Public Carmodism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Discussion on the tournament thread about GHOST TOWNE by the Specials - is this the biggest example of Carmodism being generally accepted and written into the executive summary of rock history?

(Definition of Carmodism for the 99% of you who won't know what I'm on about: the belief that the state of the charts reflects the state of the nation, or at least the belief that it makes for more interesting analysis to pretend it does. From Robin Carmody, cultural critic and high practitioner of the art.)

Comments

Re: full-on carmodism... teenpop 1965

[koganbot]

i. every record in the charts (inc.its placement) is a snapshot of the "state of the nation" in a fairly particular way

But this points up a confusion I got from the way that Tom worded the question: to say that state of the charts reflects state of the nation is not the same as to say that a particular song reflects the state of the nation. And to say that songs and charts occur on a sociopolitical landscape (which is probably the real point to be made) doesn't imply that either a song or a chart will reflect that landscape as a whole, esp. given that the landscape isn't a steady state but rather a land of conflicts and tensions. And the same song can be used differently by different people: e.g., "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" being played in a working-class pub and being played to screaming American teens and being played on a portable tape player by a G.I. in Vietnam and being played by a pickup band of high-school students at a summer camp I attended in 1966 and being played (on piano?) by two middle-class New York Jews as they were composing the thing.