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

[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.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think that's more reflective of the dissipation of the public sphere of criticism? I rarely feel the direct shadow of this specific music but its values still loom large over crit-friendly pop.

[koganbot]

its values still loom large over crit-friendly pop

You might be right, but the argument to support this would have to be very subtle and complex, and my guess is that you're not the one who'd be able to make the argument persuasively, given that you don't know the music on this list very well, you don't know the divisions that this list represents - the people voting Beefheart, Richman, and Legendary Stardust Cowboy (!) are not likely voting for much else that's on this list, and they're the ones most likely to be giving scattered votes to the girl groups and Motown and funk and garage rock and bubblegum and glam and Detroit punk (which was very r&b based) that don't register in the results - and you don't know what critics of the time were saying: criticism of course was all over the place in its attitudes but there was a large contingent that would be objecting to this list in much the manner that you do (you have no idea how much you remind me on this thread of Dave Marsh circa 1974, though you're smarter and more engaging and a better writer); in fact this list is much more representative of the rock audience than of rock critics, who were often in conflict with that audience. So the subtle and complex argument would have to be about how people who would be very averse to what they think this list represents and who would plump for very different music nonetheless are something of the latter-day equivalent of the sensibility that produced this list.

In other words, you need to read chapters 12 and 13 of my book. Not that those chapters make the argument I'm envisioning here (which I'm not sure is right anyway), but they're a template one could start with to make such an argument.

[koganbot]

the people voting Beefheart, Richman, and Legendary Stardust Cowboy (!) are not likely voting for much else that's on this list

Er, I mean people voting for Richman et al. in 1976, not poptimists voting for them in this poll.