The History Of Jop Part 8 aka It started with a little kiss, like this

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Away from the Hip-Hop Wars the Pazz and Jop poll moves smoothly onward to 1986 - some great singles here but very few names that had not previously appeared in P&J. You get NINE ticks from these 25 tracks.


[Poll #829550]


1985: The Joptimised Version

1. Into The Groove (45 votes)
2. How Soon Is Now? (40 votes)
3. Raspberry Beret (37 votes)
4. Running Up That Hill (35)
5. Walking On Sunshine (24)
6. The Boys Of Summer (23)
7. Money For Nothing (22)
8. And She Was (21)
9. Smooth Operator (19)
10. I Wonder If I Take You Home (18)

Surprising mass support for VER STRAITS there!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also because "West End Girls" is nowhere near as good as "Word Up".

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

also because madge is better

Re: Your ugly face is going to bland

[koganbot]

Well it seems to be using "rock" attributes as a basis for analyzing and justifying everything. Of course I also had some other reasons (other than just my "rock reasons) for liking/disliking nonrock, but you couldn't really tell that from this rant. (And of course the "rock" reasons preceded rock, and will outlive rock.)

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

You should! It's a very good single.

At the time

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

My top 15. Caveat: I didn't hear the #1 track until 1988, so there was some major ex-post readjustment of the list here. (The original list-topper was Psychic TV! I haven't listened to "Godstar" in years! My best friend was really into them, though, so...) The Madonna track is also a retrospective addition. Paul Simon and Elvis Costello got bumped down to make way.

1. Steinski & Mass Media - "We'll Be Right Back"
2. The The - "Sweet Bird of Truth" (LP & 12" single versions)
3. The Smiths - "The Queen Is Dead"
4. Age of Chance - "Kiss"
5. Run DMC & Aerosmith - "Walk This Way"
6. Madonna - "Where's The Party?"
7. Billy Bragg - "Greetings to the New Brunette"
8. Psychic TV - "Godstar" (EP version)
9. The Housemartins - "Get Up Off Our Knees"
10. A Certain Ratio - "Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)" (12" mix)
11. The Housemartins AGANE oh dere - "Sitting On A Fence"
12. The The - "Heartland"
13. The Primitives - "Really Stupid"
14. The Wedding Present - "This Boy Can Wait"
15. The Smiths - "Ask"

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

As much as I love it, no. To be fair, there are few things as good as "Word Up".

[koganbot]

The only one I've never heard is "Levi Stubbs' Tears."

Meanwhile in NMEland

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Clearly the absence of the Band of Holy Joy invalidates this poll - HOWEVER in the interests of completism... (crossovers in bold)

Kiss - Prince
Word up - Cameo
Into the groove(y) - Ciccone youth
Walk this way - Run DMC
Bang zoom! lets go go! - The real Roxanne
Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent - Gwen Guthrie
Pain - Betty Wright
Kiss - Age of chance
Levi stubbs tears - Billy Bragg
Still smokin' - Trouble funk
Almost prayed - The weather prophets
Baby I love you so - Colourbox
Nasty - Janet Jackson
Who the cap fit - Shinehead
Rise - PIL
I want you - Elvis Costello
Galveston Bay - Lonnie Hill
PSK (what does it mean?) - Schoolly D
Human - Human league
A screw - Swans
No conversation - View from the hill
Sweet bird of truth - The the
Panic - The smiths
Sweet love - Anita Baker
Starpower/Expressway to your skull - Sonic youth
Some candy talking - Jesus and Mary chain
World shut your mouth - Julian Cope
Love can't turn around - Farley Jackmaster funk
Ask - The smiths
Living to late - The fall
Safety net - Shop assistants
Mr Pharmacist - The Fall
Time is money (bastard) - Swans
You can call me Al - Paul Simon
Sho’ nuff bumpin’ - EU
Diggin’ your scene - The blow monkeys
Hard left - Gary Clail
What have you done for me lately? - Janet Jackson
Saturday night - Cherrelle & Alexander O’Neil
Sorry somehow - Husker Du
Rock the bells - LL Cool J
Wide open road - The Triffids
Greetings - Half pint
I’m Chilln’ - Kurtis Blow
Heartland - The the
Do fries go with that shake? - George Clinton
Lady Soul - The Temptations
Rubberband man - Youssou N’Dour
Once more - Wedding present
She’s on it - The Beast Boys
Poguetry in motion EP - The Pogues
Therese - The Bodines
Mind at the end of the tether - Tackhead
E=MC2 - Big audio Dynamite
Basslines - Mantronix
Jump back(set me free) - Dhar Braxton
Bahia girl - David Rudder
Rumors - Timex social club
Velocity girl - Primal scream
Whistling in the dark - Easterhouse

Almost NO crossover outside the top 20 or so!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

No you shouldn't have!

Re: FYI

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hehe, i loved this song, i think it was on hits 8 (poor person's now compilations).

Re: At the time

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Any chance of a YSI of that Steinski track? I've had trouble tracking it down and I absolutely adored it at the time, on some early commercial house compilation.

Billboard Top 26

[koganbot]

Billboard Top 26 Pop Singles of 1986 - * Song went #1

*1... THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR, Dionne and Friends (Arista) (#1, Jan)
*2... SAY YOU, SAY ME, Lionel Richie (Motown) (#1, Dec 1985)
3... I MISS YOU, Klymaxx (Constellation) (#5, Dec 1985)
*4... ON MY OWN, Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald (MCA) (#1, June)
*5... BROKEN WINGS, Mr. Mister (MCA) (#1, Dec 1985)
*6... HOW WILL I KNOW, Whitney Houston (Arista) (#1, Feb)
7... PARTY ALL THE TIME, Eddie Murphy (Columbia) (#2, Dec 1985)
8... BURNING HEART, Survivor (Scotti Brothers) (#2, Feb)
*9... KYRIE, Mr. Mister (MCA) (#1, March)
*10.. ADDICTED TO LOVE, Robert Palmer (Island) (#1, May)
*11.. GREATEST LOVE OF ALL, Whitney Houston (Arista) (#1, May)
12.. SECRET LOVERS, Atlantic Starr (A&M) (#3, March)
13.. FRIENDS AND LOVERS, Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson (USA Carrere) (#2, Sept)
*14.. GLORY OF LOVE, Peter Cetera (Warner Brothers) (#1, Aug)
*15.. WEST END GIRLS, The Pet Shop Boys (EMI-America) (#1, May)
*16.. THERE'LL BE SAD SONGS (To Make You Cry), Billy Ocean (Jive) (#1, July)
17.. ALIVE AND KICKING, Simple Minds (Virgin) (#3, Dec 1985)
18.. NEVER, Heart (Capitol) (#4, Dec 1985)
*19.. KISS, Prince and the Revolution (Paisley Park) (#1, April)
*20.. HIGHER LOVE, Steve Winwood (Island) (#1, Aug)
*21.. STUCK WITH YOU, Huey Lewis and the News (Chrysalis) (#1, Sept)
*22.. HOLDING BACK THE YEARS, Simply Red (Elektra) (#1, July)
*23.. SLEDGEHAMMER, Peter Gabriel (Geffen) (#1, July)
*24.. SARA, Starship (Grunt) (#1, March)
*25.. HUMAN, The Human League (Virgin) (#1, Nov)
26.. I CAN'T WAIT, Nu Shooz (Atlantic) (#3, June)

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

I can't otherwise understand people's attractions to "One Hit to the Body," "War," "Higher Love," or "Living in America" -- they seem *really* ordinary.

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

This, btw, is the first P&J I was ever really aware of, having had my mom's bf buy me a copy of the VV to see what it (meaning the VV) was all about. Boy was I surprised. When I started buying the VV regularly was I finally became aware of rockcrit as something that handled events As They Were Happening rather than from a rear-view mirror (in other words, this was really the first time I digested rock criticism per se from magazine/tabloid/alt-weekly rather than a book).

Re: Your ugly face is going to bland

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i would say that the values it deploys as a basis for analysing and justifying everything are KOGANIST -- viz explored and justified by YOU -- of course if there were a great kneejerk wave of people who agreed with the attributes you find and favour in the rock you like and assume them to be present generically in stuff they are not present in there would be an issue here but sadly this is not yet the case! (hmmm must pester NLR again)

so are you rockist in yr koganism? sometimes a bit maybe -- your recent anger at the prejudgment of "let it blurt" was (my def) antirockist in essence but a bit rockist in assumption (ie a bit prejudicial about WHY ppl might be making the prejudgement) -- but really pretty rarely

the things you're valuing you would be able to be justified on (your reading of) their own terms here whether or not rock had ever existed -- they are not borrowing rock's "anti-authoritarian" authority to signify; nor are they being used to affirm rock-as-the-genre-which-matters (exactly the opposite i'd say, given yr before rock and after parenthesis); or (which is also part of my defn) to affirm _______-as-the-genre-which-matters*

*i fully acknowledge there is a badly confusing element in the term itself: does it or doesn't it connect more closely to rock than to other genres? erm yes and no: historically the term arose in the context of deciding what genres should be given critical priority, in a magazine which till then had unquestioningly given rock priority; and yes also bz rock occupies a janus-faced position in music generally -- that it was a music which garnered its importance from its unimportance, to be meltzerish for a moment; so that to reach back to pre-rock modes of justification-by-importance to affirm rock against its other challengers was to toss out the importance-in-unimportance clause

but you can discover and energise this same idea in other musics, older and newer -- i would contend it became a BIG TALKED-ABOUT THING in rock first but the same contrary loop certainly operates in jazz, esp.when it was still pop as well as "art"; and in fact all over the place -- so to insist that this insight, this value, this attribute matters because it takes us back to rock is putting the story the wrong way round

rock matters -- or used to? -- because it dramatised the play around this value; but it's the value that matters (if it does); its name is therefore arguably fatally misleading (i used to think "BUT IN A GOOD WAY" but i am no longer at all sure of that)

i think once you pick out something like "outrageousness" as a valued attribute and take it seriously in its meaning (which is not simply musical after all), it helps you here the way other genres operate -- their conventions and code and blah blah -- ie by bringing a strong question into the genre, you put yourself up against and into that genre; it allows that genre NOT to be muffled by other genres

Think the Stones are getting overlooked here

[koganbot]

Actually did something a bit new: took their groove and had Keef play half with it, half against it, so uncharacteristically jittery.

Re: Think the Stones are getting overlooked here

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I agree - not a bad effort at all, but this is just too far along for most of us to care.

Re: Your ugly face is going to bland

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"it helps you HEAR the way other genres operate"

i am rehashing all this again not to defend "rockism" as a term per se -- it always seems to me a joke insult rather than a real one -- and more to get at the role it plaed in how i think about stuff, and (as you would put it) what is therefore at stake for me in clinging to it long after it (in its frutiful-error way) perhaps got me where i needed to

the "genres muffling other genres" seems to be pretty key to me -- to my aesthetic nerves -- in that i flare up when this occurs: what's THAT about eh?

Re: Anger is an inner G

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

This kinda underscores a key reason why I am not you: I have been contrary but I have never been punk rock. When I think of the umpteen records or so that come to mind when I try to think of the records that are hopelessly *me*, they're more like a day at the beach than a fuck you. They're more yes than no -- and here is where I may be fooling myself -- they seem to be beyond yes and no. Whatever I feel about artists I don't especially like, I wouldn't say their problems are about heldbackedness.

Points of order

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

- Even with such a good selection I am sad that Bruce Hornsby isn't doing better. For the benefit of the Lex, "The Way It Is" was sampled by Tupac for one of his "I'm Dead, Rly" hits. Lots of piano triplets.
- Walk Like An Egyptian is one of my favourite songs to sing at karaoke.
- Rise is better than all of the Sex Pistols' output put together.
- But then so is Cameo. Though I will always think of Mel B's effort on TOTP now.

Re: Meanwhile in NMEland

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Half of these are on my ace Electro compilation! Rock The Bells is proper ace, innit.

Re: Your ugly face is going to bland

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(obvious counter: the accusation of "rockism" can be used to muffling effect -- as i don't use it in a genre-specific way i don't think i'm guilty of this type use of it -- i guess i am (by habit by now) trying to elbow space for a non-prejudicial across-the-board pre-appraisal of genre... nothing rejected unheard (even "let it blurt"); nothing rejected by shared assumption; insofar as genre coheres round shared assumption, is "x" within the genre bcz it affirms the assumptions or breaks with them (or both)?

and so on

lord sukrat disposes:

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Kiss - Prince -- grebt but not the best
Word up - Cameo -- better than kiss
Into the groove(y) - Ciccone youth -- THIS IS STILL GOOD but not this good
Walk this way - Run DMC -- rock!
Bang zoom! lets go go! - The real Roxanne -- Gogo!
Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent - Gwen Guthrie -- this is lovely
Pain - Betty Wright -- so is this
Kiss - Age of chance -- THIS IS DREADFUL
Levi stubbs tears - Billy Bragg -- i don;t hate all of BB but this is meh
Still smokin' - Trouble funk -- GoGo!
Almost prayed - The weather prophets -- oh please
Baby I love you so - Colourbox -- don't recall
Nasty - Janet Jackson -- i like janet!
Who the cap fit - Shinehead -- THE WINNER!
Rise - PIL -- liked at the time; went off
I want you - Elvis Costello -- don't recall, this is purgatory-era costello
Galveston Bay - Lonnie Hill -- REALLY REALLY LOVELY
PSK (what does it mean?) - Schoolly D -- do you like hitler?
Human - Human league -- poor
A screw - Swans -- haha
No conversation - View from the hill -- no clue
Sweet bird of truth - The the -- intense
Panic - The smiths -- "Hang the DJ" -- this line was a hiphop wars bone of contention!!
Sweet love - Anita Baker -- lovely
Starpower/Expressway to your skull - Sonic youth -- great
Some candy talking - Jesus and Mary chain -- they are ok
World shut your mouth - Julian Cope -- dwindling meories of greatness shrouded in bbombast
Love can't turn around - Farley Jackmaster funk -- great
Ask - The smiths -- ok
Living to late - The fall -- OH NO IT'S THE FALL
Safety net - Shop assistants -- nice
Mr Pharmacist - The Fall -- oh no IT'S THE FALL
Time is money (bastard) - Swans -- COP-era swans is best
You can call me Al - Paul Simon -- nice
Sho’ nuff bumpin’ - EU -- Gogo
Diggin’ your scene - The blow monkeys -- sigh
Hard left - Gary Clail -- i hate on-u
What have you done for me lately? - Janet Jackson -- janet!
Saturday night - Cherrelle & Alexander O’Neil -- nice
Sorry somehow - Husker Du -- don't recall
Rock the bells - LL Cool J -- should be higher
Wide open road - The Triffids -- only one good triffids song (not this)
Greetings - Half pint -- think i liked this
I’m Chilln’ - Kurtis Blow -- forgot
Heartland - The the -- earnest
Do fries go with that shake? - George Clinton -- nothing special considering
Lady Soul - The Temptations -- forgot
Rubberband man - Youssou N’Dour -- likeable
Once more - Wedding present -- jang jang zzz
She’s on it - The Beast Boys -- yay!
Poguetry in motion EP - The Pogues -- why not!
Therese - The Bodines --- no!
Mind at the end of the tether - Tackhead -- no!!
E=MC2 - Big audio Dynamite -- no!!!
Basslines - Mantronix -- not all that in retrospect
Jump back(set me free) - Dhar Braxton -- don't remember this
Bahia girl - David Rudder -- probably nice
Rumors - Timex social club -- no clue
Velocity girl - Primal scream -- GO AWAY
Whistling in the dark - Easterhouse -- YOU TOO

Re: lord sukrat disposes:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"No Conversation" is a very pretty Brit-soul track.

Re: lord sukrat disposes:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Anita Baker! That song is near perfect.