John Peel = ultimate Poptimist?

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

With the exception of Julie Burchill, this post isn't intended to call out anyone in particular, but the fact that that John Peel thread went the way it did *this far* into the existence of Poptimists depressed me more than anything else I've read here. The Peel-bashing seemed to only undermine the sort of arguments this community has been making, and reinforcing the sort of arguments this community has been defending itself against, for ages.

By which I mean that 'Poptimism' as ideology, if it even exists, is about making the case for what you like regardless of critical consensus. That really Poptimism isn't about going 'OMG GIRLS ALOUD IT'S AMAZING' or 'you MUST LIKE this Mariah Carey album otherwise you're not a true Poptimist' or 'it doesn't matter that people say The Beatles were better than Aqua, it's all ephemeral pop and whatever you like matters', or whatever gets levelled by over-committed and under-researched bloggers. It's about making the case for what you like and risking indifference or ridicule. If not, why have we been bothering to share all this African hip-hop or German dancehall or Scandinavian dentists rapping about how ecstacy will mash your life, stuff that no one is ever going actually buy in this country? And I'm struggling to think of anyone who did that for music, ESPECIALLY on a national pop platform like Radio 1, before John Peel.

As a mid-90s indie rock kid, my abiding memory of listening to John Peel is one of dissatisfaction. Because from 94-97, it was mostly not indie rock AT ALL, it was all drum and bass or happy hardcore or thrash metal or obscure music from Peru I didn't have a clue about. I thought it was mostly rubbish, if I'm honest, but in hindsight I'm grateful for the opportunity to have heard it. This, after all, was one of the first DJs to play jungle on Radio 1 who later saw his own show shortened to make way for a dedicated drum and bass slot.

Julie Burchill attacks Peel for being hippy, or middle class, or more pointedly ignoring black music, when in fact he played lots of it. Does it really matter if a critic, genuinely, doesn't like a single black American hip-hop or rnb record of last decade, if they're instead bigging up music from South America or the Middle East or Eastern Europe or, well, anywhere that gets TOTALLY IGNORED by the most vociferous of accusatory Internet crusaders.

Not to mention the fact that Burchill is, as dubdobdee suggests elsewhere, more responsible than most for the current musical climate. The inability to get over punk in particular - when the history of NME is told by IPC these days, no one mentions Mark Sinker or Ian Penman or even whoever wrote for them in the 1950s and 60s, it's all Burchill and Parsons and hip young gunslingers.

It's possible that my picture of Peel is heavily rose-tinted here, just as my picture of Burchill is as reductive as the argument I'm attacking her for. But really, despite what your fans want to hear (or what consensus polls tell you they want to hear), isn't playing whatever you love pretty much as Poptimist as it gets?

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

I listened to Peel in the nineties/00s, liked him then, and still basically like him now, as an idea as a mythology and as the memory of a radio personality -- but I really hate the idea that anyone should go unquestioned! Especially on the grounds that he was some kind of proto-poptimist fellow traveller: "making the case for what you like and risking indifference or ridicule" is pretty much my poptimist ideology, yeah, but it's not all of it (for one, i love tartini more than kylie but pmists is the place for her and not for him), and I'm not sure it's everyone else's. I think it's fair to say e.g. "using a listener-voted list as a platform from which to attack John Peel of all DJs is frankly ridiculous; attacking Peel for these reasons is ridiculous" (although there's an interesting question there about why Peel couldn't get his ideology to stick on his listeners); I don't think it's fair to say that Peel should not be attacked.

About the line "went the way it did *this far* into the existence of Poptimists" -- do you think we're meant to be changing each others' minds in pmists? That it's an ongoing project? I sort of do, but... I dunno, it'd be interesting to ask poptimists if they think their attitudes towards music have been changed by being in pmists for any length of time. Not whether they're listening more to x or y or they have a new perspective on z but whether their personal ideologies about music have altered or are undergoing a process of alteration since joining pmists.

(In my opinion, the version of the indie past that's in current use is interesting because of the way it defangs both Peel and Burchill. He became some kind of cuddly eccentric uncle who played all this unlistenable tosh ha ha ha but brilliant in his own way dontchaknow even if we don't understand it (and -understood - are better off thus), not a conscience so much as an indulgence, in the Catholic sense; whatever they're called, those monks you can pay to pray for you, to do the devotions so you don't have to. And emphasising the 'hip young gunslinger' Burchill image, emphasising the punk thing that she's now so blase about, implies that she's someone trading on past glories, or she's a pop culture miss havisham half-dressed in punk's petulance. They both become meaningless.)

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

(Yes I think part of my complaint is that the past is being viewed through the prism of an indie present that does defang, of shave off the awkward edges of both of them - and this applies as much to Peel canonisers as Peel haterz). One of the things about retrospective polls even from a particular year is that they, by virtue of being all about consensus, shave off all the awkward or interesting bits as well, whether on Poptimists or Idolator or the Festive Fifty.

(I'm also not sure I 100% agree with this Peel as ultimate proto-Poptimist argument but its an interesting rhetorical position to take as a basis to argue from. I think it sits a lot better than Peel as hardcore conservative rockist though)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

My open-mindedness about pop probably only kicked off around about the time this community did - it certainly hasn't hindered it! I'm much more likely to give a song a chance to impress me these days - it's absolutely fine to hate on a song, as long as you give a reason why. Same for liking a song! EXPLAIN THYSELVES.