Before The Flood

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a poll about John Peel's Festive Fifty, 1976. Just tick all the songs you like from the list of 50 (counting down from #50 to #1, as it happens). I've put it up because i) I'm curious about the results, ii) I'm probably writing a pitchfork column about the F50.

[Poll #1137239]

And some more general questions I'd like to think about - they're quite big questions though:

- What does rock do better now? What does it do worse?
- How does the stuff that won respect and adoration on this poll differ from the stuff that critics and fans enjoy now (a VERY broad formulation, I know)?
- Where's the modern equivalent of the audience suggested here - Pazz and Jop? the Pitchfork Readers Poll?
- What were Poco and can we eat them?

Comments

Poco

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Quite jangletastic! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7k0NZ4XidM) Would get a solid 6 on the Podcast Panel so a tick from me here.

Re: Poco

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Mr Hopkins listens to Poco so we don't have to!

I have to say it again!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

YEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Re: I have to say it again!

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahahahahhahha xpost!1!!!

"A real... baker's dozen!" YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOW!

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

Obv I only ticked Won't Get Fooled Agane cos of CSI: Pie-ami.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

poco = mellow country rock, a gentler eagles (ie w/o the stark nihilist bleakness)

(peelie liked mellow country rock iirc but it kinda stalled oif its own accord c.1977) (as ever the bopkids is yer man factswise here)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I can't remember how the Beefheart one goes but the title is good enough for a tick on its own (and I approve of Beefheart in general).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hooray! It's good in a pleasingly mental way! (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZfNb1w7pVcA)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I feel bad for knowing as many as I do (nine).

[martinv.livejournal.com]

That Peel list confused me initially. It took me a bit of time to realise it was an 'all time'/'best so far' Fifty rather than just songs released in 1976. Ahem. That makes a bit more sense...

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

But presumably bearing the usual slant towards stuff released that year: "Desolation Row" is fkn awesome but not really one of Dylan's top five.

[cis.livejournal.com]

I like how they managed to pick two of the Beatles songs i hate most in the entire world! Wow, 1976, you were wierd.

A lot of these, for me, are basically just Time Life Advert songs - I recognise them as a snippet of chorus, a name scrolling in little yellow capital letters (white means 'on the record' yellow means 'playing now'!) over sepia band footage or a blue-sky shot of a freewheelin' road trip. So I think of the audience as being completely mainstream: this is straight-up eighties-baby 'stuff your dad was supposed to want to play in the car'.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I guess the main clue as to the non mainstreamness is the dogs NOT barking here - no "Bo Rhap"!

But also the mainstream and the non-mainstream were closer anyway?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!!!!!!!!

not a SINGLE ONE!!!!

aaaaagh this is all so bad!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

oh actually I didn't see Marley but it's still not good enough to override the principle of the thing. dear god this is the root of all our problems! this shit right here!

Artists on this list I RLY can't stand

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

- Van Morrison
- Bob Dylan
- Neil Young

I think it's the harmonica element!

Re: Artists on this list I RLY can't stand

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is Grace Slick REALLY the only lady on the list?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There is not one single female in this list. That's...so indefensible I don't know where to begin.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I mean, the more I look at it, the more I boggle at how THIS became the basis for the way people think about pop music. AAARGH.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, White Rabbit can remain white. White past my iPod. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Bastarding White Rabbit bastard student parties bastard stupid hand dance bastard GOTHS.

Also is Grinderswitch the forerunner to Grinderman??

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Grinderswitch was the jaunty pop blues tune Peel used as a theme tune, it would chime out at the end of his programmes and send you comfortably off to Home Truths dreamland. I like the fact that lots of his listeners voted for the theme tune, I hope Saltarello would do as well in an FT poll!

Songs I am RLY sick of now

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

- Layla
- All Right Now
- Stairway To Heaven
- Hey Jude
- Maggie May
- No Woman No Cry

I never need to hear these songs again.

[koganbot]

I only ticked those I knew that I knew for sure what they were; a surprising amount I didn't know. (Like, which Allmans track is "Jessica"?)

Of the ones I was sure I knew, I only didn't tick "Riders On The Storm" and "No Woman No Cry," though presumably the reason I don't remember if I know some of the others is that they were by bands I didn't like enough.

Poco had Richie Furay, ex of the Buffalo Springfield, and Jim Messina, later to join Loggins and Messina.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

It's the Top Gear theme.

The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick

[koganbot]

Lex, I keep linking it for you, and I don't think you ever listen, but you need to hear "Roadrunner":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDJShMk-r88*

They correctly give the album date as 1976, but the recording was 1971 (and the song is a self-conscious rip of the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray," which was 1968).

Re: The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I debated for a while between this song, "Jumpin Jack Flash" and "White Rabbit" before deciding that "Jumpin Jack Flash" was, in fact, the best song on the list.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the idea that julie burchill bears no responsiblity for what lex calls the "current situation" -- given that she is/was BY FAR THE MOST SOUGHT-AFTER AND ADMIRED POP WRITER OF HER DAY -- is as goofy as the idea that the best way to study pr understand the past is to know absolutely nothing about it: julie b's militant parochialism is EXACTLY the element in her critical armoury that was most widely adopted first by the MM kru and then (in their wake, and more parochial still) britpop

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Looking at it now my immediate reaction is that it's actually quite low on the stuff that's supposed to have been swept away by Punk Year 0: one Yes song, no Styx, no ELP, no King Crimson. To an extent the names that are there are excluded from the list by their survival - if the Rolling Stones continued to make records after 77, then they mustn't have been the target. Joe Strummer doesn't miss what he aims for!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

bah i am WAY TOO BUSY this afternoon to respond to this: it is also wrongheaded but in a more subtle way that the lex is being

Pink Floyd vs Panda Bear

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Critic dudes still like long songs but they don't like epic songs so much? y/n?

Possible factors here

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

#1. Average age of critic dudes increasing & they want to hark back to the days when they were able to jump up and down?
#2. Average age of critic dudes DECREASING & they still like jumping up and down?
#3. Much easier to press 'skip' on ipod rather than get up and press >> on the cd/tape/rekkid player => short attention spans?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

my analysis of peel's line is that he too was becoming insensely unhappy with what this list "represented", and from c.77 made HUGE efforts to push back against his listeners' prejudices -- tho a less in areas of black music that still got daytime play than ones that got none (reggae)

i think the longterm project was a failure -- it ended up establishing indie: his diffidence and self-depracation a kind of shambling virtue-out-of-shy-incompetence which became increasingly passive-aggressive

but i think JB's approach was a failure also (it's possibly not helped by my judgment that she's at root a perniciously racist careerist homophobe): i think by agreeing to the pre-drawn lines but merely switching the "good" and the "bad" signs, she affirmed exactly the settlement lex is protesting

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

A very tempting torrentable is a "Peel Punk Rock Special" from 1977 - Eddie & The Hot Rods ahoy.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

How does the stuff that won respect and adoration on this poll differ from the stuff that critics and fans enjoy now (a VERY broad formulation, I know)?

And Peel's listenership changed a lot (or did it?)

Partial answers to these questions can be found in the Millennium all-time F50:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/festive50s/2000s/millennium/

Survivors: 1xDylan, 1xHendrix, Beefheart and that's it! A different Beatles song gets in (thanks to Oasis?) and the Beach Boys, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and the Velvets place for the first time (roots of swathes of UK indie in a nutshell there).

NO SPOILARZ

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I was going to do a poll on THAT too, but the Lex's doctors won't have it.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I only know a few of these songs!

Cortex the Killer and Freebird are the best!

Modern equiv. = people who like Wilco?

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Cool slip on my behalf, cortex I mean! Cortex the Killer is my new Pantera style band!

Null ticks for Family

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling sorry for them now. I don't know this song, but what I have heard by them was all right.