yes! this is a part of what I mean: when you are a mere bairn such as I, you learn about older records from e.g. capital gold and vh1 classic, as much as anything else. You hear a lot of great songs, things you love: while no doubt there's a load more of wonderful music out there, if it's not canonised and playlisted you'll never know about it. you make decisions on what you like from a much smaller remit than someone who's there at the time. And sometimes (obv i am straying from the fite at hand here) it's quite hard to tell whether you think something is 'any good at all' or whether you just recognise it.
yes this is completely true - and it also builds up the suspicion, as you witness today's canon building around you, that there are songs and artists getting shafted then as there are now, and the songs we take for granted from then might be the equivalent of the songs we like but have suspicions of from now because of what they're shafting...
This is what used to make the music press invigorating when it did engage with pop - the sense of individual factions (or just individuals) desperately trying to exert some sway on public opinion, even that tiny segment of it that was reading.
It's the problem with the tight demographic focus of NME now - Conor M knows who his readers are, and knows what they like, and knows that by catering to this he will acquire new readers who aspire to be like that. Whereas if nobody really knows what the audience is like there's a lot more at stake in trying to forge it (and successful forgeings are temporary, because there's no overall brand strategy behind things).
This is so, so true - of pretty much EVERY music mag (and probably...every mag! - right now! Everyone's trying to find a target audience, everyone's obsessed with following the leadership rather than leading them. Which is good in some ways but to the extent it's gotten is really, really harmful and stagnant.
I used to think Plan B was different but as soon as it found its niche it burrowed neatly into it.
I don't know if following/leading is quite the right way to think about it, because consumers don't appear with fully formed tastes and then find the brand that matches them. What a brand needs to do is become associated strongly with certain ideas, or feelings, or occasions, to the point where it starts to define those things for the people aware of it. Hence the NME throwing a lot of their attention into sponsoring gigs (association with an occasion) and doing the Cool List (association with a value or concept) and running awards (association with alternative-ness, because the awards it sponsors are supposedly different). It's not following the audience, as much as leading it into a fairly pre-determined and unsurprising place.
"Poptimist" is functioning much like the early days of a such a quasi-"brand" (and I don't think there's anything wrong with this). "What a [brand/movement/sensibility] needs to do is become associated strongly with certain ideas, or feelings, or occasions..."
Well, among mags and movements there's a natural progression; the initial movement has to create its audience, so the bands and critics are playing less well-trodden notes and putting forth less well-trodden opinions. When critics first started bandying about the word "punk" in the early '70s they were resurrecting a lot of old discarded songs that were generally considered trash. "Be My Baby" and "Leader Of The Pack" may be canonical now, but they'd been long out of print in the U.S. when I first got them in the mid '70s; got the first on a British import, the second on an anthology that my friends Jay and Maureen found in an oldies shop and gave me for my birthday. By the way, the spirit of those original punk critics was very poptimist.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 01:48 pm (UTC)yes! this is a part of what I mean: when you are a mere bairn such as I, you learn about older records from e.g. capital gold and vh1 classic, as much as anything else. You hear a lot of great songs, things you love: while no doubt there's a load more of wonderful music out there, if it's not canonised and playlisted you'll never know about it. you make decisions on what you like from a much smaller remit than someone who's there at the time. And sometimes (obv i am straying from the fite at hand here) it's quite hard to tell whether you think something is 'any good at all' or whether you just recognise it.
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 02:22 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 02:29 pm (UTC)It's the problem with the tight demographic focus of NME now - Conor M knows who his readers are, and knows what they like, and knows that by catering to this he will acquire new readers who aspire to be like that. Whereas if nobody really knows what the audience is like there's a lot more at stake in trying to forge it (and successful forgeings are temporary, because there's no overall brand strategy behind things).
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 02:35 pm (UTC)I used to think Plan B was different but as soon as it found its niche it burrowed neatly into it.
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 02:56 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 03:02 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 03:06 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmm
Date: 2007-02-15 02:59 pm (UTC)