers -- were notorious anyway for not being particularly interested in READING about the music they loved; the modes of addrss that already flourished -- at black echoes and a soul monthly i forget the name of -- were pretty flabby pro-industry puffwork) (actually i retain a fondness for black echoes but it was NOT a writer's paper); and -- the one thing i think the indie faction were intuitively right about, though no one had the writing chops to work this up -- the hiphop faction NEVER dealt with "how music might be political in ways which DOESN'T just fawn on established non-musical politics" (MM were actually a bit better on this, tho frankly i don't think anyone at MM -- from simonR on down -- had much of a clue about non-musical politics except insofar as it was addressed by eg virilio)
vii. there were others acting as the em grit which produced the pearl viz SWELLSY -- editing the dick neecher column -- put in a little cartoon of someone goosestepping called THE HIPHOP HITLERS -- which hardly cooled tempers
THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir pt 2
Date: 2006-09-25 11:31 am (UTC)ix. the DENOUEMENT came with an theme issue on censorship -- i think pye had left, exhausted, at this point -- where cosgrove and designer joe ewart laid out a page which included giger's PENIS LANDSCAPE sleeve of the dead kennedies... IPC high-ups got wind of this outrage and pulled the entire article on pressday; the only available cover pic was the legendary MOTORCYCLE BOY -- a BAFFLINGLY terrible pic for a cover -- cosgrove and ewart were sacked; the LOOK of the paper -- which had been good, if a little precious and arty for what it was -- lurched towards the ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWFUL, and a young james brown leapt up the editorial ladder to declare the advent of GREBO
x. the one thing that all factions utterly concurred on = no one is allowed to say anything bad about u2
Re: some c86 resources for you
Date: 2006-09-25 11:33 am (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 11:37 am (UTC)and to be fair to my favourite foe...
Date: 2006-09-25 11:38 am (UTC)to restate: i don't think nme OR mm dealt with the politics issue well -- nme basically argued for the assimilation of pop discourse in "mainstream radical politics"; mm argued (correctly) that music contains implicit politics of other kinds, which should be nurtured and valued -- but in the end, the um "aesthetic dimension" they were hioping to valorise was undermined by the boho neo-futurist sonicstorm irrationality they over-favoured (there's a lot more to pop; and more still to the rest of music)
Re: might suprise some to see
Date: 2006-09-25 11:42 am (UTC)Sides still being taken!
Date: 2006-09-25 11:45 am (UTC)*or was it DANCING! "Schooly" rises up names list....
Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 11:45 am (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 11:55 am (UTC)to be fair i think the britpop line had solid evolutionary links with the earlier red wedge kinnockism -- the hiphop faction were strategically pro anything hewitt's schoolchum paul weller did* -- with the gallaghers in place of wishywashy soul
*haha i recall the STUNNED LOOKS ON ALL FACES as we trooped out of the showing of the style council's film JERUSALEM -- has this ever surfaced since? it is awesome poor
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 12:01 pm (UTC)Re: Sides still being taken!
Date: 2006-09-25 12:05 pm (UTC)it was the rise of dance music in 87 -- chicago house in particular -- that the indie side were suspicious of: as early as this it only had a TINY following in the uk; and the london club-scene was notoriously elitist and not especially "black" (obv more than indie was, but nevertheless); some of the "soulcialist" rhetorical armory was quite flawed by now
IMPORTANT: the very vexed question of what appeared in the "indie" charts -- how they were compiled, whether dance labels like Jive or manu-pop like SAW were to be included (yes economically, no "ideologically" was the "indie" attitude)
also there was at this date a series of "straight" soul acts hugely promoted by CBS (ie the major majors) -- terence trent d'arby the most dramatic (and least "straight"), but a string of others wyho i now forget -- who were fielded VERY uninterestingly by the soul faction
Re: Sides still being taken!
Date: 2006-09-25 12:06 pm (UTC)What If This Tape Is Great?
Date: 2006-09-25 12:09 pm (UTC)thanks to the judge
Date: 2006-09-25 12:09 pm (UTC)Vote tampering
Date: 2006-09-25 12:13 pm (UTC)Re: What If This Tape Is Great?
Date: 2006-09-25 12:16 pm (UTC)there are a couple of gently fugitive songs on it which seem better now than they did then -- i have an (original! swank swank) tape copy which i can't upload sadly
therese which tom put up last night is on it and is emblematic
there has never been any justification for --
Date: 2006-09-25 12:32 pm (UTC)he was universally loathed (not as a person -- he is perfectly affable -- but as a writer and tastemaker)
Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 12:37 pm (UTC)The one record from this era that I did love enough to actually buy
Date: 2006-09-25 12:37 pm (UTC)This isn't a shambling record though. It's teen pop through a JAMC filter. The Shop Assistants sort of fall into this category too. Both bands were templates for the cutie indie that eventually led to the woeful Sarah records. Only they avoided tweeness and were all the better for it. (The Primitives of course lurched successfully into the mainstream within 2 years.)
Re: there has never been any justification for --
Date: 2006-09-25 12:37 pm (UTC)Re: Fuzzbox
Date: 2006-09-25 12:38 pm (UTC)But then I have C86 too...
Re: The one record from this era that I did love enough to actually buy
Date: 2006-09-25 12:40 pm (UTC)Re: What If This Tape Is Great?
Date: 2006-09-25 12:58 pm (UTC)Re: The one record from this era that I did love enough to actually buy
Date: 2006-09-25 01:00 pm (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 02:50 pm (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 03:04 pm (UTC)[Presumably that's Blues & Soul magazine you're referring to in point vi?]
2. To me at the time the enemy would have probably amounted to Luther Vandross (but not Alex O'Neal, who was tops), Tina Turner and smoothed up 60s survivors like Steve Winwood.
Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-25 03:09 pm (UTC)i forgot to mention the BIG FIGHT over "hang the DJ" -- one side saying "THIS IS RACIST", the other side "no no he means TONY BLACKBURN"
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:30 pm (UTC)were the Pastels australian?
Re: Sides still being taken!
Date: 2006-09-25 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 09:59 pm (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir pt 2
Date: 2006-09-25 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-28 05:23 pm (UTC)Re ""artistically valid" and "politically correct"" -- if I read you correctly, PC was actually used as a positive yes? (A friend of mine who studied in the us in the late 90s introduced me to the term, at which point I did not get the impression it was meant as ridicule.) Backlash of the century, digging one's own grave etc eh?
Poptimists/Sukrat crossover alert!
Date: 2006-09-28 05:32 pm (UTC)And the only reason I have any Pastels at all is The Wire Tapper 2 haha!
Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-28 05:35 pm (UTC)if it was in use in the office at this time, i'm not sure i heard it or recognised it as such -- so the point i'm making is a bit glib and double-edged hindsight-wise : viz that the "ORDINARY RADICAL POLITICS" being argued for i more or less agree with, and some of the hiphop faction's taste was good; but the ATTITUDE TOWARDS POP i think stinks, actually, tho i didn't have the rhetorical firepower at the time to do anything about it
Re: THE HIPHOP WARS: a personal memoir
Date: 2006-09-28 05:50 pm (UTC)NB!: guy studying in US in "late 90s" above should obv be "late 80s"!!