more pop filosophie: discuss

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

We all read fluxblog, don't we? Yes, of course, we do. Matthew really seems to have raised his game over the last year or so, don't you think? Well, I just wanted to call people's attention to a post he updated yesterday. Somehow I would expect we'll all agree with his basic idea, if not about the specific example, although there's quite a bit too tease out.

I'll excerpt the relevant bit:

I'd like to address this comment left in the box below, which more or less echoes what I was railing against the last time I wrote about CSS at length:

I'm sure Lovefoxxx is not emoting that much. She's in a dance band for crying out loud and not a very good one. - Anon

To a certain extent this (obviously quite brave!) anonymous poster is entitled to their opinion, and since it is apparent that they haven't given this a great deal of thought, it's not really worth arguing with them, at least not in the interest of trying to change their mind. But honestly, there's no way I can read this sort of comment without assuming some pretty harsh things -- mainly, that they seem to have extremely rigid and unimaginative ideas about what signifies intelligent and emotionally moving art.

I think that a lot of the problem that some people run into with CSS is that their record is very much a product of the present tense, and though I believe that accounts for a great deal of its beauty, art that is so tied into a moment that will inevitably pass tends to freak out a certain type of insecure fan who demands permanence and timelessness, often because they are terrified of ever having to admit that they enjoyed something that has since become dated. If you want to cling to the notion of having an imagined aesthetic upper hand, you will most likely become allergic to this sort of music, and find refuge in safe bets. If you've conditioned yourself to think of contemporary culture (especially internet culture) as being an endless stream of vulgar novelty -- a notion that is not entirely inaccurate, by the way -- you've most likely blinded yourself to any art that speaks to the humanity and emotional truth of experiences within that culture.

Personally, I remember quite clearly a moment at uni when my roommate and I were questioning "Will we always like this music?" although for us I think it was a given that the music was timeless, and while it was we that would become dated.

Comments

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Every time someone links to something from Fluxblog it reminds me why I *don't* read it. He makes that Spank Rock mix sound dreadful, and there's such an enormous amount of projection into the motives behind that anonymous comment.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

there's such an enormous amount of projection into the motives behind that anonymous comment

Surely this is what the internet is all about!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the reasons that we like some music not others, based on what I read on poptimists.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I really don't understand people with access to the internet that still believe there's some global 'moment'.

Though the commentor using the phrase "dance band" is kind of hilarious. Please to list 5 similarities between CSS and a) Glenn Miller b) Altern-8, anonymous person! Apart from the obvious ones - they are awesome, also fun.

Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” - let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album - they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they secretly mean is that it will be listened to in just the same reverent way as now: taste to them is a stock market, and they’re keen to invest emotionally in records which promise steady long-term growth.

You can caricature the pop fan, too - their expenditure is without hope or desire of return, their passions are spent on mayfly records, and this hopelessly compromises their judgement in the eyes of their more sober peers.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

their expenditure is without hope or desire of return

What's wrong with that? :-)

I'm almost certain I won't be listening to The Feeling's album regularly in 6 months' time. Or even 3 months. I'm only listening to it today because I saw lovely Dan From The Feeling advertising jumpers in the window of M&S last night. Bless!

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Nothing's wrong with it!

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I agree with that idea but don't think not liking CSS negates one's ability to like stuff/listen to stuff on a momentary basis, which was what I took to be part of the Fluxblog post.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah specifically liking or not liking CSS is nothing to do with it - I like Let's Make Love, but the Spank Rock rmx is feeble.

I can sympathise with Matt letting one snarky comment trigger a load of pent-up frustration though.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

they are terrified of ever having to admit that they enjoyed something that has since become dated.

I've been guilty of this plenty of times. I am currently experiencing it wrt my vast collection of Radiohead CDs. I *know* I adored them at one point (when I was feeling particularly miserable about four years ago, hah) but I don't think I could get the same enjoyment out of them now. Probably because I'm not moping about over some bloke/stressing over my finals. I wouldn't say I'm "terrified" to admit that I once liked it though. I guess peer pressure still casts a shadow over the poptimist ideal!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

The Radiohead and U2 references are very on point - I actually hadn't thought of them in this context. U2, in particular at the moment, is a bad that - mustering up some objectivism - I would say I quite like. But for the last four or five years, the first few seconds of a U2 song are enough to make me dive for the 'skip track' or volume buttons. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed, but god there is hardly anything i want to hear less. (Although the last 15 years of R.E.M. would probably come a close second.)

I don't think "peer pressure" has anything to do with it, but there is a weird kind of zeitgeist or something that just eventually seems to catch up with everyone (Madge, are you listening?) It seemed like the world turned upside down on Coldplay overnight.)

At some point, I think, said zeitgeist changes and, generally, we will again be able to appreciate The Joshua Tree and The Bends (if not necessarily X&Y, although I listened to Business As Usual by Men At Work last month and kind of liked it, so anything is possible).

Exactly what these processes are, I don't really understand. I mean, I am for the most part isolated from US&UK media, and despite liking all of Radiohead's singles from the first two albums, I was *so* uninterested/negatively disposed toward X&Y before I even heard it.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

part of the process is perhaps realising that nothing interesting was in fact ever again going to be said abt [whoever] -- where earlier you were intrigued bcz it seemed it might be

(i know i really sharply went off eg costello and talkin hedzorz when it seemed like the openness and possiblity earlier present shut down)

(what's interesting i think is that older foax i wz allergic to from the OUTSET -- dylan or the stones say -- once i first heard something i hadn't expected to hear said/written abt THEM, the openness and possibility opened up again and i started to be RERALLY fascinated by them)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

this came up on ILX recently, this business of "used to like"!

- "used to like artist X, but times change and people change and we have grown apart: I still like the songs I used to like, but I never choose to listen to them"
- "used to like artist X but they have gone so shit that I could never say I liked them any more"
- "used to like artist X but they have gone shit, and what I think is shit suddenly infects all of their previous work so that I cannot listen to it in the same way again"

i really do judge...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

... music in terms of "potential discussion, potential thought, potential animation" on my part -- if i believe i am going to be bored and going over old ground, i have gone off them

(eg i am quite open to someone rescuing u2 for me in this area -- tho not remotely confident they can be rescued)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I tend towards a mixture of the first and the last category - it's not so much that the band has gone shit, but that my tastes have changed enough that it would be a real physical effort to put any of their CDs in the stereo = not good. Too many times in the past I have thought "I SHOULD be listening to X". If you're really not interested in X anymore (for whatever reason) it's a pointless exercise and you could be spending your time searching out new music that you WILL like.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

That's interesting--I never liked Radiohead because they ennabled my mopiness, I just thought they were a good rock band, I guess. So I can still listen to them. Interesting--maybe the more we tie our apprecaition of music to our individualized circumstances, the more we like it in the short term, but the less in the long term? Does identifying something with an aspect of yourself that's not timeless doom a band to disposability?

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's what happens to a lot of angsty bands that appeal to teenagers, even when those bands grow up beyond expressing that sort of thing.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: am ill and trying to write essay therefore nothing sensible is coming out of my head.

Well CSS aren't very good. If they were from Clapham I can't imagine that hardly anyone would give an arse but it seems that since it's Brazil then oooh! etc. They sound like lounge music, to me- actual Death From Above seem far more fun/sexy. (incidentally, the new DFA remix album is brilliant, although everyone else probably knew that already) I dunno, possibly I'd like CSS if I didn't have them stuffed down my throat as the saviours of the known universe every time I open a music publication but particularly blabbing on about them as though they're something philosophically amazing like in that Fluxblog post makes me want to break things. If they're philosophical, they're part of the 'ee, sex is naughty, isn't it?' movement.

I don't think that necessarily means Lovefoxx isn't emoting, although I don't think it's anything exceptionally deep and if the music is what it's touted as then it's fairly straightforward what she's saying in the lyrics, with a bit of self-consciousness. Most of it's just playing, anyway, isn't it? Which isn't to say that's not emoting and there is something conscious about the music, which I find annoyingly knowing a lot of the time.

I don't think that song's even about a long-distance relationship, is it?

Also, Mr Fluxblog probably doesn't sway around nearly blubbing to Jamie T but I didn't go and say that makes him a shallow tart, incapable of understanding music, did I?

Which is not to say I was the anonymous commenter, because I don't read fluxblog. Judging from that it all seems a bit hysterical.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

If the comments on that post were going to be dissected, this one is more interesting- *sigh*

I didn't understand CSS, now after spending a few days with my 18 year-old sister, little lo sunbeam, who's visiting me over her spring break, I'm now painfully aware of where this song is coming from and what that deadpan, detached delivery is all about.

I don't like feeling like a prude, and I don't particularly think that I am -- but by golly, growing up in the 80's, affected by the burgeoning years of the AIDS epidemic and the tail end of second-wave feminism sure did make anyone over the age of say, 28 or so, really, really self-conscious to a fault about promiscuity and casual sex. -cindyhotpoint

I'm not sure I totally get what the hell it's talking about but that seems far more interesting than someone who got a bit narked at seeing yet another piece of the internet dedicated to raving about CSS.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Well CSS aren't very good. If they were from Clapham I can't imagine that hardly anyone would give an arse but it seems that since it's Brazil then oooh! etc.

What's wrong with this (not that it's true IMHO)? People's enjoyment of things are related to preconceptions and biases and everything - English not being their first language has a pretty major effect on how people react to their lyrics' clumsiness!

[zenith.livejournal.com]

possibly I'd like CSS if I didn't have them stuffed down my throat as the saviours of the known universe every time I open a music publication

This strikes me as an explicitly anti-pop point of view - exactly the same as whenever people justify directing vitriol at mainstream pop because "I'm forced to listen to it whenever I go to the shops or turn on the radio". As a reason to dislike something, it's nonsense, and it makes even less sense when applied to someone like CSS, who surely must be raved about by only a handful of music publications - Plan B put them on the cover but one Alex Macpherson slated the album, the NME quite like them but nowhere near as much as the next band who don't have girls in or sound a bit foreign.

Equally, "people only like them cos they're from Brazil" = about as useful a comment as "people only like them cos they fancy them" - although of course, if they were from Clapham then they would sound different, wouldn't they.

Also, if 'Let's Make Love & Listen To Death From Above' isn't explicitly about a long-distance relationship/courtship then I'm not sure there's a better way to read it. Telephone calls, exchanged mixes, plane journeys made for love...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

fluxblogorg, by the way if you want matthew on yr flist ;)

brazil vs clapham

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

for me at least this is a function of "ooh i don't know much about brazil hence in otherwise ordinary promo material re CCS i will read stuff that is new to me" -- which wd not be the case in ref clapham

so this aspect of CCS -- new information, not necessarily particularly exotic even -- gives them the edge, pleasure-wise, over their identical-except-from-clapham

(important shaping element for me apparently: am i going to enjoying READING abt [whoever], which more or less means, is my curiosity going to be fed a little, or merely teased and scorned?) (or more accurately reading the stuff their project sparks -- it might NOT be "about" them in a journalistic sense)

Rambling comment specific to Cansei

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I put 'Lets Make Love' at the top of my singles list (http://katstevens.livejournal.com/466410.html) last year:

- Their being Brazilian did indeed contribute to their appeal for me (vocal intonation, relative lack of information/hype upon first hearing the song).
- I think the song (though probably not the band) will have a greater longevity for me personally than any other single released last year. Am I alone in thinking this?

What I didn't mention in that blurb:
- I hardly listened to the song in the last 4 months of the year
- But still got excited upon hearing it at Poptimism/out clubbing
- I was underwhelmed seeing CSS live, and disappointed with the English version of the album, not because "now EVERYONE likes them, noes my hipster cred has vanished" but because they dropped all the ace Portuguese songs

I saw "Off The Hook" at about no 35 in the HMV singles chart (ie not including downloads) last night and was pleasantly surprised (it's their 2nd best song!)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm actually listening to the album for the first time as I find this post, and...I'm finding it less tied to the nightlife of 2006-7 than I'd thought they were from hearing them when out. I suspect they'll be non grata for a year or two, then people will gradually rediscover that yes, it's an ace song anyway again c2012, much as 'Common People' is now starting to get played out again.