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

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I thought the 'indie wars' column was fundamentally but unsurprisingly wrong, in that it regards the whole business as an essentially dualist affair, Light v dark, Good v Evil, the eternal struggle, blah blah.

There's a lot of reasons why I could pick it apart, but on a personal level, I could never really be involved because, as goths, we (my circle, such as it was) weren't even allowed to *have* a side, no matter how interested we might also be in our indie (or indeed, our pop). And those lovely fey indie boys weren't so sweet and inoffensive when they were slobbering down your cleavage in a club, then taking the piss out of your hair. Anyone who's seen 'Career Girls' might know where I'm coming from - Mike Leigh's apparent caricatures were more accurate than one might expect!

Nostalgia is mostly bollocks. Things are better now. People don't care so much about their pointless aesthetic puritanism. This started sorting itself out on the goth scene at the start of the '90s and it was a breath of fresh air. Thankfully, it seems to be the way things are going everywhere, so we should celebrate it, instead of writing *another* article about how x type of 4 REAL music has, maybe, sold out.