Still Too Soon To Know

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Three questions, which I will try and phrase right - all related though.

They're about importance. For once I'm not talking about importance to one's personal listening history, emotional development etc. I'm interested in how we as individuals perceive "music history" and "historical significance" while it's happening.

The question:

1. What moment, or trend or era in music have you felt was most important while it was happening?

2. Have there been any moments you felt at the time were important, which don't seem as important with hindsight.

3. When you first became aware of pop music as something which had a history, what seemed to you the most important things in the previous ten years?

Comments

Re: unfortunately another interesting topic i don't have time to chat on

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

It also occurs to me that the arrival of rap/hip-hop NEEDS to be accounted for - your comment above about "what other stuff were people claiming etc." Also clearly hugely important from "Walk This Way," maybe.

Re: unfortunately another interesting topic i don't have time to chat on

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

And one final point: I really started as a pretty heavy Beatles obsessive, so I think the idea that "pop has a history" was something I had right away, just because their career was this huge development arc, and writers always liked to talk about who their influences were, and who they influenced afterward.

Re: unfortunately another interesting topic i don't have time to chat on

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Perhaps oddly (given the colossal impact of hip-hop), I didn't have a huge sense of its importance - I think because the development of it was quite under-the-radar in UK pop terms BUT there was usually rap of some sort in the charts from the time I started listening.

So I knew from age 7 or 8 what rap was - via Adam Ant, Kenny Everett, Roland Rat, Wham! etc. and then via kids breakdancing in the school playground. I didn't have any sense that it was important, or anything other than a "novelty", but I don't think I had much sense until I got to 12 or 13 that ANYTHING was other than a novelty: the early 80s charts were very colourful and acts came and went fast.

Then the Beastie Boys came along and I didn't like them - I disapproved of them and thought they were scary, and at the same time was irritated by other people who disapproved for not just ignoring them. But they fit very well into my existing idea of rap as this thing you could draw on if you wanted to novelty-up your music, it's just now horrible people were drawing on it, rather than Adam Ant or Wham.

And then age 14 or 15 or so I must have woken up to the idea that rap was an actual thriving genre, and I asked a friend to borrow a Public Enemy tape, and from then I liked it. But because I realised then it had been going on for ages, and was well-established, it never seemed "important". It was just there, like metal or soul or reggae.