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

[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.

Re: NO SPOILARZ

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Good god that manages to be EVEN WORSE (the lovely PJ notwithstanding).

Re: NO SPOILARZ

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Oh go on.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Crikey, is there any excuse for having NINE Joy Division/New Order songs in there? Get one imagination, dudes :(

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Anyway the reason for my "or did it" is that obviously the listenership's tastes changed - really quite quickly after 1976. But what I don't know is whether, or in what proportions:

- Peel won a new listenership in 1977.
- Peel took his listeners from 1976 with him.

My suspicion is that Peel built several audiences over the years.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Yes, I twigged what you were getting at, I was just curious as to whether science could answer the question. I think you're right about building several audiences. The advent of the Friday Rock Show on R1 in late 1978 (hosted by the late Tommy Vance) was I think partly to cater for the pre-punk Peel audience*, although it wasn't long before NENWOBHM permanently changed the direction of that show too.

*your Deep Purples, Yeses and Stairway To Heavens regularly featured in that show's all-time favourite tracks polls, which Vance would run annually on the show's "birthday"

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

But it's not that significant a change in style, even if almost all the records are different - it's still the same kind of viewpoint, the same type of canon, just reiterated by a new generation.