The Past? Now let me tell you about the past...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in how people think about old pop. We spend quite a lot of our time here doing polls about it, but nonetheless I'm going to start another thread on it and see what happens.

Two thoughts specifically:

- "Older sibling syndrome": I remember a conversation I had with Al (my younger brother WINOLJ) a few years ago where he was expressing envy at my having "lived through" acid house and jungle. Obviously he was alive between 88 and 95 too, but he meant "paying attention to music". I explained that I might have been around then but I'd hardly been taking advantage of my raving opportunities. Anyway it struck me that, even though I don't have an older brother myself, I also had always had a fascination with the years just before I got into music, the stuff I'd just missed or had absorbed haphazardly via the Sunday Top 40 show. Does anyone else recognise this?

- When does pop stop?: Not many people tick anything in the 1952-1953 Number Ones polls. Fair enough - this stuff is quite obscure. But there's no sense of curiosity either, or not of curiosity in the sense of "wow maybe there's some great old stuff here". It's too far beyond pop as we understand it to excite much enthusiasm. Are there other, more recent, pockets of 'old pop' which are like this for you - sounds and styles whose appeal is lost or baffling?

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Interesting, this. I don't think about time before I was listening probably because of the way I consumed as a child. I was lucky enough to have a pop-obsessed sister four years older than me, who would play me Madonna and Duran Duran and Kate Bush and other such things from when I was 3-4 years old. I honestly can't remember a time when I wasn't a consumer of pop music.

At the same time, on long car drives, my parents would always have the radio on and I was exposed to 70s music this way. And a lot of 60s music from my mother's collection of tapes. And 50s music from some of my grandmother's old records (she lived with us). So I had the older sibling syndrome in lots of different ways.

I tend to think pop doesn't stop, but the band of it which you find appealing does certainly thin the further back you go. At least if you're me. Or rather, if great pop is about being 15, the further you are from 15 when it came out, maybe. I like pop today a little more than I think I would at 5 (1987), anyway.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one of the signal revelations of my career was arriving on the editorial team of wire just after richard put michael jackson on the cover and wading through the SACKS of letters of complaint: bcz -- tho written largely by old-skool jazzfans in their 40s and 50s -- they were expressed so IDENTICALLY to the letters of complaint run by MM when they put bobby brown on the cover

jazz fandom had already to negotiate several layers of (pre-rock) passion about when eden was lost to us: in particular there is (was) a famous jazz discographer and scholar called BR!AN RvST who angrily argued that ALL JAZZ WAS WORTHLESS after the arrival of the saxophone (=1921 i think)

i must work harder at converting my HITS OF 1890s to stuff everyone can listen to online

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

googling implies BR is still with us!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I dunno, it doesn't seem too surprising to me that music fans will reach for similar language to express outrage/disappointment/NOT-US-ness when confronted with that kind of editorial 'transgression'.

From my memories as a reader of the NME letters pages when it used to occasionally put pop stars on the cover, the responses broke down into:

- Feelings of betrayal (I rely on the NME to support indie and look how you repay my faith)
- Feelings of fear (This is a commercial sell-out, you are trying to attract the wrong sort of readers, it's a populist move)
- Feelings of exclusion (This is actually an elitist move - you are being too ironic/postmodern/hipper-than-though/clever but I have seen through it!)

And then the basic "But X is shit" irritation.

I guess an interesting test case wd be - what happens when mags in the mainstream (i.e. not relying for reader loyalty on an implicitly oppositional stance like Wire or MM) break their own standard bounds? If Smash Hits had put Elvis on the cover in 1988, would anyone have complained, and what language would they have used if so?

All this is a big but fascinating tangent to what I was asking about!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think it was the first window i really had onto the emotional insecurity and general "indieness" of superior-taste fandom where the fans were no longer actual real teenagers -- in fact a lot older and allegedly wiser and more self-aware than me at the time (i was in my late 20s, and still inclined to give avantists the benefit of the doubt as regards being more intellectually curious)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well as far as your first point goes, I pretty much agree. I think I got into pop relatively late (c. 1986, i.e. aged 12. 'Calling America' by ELO was the song which switched my pop-brain on, closely followed by the Beastie Boys.) -- I used to get fed up during Cheggers Plays Pop (1977-1982) when the bands came on, as I was only watching for the games! I can vaguely remember having been aware of a couple of big hits before then -- Bucks Fizz (1981), Pop Musik by M (1979), Video Killed the Radio Star by Buggles (1980). But it's fair to say that the prime years of synthpop i.e. the five years prior to me 'getting' pop, remain almost archetypal for me. This could be strong support for your own experience, but it might just be those years spent hanging aroung the MVE bargain basement buying up OMD B-sides.

I am desperately curious about older pop, and always feel bad about not being able to tick anything in those polls, but just have no idea where to start finding out about it!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes I can't imagine who you might ask to get hold of those early-50s number ones! ;)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well there's probably also a question of lacking time and energy. But yeah, a beginner's guide to the 50s would be cool.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Now I have started searching for cheggers plays pop on youtube -- no good can come of this.

First comment here is a classic, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrZ64xPr8YY

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I started properpy paying attention at the same time / same age - being 12 in 1986, and I've always had a similar fascination with all the synth-pop acts that emereged in the early 80s - obviously I remembered first hand massive hits like "Don't You Want Me", but I have subsequently spent increasing time seeking out smaller hits and more obscure stuff. I always assumed it was just because for my personal tastes the early 80s were a bit of a golden age; but perhaps it is the fact that my sister lived through it that drew my attention to it.

On the 'old pop' issue - I love quite a wide range of 70s stuff, but most of the 60s has never grabbed me in the same way, apart from R&B / Motown / Soul type stuff. I've never been quite sure why - it just feels too dated and too far away from my own experience and what I relate to.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Age 12 for me too, though obviously that is before most of you were born - 1972 was when it started meaning a lot to me. Parallel to the above, the glam that I was listening to then (my first single was by T.Rex, my first album was by Slade) still means a great deal to me. I listen to a lot before then, but one difference is that there is less distinction between chart and non-chart tunes, because I am often less aware of their chart status. I mean, clearly I know the Beatles did quite well, but there are records where I have no strong idea whether they were huge hits or not hits at all. This affects how pop they seem, if they aren't mainline pop sonically.

I listen to plenty of jazz-pop stuff from way back. Loads of '50s stuff, and quite a bit before then. I really like old Sinatra, Nat King Cole and so on from before I was born.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My lack of curiosity for the 50s stuff is exactly the same as it is for the 60s, 70s and 80s stuff I haven't heard! I don't think it stops being pop, indeed I suspect I'd like a lot of pre-60s pop music more than post-60s pop music (as that seems to be where the dread influence of the Beatles starts, and where the canon has started in retrospect?).

But I'm not curious because I don't have the tiiiiiime. I still prioritise hearing New Music over hearing Old Music - in an ideal world both would happen but finite time and money innit!

Also this is probably bad but just skimming over the surface, downloading say the No 1s of a particularly year, isn't going to be particularly satisfactory to me, I worry too much that I'm missing the real gems - this is a bad attitude as it basically means I can only enjoy music that I'm "on the spot" for, or which are completely separate from any scene/context.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Canonisation before the 50s => see msg 36 (http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=756.30).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

re. your last point - this held me back in some areas too, "oh there is no way I will ever be an EXPERT on reggae/hip-hop so I will mostly ignore it" - ultimately I just stopped minding. Doing the No.1s thing has helped actually because i) it's an arbitrary sampling of hits, ii) by writing about them I feel I'm combining committment and dilettantism.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

1. No. I remember, somewhat ironically now, the fact that I actively *hated* "popular" music up until a very specific point, when I was captivated by a particular single and band. Thus began my years of listening to the Top 40 countdown on the weekend and rooting for and against this and that. (This period lasted about three years, I'd say at which point I guess I found more interesting things to do on the weekend.)

Previous to said specific point (notice how I am avoiding naming the single in question, to avoid ridicule :) I listened to stuff like the Beatles, maybe Simon & Garfunkel... Quite consciously "60s" music. Once the world opened up/ I did do a lot of obsessive exploring of past eras, but nothing like the way you describe. For me it was more artist-focused I think.

2. Factually I touched on this, I think on one of the 50s polls. (Speaking generally, Rubber Soul-era Beatles is about as far back as I can go now.) Everything after that is, or has been, fair game, at least in terms of time periods. There are, obviously, genres that I like/know well and those that I don't but I don't think there's a specific chronological aspect to it.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i insintively hated old music (not just pop) for ages just because it WAS old, and didn't relent in this until my mid 20s. (my event horizon of old is sometime in the 70s with Sparks a VERY early impact.) i briefly tried buying 'canon' artists by asking people who liked them what the best album i should start of with.

success: bowie, roxy music. fail: pink floyd.

a few others were in there. i could have tried harder, and i should really have another go.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

(bowie i RLY hated because tho i liked ashes to ashes, everything after that is just AWFUL and that's what i grew up with)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

As a young sibling I owe a lot of my musical knollidge to graciousviv, esp in the genres of RAVE, BAGGY and MADONNA.

Rubbish indie and 90s techno I discovered all by myself :-)

A lot of my love for older stuff has been through the influence of various boyfriends! I knew who Wire were because of Elastica, but I'd never have bothered listening to their grebt first album unless mayer_n had shoved it at me and forced me to admit that yes, Three Girl Rhumba is actually awesome. tommymack is responsible for a large amount of ska and dub in my possession. It's azureskies's fault that I own a Nick Drake album. boyofbadgers first informed me of the wonder that is Kompakt! I am a CULTURAL LEECH!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

ha ha no you are a GURL.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

well at least you appear to have been influential in return as regards possessing an LJ account ;-)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hahahah yes! Azureskies got his about 3 weeks after I got mine :-) I had nothing to do with mayer_n's though...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

You know my answer to the first question from various Popular comments box posts.

Re the second question, I do find the appeal of Merseybeat and the "English" sound in the immediate years after that (Hermans Hermits, Small Faces after they moved to Immediate, even The Kinks at their most parochial) a bit baffling. I like freakbeat, garage and bubblegum, but a lot of those foppish "Mrs McKenzie's Psychedelic Wheelbarrow" type songs drive me up the bloody wall.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

To contextualise that last comment: pop doesn't "stop" for me, but British pop it seems to me lost the plot a bit 1965-1967.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Interesting point (the first one). I'm the eldest sibling, and my parents, despite owning lots of old vinyl, never really played much music around the house. We never watched Top Of The Pops - the first time I saw it, Tasmin Archer and The Shamen were at the top of the charts. I remember lots of pop in the car on the way to primary school, but I suspect it was largely the radio, and it never interested me enough to drag me away from conversations with my sisters or my neighbours, with whom we shared lifts to school. As a result, I experienced the envy that you call 'Older Sibling Syndrome' in a different way entirely.

The chronology goes something like:
Age 11 - start secondary school, hear Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer' for the first time (well, a karaoke version, at a girl's Bat Mitzvah party), buy 'Slippery When Wet', go on a winter camp with a youth group and hear Nirvana's 'Nevermind' for the first time.
Age 12 - gap in my chronology... guess I was watching Top Of The Pops, had no real source for alternative music apart from any I bought or that friends played to me
Age 13 - best friend at school buys The Offspring's 'Smash' and introduces me to Metallica, Kurt Cobain dies on the weekend of my Bar Mitzvah, start buying NME religiously
Age 14 - go on holiday to the States and become friends with Libby, a girl from Norwich; Oasis and Blur spark the birth of Britpop
Age 15 - Libby makes me a mix-tape featuring bands like Spacehog, Rialto, Soundgarden, Hurricane #1. Go to my first gig to see Spacehog at Camden Dingwalls
Age 16 - first festival, V97

The 'envy' for me really started after Kurt Cobain's death, with the realisation that I would never get to see Nirvana live. Subsequently from ages 15-16, I started listening to older bands (as all true music fans should), and became envious of people who had seen The Clash, the Pistols, the Ramones and others in their prime. These days, it is more about specific legendary performances that upset me... Dylan in Manchester in 1966, Nirvana at Reading 92, early Orbital or Underworld shows, the White Stripes' first ever UK show (which I had a ticket for but didn't attend), Girls Aloud at V2006, the list goes on.

So I do kind of recognise what you talk about, but for me, it is more about missed opportunities to see things that subsequently became legendary, rather than missing the chance to be in the midst of a specific 'scene'.

My younger sisters never displayed such jealousy towards me. I suspect this is because I largely listened to what Weird Al Yankovic termed 'Angry White Boy Music'.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I'm an only child and really didn't have any exposure to pop before 1989 (except for the Ghostbusters theme and my dad buying my Thriller--go dad!), so all areas of pop were/are equally mysterious to me. I like 50s pop about as much as I liked 80s pop before people started mentioning specific great songs and buying me Prince albums. I definitely need a little nudge into things because old pop does have a lot of elements that are very off-putting. I still have a hard time listening to Bowie because of the production, it's just so damn thin.

I guess I do have a certain fascination with hair metal, but the first pop album I really got into was Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood, so really it's just an extension of that.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I got a three CD compilation of 'The Fifties' to review. I like having it, but I don't listen to it very often, and I don't really feel much urge to dig further.

OTOH, I love Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich and Charleston-type stuff, and particularly in Coward's case, have a fair amount of stuff including some pretty obscure bits. But then, his is an era/style I really like, whereas for me the fifties are a mental byword for 'rubbish decade'.

[koganbot]

Tom, from age 12, 1966, when I made the jump from "folk" to "rock" (I think that's pretty much what I called all the pop on the radio) to when I graduated high school in 1972, at age 18, I knew no one - I mean no one - who listened to any popular music that came out before late 1963. Maybe some of the people did listen, a little, but I didn't know about it. That's the one thing I emphasize most when I try to explain what it was like coming of age musically in the '60s. The musical past did not exist. It's as if the people just older than us had invented music themselves. Music from the '50s and early '60s existed as obviously inferior oldies, even if we'd listened to it when younger. And popular music before rock 'n' roll: nada (unless you want to count Billie Holiday and Robert Johnson or something). Elvis didn't exist except as an oldie. He had a whole comeback in the late '60s and none of us noticed. Culturally he existed in the '50s, he existed in the '70s, he exists now, but in the '60s he didn't count (didn't count to teenagers in the northeast United States, at any rate). I don't think before or since there's been such an Us vs. Them barrier, music older than 1964 belonging to Them and music after 1964 being Ours in such a way that we simply ignored the music Before. Imagine a teen in the '70s knowing virtually nothing about Dylan or the Beatles and not even raising a sweat over his lack of knowledge. Imagine a teenager in the '80s knowing virtually nothing not only of the Beatles and Doors and Hendrix but also of disco, glam, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, punk, Fleetwood Mac, just able to put it out of his mind as of no consequence. Don't know how relevant what I just said is to your question; just thought I'd communicate it. What broke the barrier for me was listening to the New York Dolls and through them picking up on the Shangri-Las (who were after 1963 but in spirit harkened back earlier) and the fact that the harmonies in "Personality Crisis" sounded like the harmonies in Chuck Berry's "Come On." Glitter and glam and what was starting to be called punk in the early '70s are what turned me around, all musics that didn't honor the supremacy of rock or soul or the late Sixties (despite being rock). To get Chuck Berry records or the Ronettes or the Shangri-Las (all out of print) you had to go to oldies stores or glitter-punk stores or used record shops, since Chuck and the Ronettes etc. were all out of print. I got the Ronettes on an import reissue from Britain or Germany.

[koganbot]

Interestingly, this barrier didn't carry over to TV or movies or books. Music is where we refused to go old, and didn't even find our refusal problematic.