League Of Pop Week 1 REVEALS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm in a huge rush today and won't be near a PC again until tomorrow but orgafun must prevail! So here are the five tracks (and what I thought of 'em, very briefly). My views are of course not intended to guide your votes, which you can cast here: http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/387730.html

Track One: The Normal - "Warm Leatherette": Ballard-inspired track from 1978, the dawn of electropop. The key I think is the tiny shifts in inflection Daniel Miller gives the repetition of the title phrase. Not wholly unsexy.

Track Two: Marcy Playground - "Sex And Candy": I'd need a better knowledge of the minutiae of late-90s American alt-rock to work out how this was distinctive (or any good). About sex, but not to my mind sexy.

Track Three: Latryx - "Lady Don't Tek No": A little too porridgey and dour to be sexy, but I'm not sure "being sexy" is the intention here. My second placed song (discounting ones I knew).

Track Four: Sex Boots Dread - "Tickle Tune": Much-celebrated (though almost unknown outside blogosphere circles) gay rasta track, which unconfirmed but persistent rumours suggest was in fact made by Keith Allen (Lily Allen's Dad). Funny, filthy and -yes- sort of sexy.

Track Five: Candi Staton - "Sure As Sin": Sultry soul slides gently over my forebrain without making a huge impact but Staton has a tremendous voice and this would have topped my list of unknowns whether or not I was taking the theme into account.

But of course my votes MEAN NOTHING compared to yours, so vote away and I'll let you know who picked what and who ranked where on Monday.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I HAVE RESCINDED ONE OF MY VOTES.

Candi Staton - very lucky I didn't know it! I got a Candi Staton best of recently, which has about 484843202 tracks on it, and I'd only listened to the first 15 or so - this is Track 19 on that album!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Because you think it's Keith Allen? (I shouldn't say anything b/c I was thinking of voting for it too, but it's kind of taken what little wind there was out of my sails, too.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Keith Allen is abhorrent => everything he is involved in is also abhorrent REGARDLESS of what it sounds like (my initial reaction was only "so-so" anyway).

Some people just don't get to do certain songs.

[cis.livejournal.com]

what if it's not by him? (KA's involvement is, after all, an unconfirmed rumour)

[(Anonymous)]

I saw Allen on the Jo Whiley show talking about how he made a record under the SBD name. He then sang an excerpt of it. I take that as confirmation, though of course he could be laying claim to the track with 0 involvement. That would have been a strange choice since there was 0 mention of it on the whole of the interwebs at that time.

bopkids

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I find myself in a bit of a quandary here. I have no particular problem with KAllen, if it is he. But armed with the information that this may not be "authentic" (interpret that as you like) it does make me feel differently about the song.

I will listen again (to this, and the other 3 I didn't already know). Most likely my 1st place vote will ultimately stand tho'.

[cis.livejournal.com]

ah well, never mind.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Is it? I got the impression in the pub it was one of those rumours which everyone knows…but I dunno, it’d still probably be a Brit novelty, which would still be fairly abhorrent to me, because there wouldn’t be any humour-from-within (as there would be if it was an actual dancehall artist), it’d be a bunch of unfunny Brits taking the piss out of both dancehall and gays b/c a) bumsex is so HILARIOUS isn’t it, and b) ooh look at this moral high horse we can climb on because no matter how unreconstructed our own attitudes we’re still better than those backwards Jamaicans…

Which may or may not have been Allen’s (or whoever’s) intentions but that’s what I get from him and his ilk in everything they do. I don’t know how tenable this position is but I would definitely say that there are some things that only some people should do, no matter how ‘convincing’ others can be; imagine Lady Sov or Kiley Dean (both of whom have been mistaken for black artists) dropping the n-bomb for instance.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Oh it is certainly Keith Allen - it's unmistakeable, listening to it. I'd prefer it to be a real dancehall act, as that would add something, but I still like it enormously.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Tom please accept Lex's first answer re Track 4. he said he liked it (enough to vote for it) until I let slip who was behind it in the pub last night (apologies).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It is VILE.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I thought most people would submit bump and grind sexy, so it was lovely to see the variance among the tracks. There's some pretty funny assumptions being made in the voting thread, but my mouth is calmped shut for now!

Old Brains Run Free But Not Accurately

[koganbot]

The Candi Staton song (my number one) was bugging me because I could not could not could not could not come up with a name for the voice, though I knew the voice very well; in fact the one and only time I did a list of favorite 100 singles ever, "Victim" was on there. Anyway, "Sure As Sin" is good bread-and-butter gospel-based soul, doesn't stand out as a song. Xgau: "Maybe she really is a victim of the very songs she sings - though not that one, or 'Young Hearts Run Free.' But her reputation for stiffing onstage makes me think there's something radically self-effacing about her - something the richest and sexiest voice can't quite make up for." If there's self-effacement, I'd say it's working to her advantage in this performance: her voice has tremendous heft, and so this touch of vulnerable tentativeness makes it more human, makes her seared as well as searing. Anyway, an easy number one.

As for the others, Marcy Playground has a casual but sticky drawl and would have been my number two except I already knew it, "Sex Boot Dread" has the same trouble as the Staton (good arrangement in a style I love but the song's not distinctive [not counting the words, which you forget about after a while]), and the singing is pretty good but not on Staton's planet much less her league, but this got my number two tick. Wouldn't have voted for "Warm Leatherette" even if I hadn't known it since I've never liked it, in fact in its day I hated it for being stupid jaded hipster cynical posing bullshit. Not so sure now that it is jaded or cynical, in fact seems funny - however, that's funny "peculiar" rather than funny "ha-ha," and once I eliminate "cynical" and "jaded" from my description of the voice, I still retain "boring." Latryx just kinda sound devoid of spark, though my indifference may be due to a culture barrier - I rarely like British r&b (if these guys aren't Brits they've done a good job of convincing me that they are; but anyway, "sounds like Brit r&b" is a criticism in itself).

Re: Old Brains Run Free But Not Accurately

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Latyrx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latyrx) (note spelling) are US backbacker hip hop, although that's a culture barrier that anyone would have trouble crossing ;-)

Re: Old Brains Run Free But Not Accurately

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because we have pretty identical takes on the songs. Staton was my number one, Marcy's Playground was my number 2 - though I could've guessed it, but I wasn't sure. I think it's funny, because I don't think we tend to like the same kind of music - and I wonder if it's partially attributable to the fact that we're discussing theme, making it more of an intellectual question than just a simple aesthetic one. (I think we share more intellectual affinities - certainly the Frankfurt school.) This occurs to me particularly because I think the 'genre' question is one of the more interesting things about the Pop Open.

Re: Old Brains Run Free But Not Accurately

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Staton would have been my number one by miles had I not known it already - she's one of my all-time favourites. Since I knew that and Sex Boots Dread, I voted for the only one I thought was decent, #3.

IMPORTANT

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

The "Sex and Candy" video ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=CKl_7zK3fbI ) is very odd and fun and is probably one of the important reasons the song hit in the US.

I voted for Candi Staton first and considered leaving spot two blank, but went for Sex Boots Dread, because it is good enough for a vote even if I'm not too enthusiastic about it.