Jop Tournament Round 1.4

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Another batch of polls - the last two Prince tracks (well, the last two Prince tracks performed by him) and several Now poll heavyweights getting another title shot.


[Poll #918473]


Coming tomorrow - FOUR 00s seeds up against Salt N Pepa, Xtina, the KLF and Cameo.

Comments

Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Ska for the madding crowd (http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,663359,00.html)

As a teenager, I read something similar explaining the song, and so for me it's probably always been an reflexive expression of Anglophilia. But you're right, the song itself really is just kind of meh (although I do like the solos).

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hee I've just realised that I will be OPINING, tangentially, on ska in my journalist capacity tomorrow :D

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

All this is true but I was 8 so didn't really notice it, I've received it as Rock Legend too of course. What I remember at the time is the really amazing video - those claustrophobic shots of the band in a tiny car driving through some striplit nowhere and suddenly screaming and going mad.

I think it *is* a terrific song - all the different voices, hooks and elements combine amazingly well: the sense of different ghosts and angers struggling to be heard. I'm not a great Specials fan in general.

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think the sound and the subject actually match up -- it's (partly) about coventry becoming a ghost town, after all, so it's mourning something no one else much cares about (and would have found ALREADY lamely provincial, even before its decline)

think of it as an answer song to "small town boy", which has a much more striking, defiant sound but with a weirdly nasty backtaste (at least to this small town boy) -- i am just more ambivalent than lex abt how the metropolitan is better than elsewhere

i almost always love terry h's voice when attached to dammers's way with near-muzak carny-organ -- i think there's an interestingly unusual relationship to NOT ecaping

(it's also about TWO TONE and ska becoming a ghost town of course)

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[koganbot]

In 1981, Britain was in a state of crisis: the government was as unpopular as any since the war, unemployment was rampant and riots were breaking out across the country.

I suspect that this sentence is bullshit, though I suppose the word "crisis" can be flexible - e.g., "Setting 'Buffalo Stance' against 'Wannabe' caused me to go into crisis." But anyway, 1981 was the year of Sheena Easton and "Bette Davis Eyes" and "I'm Comin' Out," all popular in Britain due to the crisis of the times. (Also the year of Terri Gibbs' great "Somebody's Knockin'," but I think that only hit in America.)

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[koganbot]

Btw I ticked "Ghost Town," but it wasn't a wildly enthusiastic tick. I rarely warm to Prince, whereas "Ghost Town" has heat.

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

is that petridish? i think he's wildly overloading the hyperbole -- but i think it was very much talked abt in those terms at the time (by some people), which makes a version of his point even if it WASN'T (in retrospect) a crisis year (i mean the riots unemployment and very unpopular govt part isn't bullshit)

(ie some people thought it was and for some this record was the posterchild of the though)

Crisis? What Crisis?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When - if ever - was the height of the early 70s 'crisis' (strikes, power cuts, 3 day week) and was it talked about by contemporaries in those terms? (At the risk of going all Enrique, I only really am aware of 70s hist. through a Thatcherite lens, which demonised the period just a bit).

Re: Crisis? What Crisis?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

three day week was 72 i think

don;t know when the "height" was -- it was talked abt eg by the daily mail as PERMANENT CRISIS pretty much from devlauation of pound (67) to falklands (82)

Re: Everyone's favorite music journalist explains why

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Well, unemployment was at a postwar high (and had maybe as much as tripled in two years), there were riots in several places and the government was v unpopular. So the second half of the sentence is difficult to argue with.