Lazy Friday reading

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

It's a quiet and sunny Friday here in the land of popsa, and I've been catching up on my reading. Although I'm sure half of you refuse to read the Guardian's pop coverage on principle and the other half read it with needing me to tell you, here are a few recent things that I enjoyed.

Interview/profile with Sly Stone: http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2007/08/sly200708

I am definitely one of those people for whom the Sly myth looms large. Listening to his stuff manages to conjure up some of that 60s magic for me, even though most of the time nowadays it makes me cringe. There's nothing earth-shattering, but it's nice to at least take a little bit out of the mystery of the last, oh, 20 years of his life.

Kitty Empire: "We won the indie wars - but at what price?"
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/07/we_won_the_indie_wars_but_at_w.html

Did I miss the discussion of this? I guess we talk about or around it all the time, and I'm not sure Kitty's post add much to what we already know. Are we "embattled and tribal?"

How Billie Jean changed the world
http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/comment/story/0,,2124636,00.html
I kind of vaguely remember this period, and so enjoyed someone writing a bit of big-picture cultural context around it.

"Billie Jean was groundbreaking because it introduced the idea that a single must be accompanied by a high-production video - preferably by someone who is a bit of a hoofer - thereby transforming a run-of-the-mill song release into an "event."

When did this period end (and why?)

Anyone else read anything interesting recently?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well the classic 80s indie relationship to the charts always seemed to be:

i. "I hate the charts"
ii. Wild celebrations when the Mighty Lemon Drops scored a #43 hit.

If there was a contradiction in this people (or at least the people I knew) didn't see it at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Unsorted musings on my largely wrong indie ways twenty years ago

We, which is to say my little gang, hated the charts not out of principle but as a matter of taste. In 1987 the days of the Buzzcocks and the Undertones getting high up in the charts were really only just behind us and my view was that "we", which is to say bands who were "on our side", could get back there.

This is why we insisted on calling the music we liked "pop", by the way, and always thought "indie" a disgusting term.

We were always very dismissive of indie fans who saw the charts as a fundamentally bad thing, thought they were fools. Our approach was sufficiently purist that we never had to make that sum add up. We could easily tell ourselves that we were carrying the flame for the true (pure!) pop in exile, the once and future King, because the bands we liked never stood a chance of testing the charts.

"On our side" is a fractal matter, or a Leninist one, of you prefer: from our point of view, the Mighty Lemon Drops were not "on our side" although they might have thought they were. The Shop Assistants were "on our side". This level of tribalness necessarily brings with it embattled-ness, I think.

bopkids

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The MLD were a placeholder for a band I was trying to remember, with a fan of whom I had this conversation in the late-80s.

I can now reveal that band to be the Railway Children.

[(Anonymous)]

Even less on our side than the Mighty Lemon Drops!

bopkids

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

whose side WERE the railway children on?

(haha i recall that the drummer of the R4ZORCUTS wrote them up glowingly in the nme -- so whose side were the
R4ZORCUTS on eh?)

i blame big flame

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i think they were on deacon blue's side...

[(Anonymous)]

I think (but I'm not sure) that D4vid 5wift was only invited to join ver R4zorcuts after that review.

The Railway Children were on the other side, whichever side anyone was on.

bopkids