an enquiry into portals

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

so i was watching boyz II men’s tep 20 R&B ballads of all time on TFM, and one of them was janet jackson’s odd, low-key sexmumble of a song, “any time any place”, and in the video there was a vinyl record playing on the turntable, and — unless i am mistaken — on the disc was the roger dean virgin logo, from the very early 70s



and it was spinning and not in focus so i couldn’t see what the record was — nevertheless, this portal takes you somewhere fairly curious: “likely” LPs for JJ to be seducin wiv apparently include Mike Oldfield‘s Tubular Bells, Tangerine Dream‘s Phaedra, The Faust Tapes, Faust IV, and — and this is my secret hope — Gong’s Flying Teapot (Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt. 1)

(this enquiry actually began as a result of catching a microscopic glancing ref in "his dark materials" to dorothy sayers's "the nine tailors" (lord asriel momentarily = lord peter wimsey); and wondering how this kind of easter-egging is meant to be made sense of -- what i'm fascinated by is genuinely little throwaway things which make you go "wtf" for an instant, and somehow (if you let yourself think off on that journey) open up the object (a book, a JJ video, whatever it may be) in an unexpected dimension

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

top 20 r&b ballads! sadface that i missed it :(

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Pop a lot of the time trades in macrocitations not micro-ones - whole Easter bunnies sitting in the track in the form of samples (say), and even THEN these aren't much discussed in terms of eg. how samples set up conversations between tracks. The model seems to be that the producer is an alchemist and that the original form of the base matter simply isn't relevant (even when it plainly IS)*. It's like a big potential part of the discussion's been closed off even when it's glaringly there - so I guess tinier references and nods *really* don't have much chance!

*There's a review of a CD compiling Daft Punk's sample-sources on P4K today, and it very much takes the line: well, here are some good tracks and several more bad ones, Daft Punk are able to turn bad songs into good YAY! But it's surely directly relevant to DP's art that they do use Cerrone and Manilow and this other stuff.