The History Of Jop Part 10 aka I had a feeling I could be someone

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

1988 - and it's a winner! (Also possibly your only chance ever to vote, vote, vote for the Wilburys in a Poptimists Poll)


[Poll #835009]

1987 - What The Jop Was Going On?

1=. Sign O The Times (33 votes)
1=. Pump Up The Volume (33 votes)
1=. Bring The Noise (33 votes)
4. Faith (29)
5=. U Got The Look/Housequake (24)
5=. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (24)
5=. I Know You Got Soul (24)
8. The One I Love (22)
9. Don't Dream It's Over (19)
10. Luka (18)

MARRS and PE got 6 'best' votes each, Prince got 8.

Comments

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

One thing I didn't expect from 80s canon lists is how popcentric they are - I am beginning to wonder when trad rockism actually crept into the music media, the assumption that certain forms (guitars, rock and so on) had gravitas and were therefore superior to dancey dancey pop.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Both those lists are pretty indie! But maybe "indie" was less "rock" back then (I don't think so though, it was just less 'traditional rock' I suppose).

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh they are v indie but there's the acknowledgement of S'Express, Neneh Cherry, Todd Terry et al which is slightly unexpected for me.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

no time now to RESTATE FOR THE MILLION BILLIONTH TIME when and how the RACE against ROCKISM began (when=1982), but the lex's claim here does suggest he hasn't been following the SAGA of the HIPHOP WARS closely enough

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Lex, comparing the 1988 P&J with the 2005 P&J, how can a top ten consisting of The Travelling Wilburys and Midnight Oil (and Tracey Chapman and Public Enemy for that matter) be one that focuses less on "gravitas" and "proper music" than the 2005 top 10, which contained a reality TV show winner singing a Max Martin track, the theme song from a Will Smith romcom, a woman in her mid 30s doing a cheerleading chant, and DJ Paul being a dog, one you do not trust?

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Erm that is not what I was saying at all.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[juror8.livejournal.com]

You were saying that rockism (ie, values, importance, Proper Musics, etc etc etc) was a lot more prealent in modern day critic polls than 80s ones. How do THE FACTZ fit into this?

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I didn't say anything about modern day polls! I was just surprised that 80s polls were less rockist than I'd assumed.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[juror8.livejournal.com]

"I am beginning to wonder when trad rockism actually crept into the music media"

So rockism must have crept into the music media at some point between 1988 and 2006 then! All I'm saying is I can't think of a more rockist band than Public Enemy.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes but equally it might have gone away again. I didn't have 2000s polls in mind as a comparison! I don't really know as I have never followed any section of the music press closely and to an extent I don't really care.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Singles polls aren't the place to judge this anyway, even the dullest Ryan-Adams-Wilco-and-Coldplay pumping music critic will vote for "Just good old fashioned pop music" in his singles list. Because singles aren't as "important".

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Pazz and Jops are disproof of this to some extent! In his essay for this year Christgau mentions that one reason new wave warhorses like U2 etc didnt do so well is that they accidentally said "Put 5 singles" not "Put 10 singles" on the ballot, and the people who didn't really care about singles didnt bother to change it from 5 to 10 when the mistake was pointed out.

Re: Meanwhile in Britain

[koganbot]

This isn't the place where I'm going to go into my spiel about why the word "rockism" is a barrier to thought and why people shouldn't use it; I'll just say that basically what we've got are society-wide impulses and tensions that already existed for at least 100 years (if not 300), so you don't have something creeping into the media but rather just something that gets expressed in the media - but what gets expressed isn't an attitude ("rockism") that some people have, but rather tensions that pretty much everyone has. E.g., your phrase "trad rockism" is itself unstable, since rock is not at all comfortable with the idea of "trad," given that in rock's hero story the music is birthed in originality and rebelliousness and wildness. But these are praise words ("wildness" etc.) that people will affix to all sorts of different music, different people choosing different musics. As for the P&J votes, the most valid choices from the point of the view of the Hero Story are Public Enemy and Eric B. & Rakim and Salt N' Pepa; black people w/ beatboxes more acceptable actually than Hollywood sleaze metal. The big surprise for me at the time was the high showing of "Child"; my guess it was a "guilty pleasure" vote for a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise touch hair metal with a ten-foot pole. Check in vain year in year out in Pazz & Jop for Def Leppard (whose "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was the teen favorite of the year, and is better than "Sweet Child O' Mine"), Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Slaughter, Poison, Kiss, Warrant, etc., who were as much the teenpop of the '80s as New Edition and New Kids were. In fact, "Sweet Child" is something of a Pazz & Jop anomaly, and you don't anything like it again until, um, "Since U Been Gone."

But then a vote can mean different things for different people. Amongst the hair-metal fans themselves, Whitesnake and GN'R could embody all those great rock values of importance and resistance; for a mainstream pop fan, Whitney Houston might not be dancey dancey pop so much as she's soul traditionalism and legitimate vocalizing (or might be all three). Some of the praise I hear for Paris Hilton today (doesn't care what you think of her, is willing to let people hate her) are exact matches for what was bestowed on the Rolling Stones in 1963. And there's nothing wrong with that.