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

[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"

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)

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.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I enter all my relationships with a song/album in the hope that it'll be an intense fling

Also an option, obviously. These two things may just be a new metaphor for rock vs pop (I hope not, although I am much happier to be on the swingers mailing list than the moral majority's :)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think it's the fact I think there was fun music before CSS and there will be afterwards and a lot of places seem to be suggesting that they just reinvented the idea of disco, when I see that as having been done before. It's not an anti-pop statement, it's a dislike of the way in which the music is dealt with. Rather than saying 'well this is quite ace' it seems to go for 'it's the second coming!!!1one!' when, to my ears, they sound a lot like a huge number of other things around at the minute. I dunno, I just don't think they're that great.

Mixmag was all over them for awhile. I think it was Mixmag, anyway, might have been something else one of my flatmates left in the bathroom and the NME goes mental every time Lovefoxx sneezes, as far as I can tell but I do only read it every six months or so. Various bits of stuff that fall out of newspapers have been drooling all over them, too, although I guess those aren't really music publications per se.

I find the Brazil thing vaguely patronising, more than anything else. Like, 'oh my god, someone in Brazil wrote a pop song' -surely not! Possibly this is a gross misinterpretation of what's going on and I by no means think it's what everyone who likes CSS thinks but I find it really quite annoying.

Re: brazil vs clapham

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, I think it's just quite annoying when you read a whole set of things that say something's AMAZING and then it sounds quite rubbish when you actually hear it.

Re: i really do judge...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

this is a reason why I never want to write about some of the music I love! because I don't have much to say about it and will therefore exhaust it all too soon.

one of the reasons I love r&b is because it's so fertile for digging, it's geared towards instant beat-involvement and when that wears out it always has emotional layers to dissect one after another.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

if they are a new metaphor for rock vs pop then one of the curiosities is that rock and pop switched roles in the last 30 years

(ie in the 60s rock was the symbol of wild fling/hard shag, and pop was more demure, if youthful, and more staid and long-term if pre-rock)

(one of my ways of deploying "rockism" as a crit was when symbolic wild fling/hard shag was being unthinkingly invoked as bedrock for STANDS THE TEST OF TIME)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think it's that, as I said below, I kind of see this as 'would you believe they have a synthesizer in Brazil?!' rather than just 'CSS are from Brazil.' Dunno, I probably read way too much into it cus I'm an International Relations student.

Re: CSS per se, was not the point

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I realised that pretty much as soon as I'd pressed post -I should really wake up before I start ranting at the internet; sorry.

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!)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

a lot of places seem to be suggesting that they just reinvented the idea of disco

This is pretty much endemic every time you get a band with a beat I think! :(

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :( I don't think it's particular to CSS at all, it's just I heard them after about three months of articles etc. due to a total internet blackout so I tend to direct my rage about it at them.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"I'M GONNA STAND THE TEST OF TIME
I'M GONNA TAKE BACK WHAT IS MINE"

sez Rachel in one of her least good singles

someone in Brazil wrote a pop song

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

i don't know if i go OMG but i certainly do find it interesting when people appropriate bits of a fairly different culture and make it their own. if we think "the internet makes us a chain of global villages la la la" then no, it's not surprising, but i still preserve no small degree of wonder and therefore joy at the idea of teenage girls in brazil liking Death From Above. i am sure no small portion of the US or Canada (never did figure out which DFA was being referred to) has no idea that they exist.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

the NME goes mental every time Lovefoxx sneezes, as far as I can tell but I do only read it every six months or so

I think I see a flaw in yr data methodology here...

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[pot80.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't think that's the case! It's more like that's a mindset that drives certain attractions. I'd like to think that I personally juggle the two extremes, which is probably a pretty healthy place to be, getting the depth of long-term fandom and the thrill of loving things in the moment, and not expecting or needing them to extend beyond that.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's more or less what happened. There's not a lot that one can fairly extrapolate from that comment aside from some clearly rockist tendencies and some overt douchebaggery, but the response was a result of pent-up frustration toward how I've seen a great many people react to that album in particular and dance pop music in general over the past few years. It was also partially triggered by some thoughts re: how audiences are mostly rather unwilling to think of artists beyond a very rigid script, which was a major theme in a blog post written by my friend Chris, which is linked in the same post.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i don't know, U2 seem to be the achetypal band that attract this sort of thing (this being the fault of rattle & hum and bonio's god complex).

see also the swarm of badness that descended on xrrf (http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2007/02/oh-thats-all-we-need.html) last week when he said the forthcoming ocean colour scene alBUM might be a bit sh!t...

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[pot80.livejournal.com]

See, I think U2 has enough major hits that they attract a lot of fickle fans who are approaching from the more pop-driven perspective. Radiohead is so focused on albums, and everything about their fandom seems centered on their Importance and Greatness and Relevance that they would probably be a better posterboy for this sort of thing. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin too -- artists that really do whatever they can to discourage the notion that they can be enjoyed as a singles act, even if they do have some pretty big hit singles.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

all i have to say on this matter is "hurrah, my copy of god fodder just arrived!!!"

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hmmm, i dunno, i'm pretty certain that the proper sizeable hardcore have been with them since unforgetable fire, through the ups and downs. also the radioheads have been much keener to p!ss off their fans due to eg lack of chorus, which u2 haven't even gotten close to because they're engaged in a pact with (a certain sizeable minority) of their audience who want/need them to MEAN something that they're happy to oblige...

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Good point.

Re: someone in Brazil wrote a pop song

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That's true, actually, I don't think I'd really approached it thinking about it like that before. I tend to have some kind of massive (and totally ridiculous/offensive to myself even when I actually think about it) reaction to a lot of stuff like that based on the fact I am an International Relations student and so spend a lot of my time being stupid about cultural imperialism vs cultural appropriation etc. See also: have read too much Eduardo Galeano in last week possibly.

On the other hand, there is the aspect that a lot of awesome Brazilian music that doesn't so heavily emulate music from these parts/the US doesn't get that kind of interest around it. Which is a shame, in my opinion, although I'll admit my knowledge of Brazilian music is highly limited.

Are the two DFAs not the same? I have been lied to. I thought Jesse Whatshisface was in both of them? Either him or the other one, Sebastien Whatshisfaceorwhateverhe'scalled. Blimey.