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

Re: Your ugly face is going to bland

[koganbot]

Never did get around to replying to this stream, and not sure I understand it (Mark's history w/ term in shorthand, am having trouble deciphering the shorthand). So, to kind of continue on with my thought (at the expense of ignoring the stream?):

As far as I can tell, the only difference between me and the supposed "rockist" (as I am imagining you imagine him) is that when I play the authenticity card I'm probing and restless, whereas when the "rockist" plays the authenticity card he's lazy and conventional. But laziness and conventionality don't constitute an ism or a syndrome or a sensibility or a species or an underlying set of assumptions. And accusing someone of conventionality is rather conventional itself, is it not? Which isn't to say that there's no value in it.

So, anyway, let's say "Typical Rockist" applauds Sufjan for being probing and restless and does it in the context of deriding Ashlee for being conventional. Let's say Frank (who's barely heard Sufjan but has an understandable prejudice against him) applauds Ashlee for being probing and restless (which I have). And I'm applauded by others for being probing and restless myself, but also derided for being a kneejerk contrarian (this has happened). It seems to me we lose a whole fucking lot by calling the other guy "rockist" and me "antirockist" - even if he's truly kneejerk and I'm genuinely probing and restless. And what we lose is that we've sent the conversation off in the wrong direction.

And what we lose is we've stopped looking at the social strength of the phrase "restless and probing." (What makes me genuinely restless and probing is that I wonder about those words as praise words, wonder how they got there, rather than simply deploying them. But I see a family relation to the guy who uses such praise words without wondering about them - and the relation is that WE USE THE SAME PRAISE WORDS, though not always to the same effect.)

What's going on when I, or the poptimist, or the supposed "rockist," plays the authenticity card? (Any time anyone here says, "If you don't like ________ I question your poptimism" - in fact, any time anyone questions someone's poptimism in any way - he's playing the authenticity card.) Or, back to the first page of my book, what do we gain by defining ourselves as potentially compromised and contaminated (contaminated by "rockism," or conventionality, or what have you)? For surely we do define ourselve as potentially compromised and contaminated, every bit as much as the supposed "rockist" does.