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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There's a total disconnect between what defenders of the Sainted Peel use to protect him and what his actual legacy was though! So he played esoterica from all over the world: does anyone, anywhere actually remember so much as the name of any of those tracks? He's associated with stuff like the Delgados and Joy Division for a reason. This was probably because of his refusal to try to make connections or draw lines between anything he played: it seemed to be cherrypicking on a grand scale, there was never any indication that you could go and submerge yourself in the drum'n'bass or Peruvian nose flute scene; the attitude was that you should sit in your bedroom and listen to them alone and in a vacuum. It was never about people. Quite apart from hating everything I ever heard on his show - and tbh I only ever heard indie! I suspect all of this glorious world music I keep hearing about was entirely mythical - the entire premise of the thing seemed to be somewhat antisocial. I guess that's fine for teenagers.

No, Peel's concrete legacy did far more damage than any of his vain/half-hearted attempts to diversify what his fanbase listened to. Why, if Peel was such a proto-poptimist, did her end up with the nervous, hand-wringing, conservatively minded fanbase that he did?

I loathed him before I'd heard of Burchill (and loved her way before I knew she hated him): I hated his smug, patronising, faux-avuncular voice; I hated his passive-aggressive gentility; he seemed to me a bit like a butterfly collector, and never aware of music as a vehicle for living emotions. And I hate him even more because of the Chuck D/Elvis factor: after hating him for all those years I found that he was apparently a hero to everyone else, but he never meant shit to me.

Burchill on the other hand is a longtime heroine of mine, notwithstanding the fact that she's now just repeating her four default columns over and over again. I think she's an amazing writer, dogmatism and ego included. The core of most of her writing is always totally on-point, and I love that she then decorates it with opinions ranging across the entire length of the lunacy spectrum, just for fun.

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.

well, yes it does! totally! are you a critic or an anthropologist, basically.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

also, it's BURCHILL whose writing is essentially poptimist! especially around the turn of the century. when I get to work I shall find links.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Haha yes but why do you immediately dismiss everything else as 'anthropology', when listening to Trina might as well be anthropology if you are a teenager living in suburbia somewhere in the Midlands.

I suppose part of the appeal of Peel was that he was a lifeline for people who didn't automatically have recourse to a 'scene', or a scene they felt they wanted to be part of. Listening to music alone in your bedroom in a vacuum is the only way of listening a lot of people have! Especially in the 70s and 80s, I'd imagine.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I suppose this is why he seemed more of an irrelevance the more accessible music became over the 90s and early 00s, that it was easier to break out of the vacuum, and easier to immerse yourself in a genre, than ever.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

(Also I don't agree with you because I don't believe anyone SHOULD feel a compulsion or obligation to immerse themself in a scene, because I don't believe there's anything wrong with being a dilettante, or cherry-picking, or whatever)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying anthropology is a bad way to listen to music! but critics should engage with the pop culture around them.

I don't see scenes as an obligation, more...if I hear something I like, I want to hear other stuff like it, and stuff allied to it, I want to be aware of its milieu.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

but if you hear something you like from 20 different scenes (as i guess many of us do now), the ability to immerse yourself in ANY one immediately becomes more problematic...certainly if you're not a critic.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

it's not necessarily about immersion so much about understanding it sufficiently so people don't say dumb things like, I dunno, holding MIA up as an example of hip-hop they like

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

it's not necessarily about immersion so much about understanding it sufficiently so people don't say dumb things like, I dunno, holding MIA up as an example of hip-hop they like

Probably unintentional, but this reads as if you're saying that there is some definable level of background knowledge and/or comprehension required before people are functionally able to express an opinion about a piece of art, which seems like a highly academic standpoint to be taking. It also sounds like a classic 'indie' mentality, IMHO.

Also, I worry about the implications of;

"if I hear something I like, I want to hear other stuff like it, and stuff allied to it, I want to be aware of its milieu."

because that seems to be like a perfectly good way of thinking about music, but not the *only* way. I'm not sure how to express this well, but it makes me ponder the implications for neurodiversity. Not everyone has a pattern of thought which works on the model of interconnectedness (or social bonds). For some people, that individualistic approach, that cherry-picking, is a way of interacting with music which meshes better with the way their brain works. Can a person with a different model not be an effective critic?

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'holding MIA up as an example of hip-hop they like'

OK but i'm not sure who's been doing this! unless you mean the broadsheets or whatever.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Also ALSO conflating Delgados with Joy Division doesn't make much sense because association with the Delgados in the mid-90s = pretty conservative, association with Joy Division in the late 70s = not conservative at all!

Also also also he ended up with the legacy he did because history is rewritten by the victors. Admittedly Peel did a lot to encourage some of those victors but he did a lot to kick back against the rest of them as well - what's interesting about Peel is often the indie or rock he left out (his show felt like an anomaly during Britpop for example).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

However he was a big fan of Blur!

The thing w/Peel is that his remit in the mid-90s basically evolved into "the stuff nobody else is playing" - this clearly didn't include R'n'B and hip-hop and crossover indie at the time but DID include happy hardcore, Peruvians, grindcore, roots reggae and tiny jangly bands. If he'd lived he would no doubt be playing minimal techno and running Fuck Buttons sessions. He took this very seriously because it mostly crossed over with his own tastes and inclinations. So it's unfair to criticise him for his legacy - as Mark S has said in the comments Lex keeps avoiding, Burchill is SO MUCH MORE to blame for "indie" the way the Lex hates it - she was, for instance, a HUGE Britpop fan on the populist grounds Lex apparently wuvs her for. Peel certainly wasn't a populist in ANY sense and saw top 40 pop as AT BEST an amusing jest he could make himself the straight man for - which is why reclaiming him as an ultimate poptimist feels slightly off.

This is basically repeating what you've said, isn't it? I will go and reply to one of the other comments!

[martinv.livejournal.com]

^This is good.

Incidentally, I was flicking through some 2000 Peel show setlists following reading this thread and amongst the predictable Hefner/Delgados deluges and the excursions into world/dance music he was also playing things like Kelis, and even Beenie Man shows up in there. I don't think there necessarily were any 'no-go' areas for Peel.

And it wasn't tokenism either, just playing the music he loved.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But Burchill's attitude towards music, regardless of her taste at any given time, is far more poptimist than Peel's - she's consistently emphasised the importance of glamour, fun, youth, transience and so on, this carpe diem feeling which I think is really key. She criticised Peel for jumping on punk and keeping it alive at the moment it needed to die - one of many anti-canon moves of hers. Plus, I can't imagine Peel writing or even agreeing with these two amazing columns (http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/music/story/0,,952679,00.html). This passage is particularly great:

There is a dark cloud over popular music: it is the shadow of a million middle-aged, middle-class men who can't, or won't, let go of their youth and are thus contributing to a culture that is becoming increasingly bland, homogenised and one-size-fits-all. From Clarkson to Rushdie to Blair, we are all meant to settle down to the same soundtrack: one nation under an arthritic groove. We all love rock and roll now, and the fandom of all is welcome. (Except, of course, that of working-class teenage girls, who just scream. Though why screaming is a less valid reaction to pop than filing CDs alphabetically, or reciting Dylan, has yet to be explained to me.) Maybe I'm immature and over-sensitive, but this state of affairs makes me want to scream and break things and listen to the Goldberg Variations.

And:

For dance music has given popular music back to the young, the working class, the female; all of those shut out of the debates about Bob Dylan and Keats, and none of them giving a damn. Those who can, dance; those who can't, recite reams of rock lyrics in their cups. Youth will always find a way of stepping on the blue suede shoes of the oldsters and letting them know whose party it really is. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,307160,00.html) ()

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No, I can't imagine Peel being so patronisingly reductive about young working class women either!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That bit is sarcastic!

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

He was briefly a fan of Blur, around the Song 2 era - he virtually never played them before that. He loved Pulp.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

"he seemed to me a bit like a butterfly collector, and never aware of music as a vehicle for living emotions"

this may be true, but it's not a reason to hate. the reasons you do pick out are his voice, and a certain base of his more vocal 'booster' fans. his role, what he did and how he did it, is still very much poptimist. like him or not.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

"never aware of music as a vehicle for living emotions"

Hadn't spotted this comment before. Can anyone reading this that ever listened to Peel talking about music really believe for a second that this was true?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

sort of yes. i mean it was clear if you did get to know him that he was involved with his music, but at the same time a lot of his shows had a detached 'and this one, and this one' feeling too.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

the only passion I ever heard from him was "love of the music" which is so nebulous and vague - I can't even imagine him talking about joy or rage or sex or dancing or any of the thrills which the music itself was about. as I said, he loved music like a butterfly collector loves nature.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Lex is there a radio DJ who does talk about the music like that? Remember Peel's job wasn't to be a critic!

Peel wasn't an especially passionate broadcaster, I agree - which was fine, because you could hear the enthusiasm in his voice when he DID get more excited or angry and it carried a lot more weight.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Martin is right. Surely just about everyone has heard him talk about the first time he heard 'Teenage Kicks', driving on the motorway, and he had to pull over to listen to it, and he started crying? I remember him playing an amazing Amayenge (Zambian band) session track called Mnise Mnise, or some such spelling, and being choked up and struggling to speak after it. Other DJs may have had more excited voices, but I can't recall any moments like that from any other DJs.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

it is totally a reason to hate! and no, I don't agree that Peel was poptimist, at least not according to how I define it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which is which? One of my big issues with the Reynolds/Woebot scene when grime was surfacing was how much of the criticism seemed to be anthropological. As Matt says there's a massive anthropological element to liking American hip-hop if you're British. And actually anthropology is very HARD to do with pop where you can't speak the language - most Western listeners responding to African pop are doing it with only the most basic grasp of its listenership, role in society etc. Is Cis' J-Pop fandom critical or anthropological? Is Sarah's?

Other than that I think you DO crystallise some points in the anti-Peel ledger. The kind of wideband listening he stood for is a privilege, or at least WAS - this is K-Punk's beef with 'poptimism' you're using, but that doesn't make it a bad one. (K-Punk is the new Burchill, basically.) There's an argument that economically working-class Blackburn listeners couldn't afford to experiment with tastes as much as middle-class Peel ones could - I think it's quite a patronising argument (especially if someone brings in the Reynoldsy look-at-the-workers-living-for-the-weekend angle in) but it's not neccessarily untrue.

Except I think the internet has changed that to an extent - the sort of "long tail" fandom Peel was an outrider for has become more of a norm, and is also changing the idea of radio listening as a lonely pastime, shifting the imagined community that broadcast listening has ALWAYS evoked into a real community.

The avuncularity is certainly a matter of taste - and I think his friendliness helped trap him a bit by the end (Mark's argued this point pretty cogently on the other threads.)