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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

NB "God Save The Queen" doesn't count as it was a deliberate attempt by Lydon, Mclaren et al. to game the Jubilee, rather than a song "catching the mood of the times" (to use a rather weak phrase).

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

Three Lions, summer of 96?

[koganbot]

The charts do - somewhat - reflect the state of the nation, but what they reflect is the state of the nation's musical preferences. There's not always a strong correspondence between the musical preferences and the nation's TV-news-watching preferences. (I assume that the TV news is the closest most people ever got to the "riots that were sweeping the nation.") (Btw, pop stars in rehab is sweeping the nation right now, if you're in the U.S.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

bah i have to go out! i want to talk abt this!

[koganbot]

The problem I often have with analyses that link Popular Culture to the State Of The Nation is that the latter is taken as a given, so the former merely "reflects" it. And therefore, any answer you give is "right." E.g., during the early years of the U.S. depression, Hollywood put out lots of fun, madcap entertainments. This reflected people's desire for escapist entertainment in hard times. Whereas the pictures that dealt with poverty, unemployment, etc. were also reflecting the depression by dealing with it directly. So everything reflects the depression. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but how do you test such a thing? And therefore, how do you learn anything surprising from the movies and music that are supposedly doing the reflecting?

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Best US example of this I think would be U2 and 9/11.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

We Are The World?

full-on carmodism...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

.. is a much more elaborate and ambitious examination though:

i. every record in the charts (inc.its placement) is a snapshot of the "state of the nation" in a fairly particular way, this being an analogue of the way that ---
ii. --- every by-election is a snapshot of the "state of the nation"

so there is a double-grid of reference, for starters (you have to recall that robin seems to have an exact map of the blue-red-yellow colouring of EVERY SINGLE UK POLITICAL CONSTITUENCY since the 1940s, as well as the names of successful AND defeated politicians, and which sector of the party they are fitted into, in class and policy terms) (and more impalpable things, like the meaning of the lure of a given cultural influence) (ie what did it mean to be attracted to americanism in 1957, 1967, 1986, 2007)

so his snapshots jigsaw together to present a complex history of flows and surges and shifts and changes -- and the two grids of refence TAKEN TOGETHER highlight subtle stuff going on in each separate grid, that wouldn't otherwise be visible necessarily

what makes it so fascinating is that he basically takes the idea that "music reflects society" as the given: and follows through in genuinely astonishing detail -- to such a degree that you do become very alert to that aspect of music which relates to affirmation of (broad) cultural-political allegience

i don't think it matters that it isn't the only thing a song's about -- it's part of what a song's about; it's not not there

(in ref lex's point abt personal lives -- people's politics is very much part of their personal lives, and Carmodism is an examination of exactly that, the personal and half-expressed dynamic within public discussion) (robin also has a very strong judgemental layer, in regard to right and wrong politics -- this you don't have to agree with at all to learn from it as a method; besides, who the hell wd commit himself to his degree of knowledge of local political minutiae if they didn't care a lot abt politics in terms of what should and shouldn't happen?)

Green Day / American Idiot

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Not exactly the same thing, for a number of reasons (e.g. some people still like(d) Bush), but clearly part of the story there is that things were so bad that even these eternal teen-clowns were turned into rock-opera writing political activists. (It feels very different to me than those points when, say, Bryan Adams got on the Amnesty bandwagon and wrote a "serious" album, although - as suggested above - there's probably something to talk about around those moments as well.)

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

D-Mob - They Call It Acieed

I haven't read a single broadsheet article about acid house that doesn't explicitly put it up against the backdrop of the late Thatcher government and this is usually the record they pick.

There's A Riot Goin' On

[koganbot]

In the early '70s there was a sudden surge of socially conscious black music, aligned with funk... and reflecting what in particular? The previous 400 years of history? Sly Stone had produced Bobby Freeman's dance-pop "Come On And Swim" in the mid '60s and the Great Society's original version of "Somebody To Love" in 1966, which hit in the Jefferson Airplane's version in spring 1967, foreshadowing the Newark and Detroit riots (just kidding; but the song is at least as punk as it is hippie - "When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies" - given that the hippie freaks were more punk than hippie, a lot of them). "There's A Riot Goin' On" was 1971.