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

[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.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well this is what I'm interested in when I ask "what's changed" and "who were the audience anyway". Cos of course 'punk' has historically been presented as a reaction against a lot of this stuff. And also of course there were big big strands of thinking about pop music COMPLETELY unrepresented by the picks of Peel's listenership, many of which surfaced and became more mainstream afterwards. And Peel's listenership changed a lot (or did it?)

(Also, loads of this is very good, even if the overall picture it presents is a joke.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes: what continually frustrates me is how people like Peel get to do the representing, the canonising; so eventually the pop music unrepresented here gets sidelined, at least in terms of how/how much people talk about them. As the great Julie B said in an article I have permanently on bookmark (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,321755,00.html):

I've always loathed John Peel. It started in the Sixties when I was a child, still staggering under the first blow of benediction by black music. All day long on Radio 1 - most of all, on Tony Blackburn's show - you could hear great creamy earfuls of it: Motown by the mile, Philly by the furlong. But at night Radio 1 became a white desert. It became 'intelligent'. That is, it became male, hippy and smelly - it became John Peel.

HEAR FUCKING HEAR.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What are your favourite Philly tracks Lex?

An understanding that there are different audiences to her has never been a Burchill strength.

One crucial point though is that Peel DIDN'T get to do the canonising or the deciding - the F50 was a listeners poll and he moaned about its contents regularly (did you see the quote I put up from him last week?). He was as much victim as beneficiary of canonising forces - turned into the sainted Godfather Of Indie when there's no evidence he wanted that at all. The canonising process is a lot more subtle and tough to work out than that.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think JB does understand that there are different audiences to her - she understands that they are WRONG!

I don't know much about Philly, that quote resonates with me more because I see the same parallel process happening today.

[cis.livejournal.com]

you don't know much about Philly because PEOPLE LIKE PEEL mean it was shoved out of the canon to make way for more BORING WHITE TRIPE

is surely what you mean here!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That is precisely what I mean! It also applies to disco, soul, freestyle...probably vast swathes of stuff which I have no idea about. If I'd known any of that even EXISTED back when I actually cared about discovering old music...but instead all I got pointed towards was this shit.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this I can sympathise with, as this list also looks very much like the stuff I was lent by boys at school when I asked what good music was (and I didn't protest and I liked some of it and not others - NO ZAPPA ON PEEL'S LIST is a big bonus IMO).

In a weird way it doesn't feel quite like a living canon though, I don't get a great sense of any of this music dominating the public sphere of rock thought in the way it maybe used to.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

In the decades I spent listening to Peel, he played more soul than any other DJ except was it Trevor Nelson with his specialist soul show. He also played more hip hop than anyone but Westwood. He was where I first heard Pink and Kelis too. You shouldn't get the idea that he only played boys with guitars, just because that was just about all his audience-consensus threw up.

[cis.livejournal.com]

haha I've always hated that article, I think the hatred starts from her trying to imply that she's the first person ever to suspect that the sixties' narrative of sexual liberation was a male attack on growing female freedoms (srsly people were saying that at the time! and constantly after!) and then extends in both directions to cover pretty much every other thing about it (esp the hanging-a-lantern on her hypocritical attack on his hypocrisy)! I really think she could have written such a strong convincing anti-Peel screed - the points to attack him on are all there, and she's a good writer - and somehow ballses it up horribly!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

JB's OTMness always comes with a healthy dose of screeching ego (but she's still OTM).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://freakytigger.livejournal.com/175998.html that's the quote I was talking about.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

If I'd been him, ie the one in the position to change that, I would never have handed my listeners any power at all, and would have been dispirited and also ANGRY at them for being so racist.

[cis.livejournal.com]

I kind of feel that if you're OTM in a poorly-executed manner you're not actually OTM?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

She executes screeching ego better than almost anyone!

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Julie B != grebt.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Peel regularly cited his enmity with Tony Blackburn, his conviction that in the future Iron Butterfly and It's A Beautiful Day and so on would be adored and revered by millions whereas the likes of Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and so on would be forgotten, as evidence that you shouldn't trust his (Peel's) judgement.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Bah my comment below was supposed to be a reply to this but I couldn't find it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

There is - Jefferson Airplane isn't a dude, the song was written and sung by Grace Slick.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

The Richard Thompson track should also have been listed as Richard and Linda Thompson shurely?

It is surprising how lacking in women this list is though, surprising especially from Peel, knowing him mainly from his later years. This is pre-punk Peel though, I guess, which was probably the turning point...

[koganbot]

You really really really really do need to hear "White Rabbit" (which you will probably like):

"White Rabbit".

I think some of the artists on this list would be as appalled by its limitations as you are (e.g., Stones in 1976 were incorporating funk and disco into their music and were continually trying to support black performers by booking them as opening acts, etc.).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh I do like that. Her voice seems oddly inappropriate for the music? She has this stately high priestess thing going on while the music is dank and earthy and menacing. I'd like it to be a little less static, maybe.

[koganbot]

The Airplane generally played faster music than this; also, their bass player, Jack Casady, was genuinely unique, would play these improvisatory licks from a basis of funk and soul, but since it didn't come with the label "funk and soul" (of the San Francisco bands, Big Brother & The Holding Company were the ones who had the funk 'n' blues 'n' soul rep [unless you count Sly & The Family Stone as "San Francisco," who of course were obviously funk and soul; but they were East Bay rather than SF; however, when Sly was still a DJ he produced the first single by Grace's previous band, The Great Society]), no one quite noticed this aspect, though it explains why the Airplane stuff was danceable.

Here's my favorite Airplane song (the YouTube guy did a weak rip unfortunately, so turn it up). Listen to what happens after a couple of stanzas when the bass comes in:

The Jefferson Airplane "If You Feel"

And here's more Grace:

The Jefferson Airplane "Grace"

More Grace

[koganbot]

Er, that song I called "Grace" is actually called "Lather."

More Grace (but not more "Lather"):

Jefferson Airplane "Greasy Heart"

Jefferson Airplane on American Bandstand "White Rabbit" (again) and "Somebody To Love"

Jefferson Airplane "Hey Frederick"

Jefferson Airplane "Eskimo Blue Day"

Great Society "White Rabbit" circa 1965 (Grace's previous band, though the vid confuses things by showing clips of the Airplane in 1969)

Couldn't find a couple of my favorites, "Rejoyce" and "Sunrise" (the latter by Jefferson Starship, but the versions on YouTube are with someone other than Grace singing)

I can definitely hear a lot of Jefferson Airplane in Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and the live version of "Rhiannon" that I keep linking.