The Last John Peel Post

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I was going to do a poll on the 1982 All Time Festive Fifty but got bored about 5 songs in. It's an astonishing thing in its way though: of the 1976 tracks (also 'all-time'), NOT A SINGLE ONE survived - a handful were later reinstated for the 2000 all time poll. If you want a bit of "punk was year zero" evidence this is surely it EXCEPT I still don't think we've got to the heart of the Peel question, beyond "was he good?" or "was Burchill good?" or whatever:

- How much did he CONVERT his audience to punk and how much did he get a completely new one?

- And the really big question (for me): how come he couldn't then convert his audience to the kind of wideband listening we were talking about on Matt's post?

And the same goes for the NME too, or Pitchfork now to an extent - why is it difficult for tastemakers to move their audience's tastes? It's a question about elitism really - the difference between "knowing what's best" and "knowing what's best for you", the latter being virulently reacted against. Should media gatekeepers - like Peel or the NME - try to educate their listeners and where do the listeners say "that's enough thanks"?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

that makes sense: I'm trying to think of how new, risky, not-on-trend sounds actually bust through to the mainstream, and the consistent answer seems to be either

a) organic grassroots scenes, whether this is an underground subculture which suddenly gains some sort of pop impetus (eg bassline, emo(?)) or
b) via the trojan horse of a manufactured (or 'manufactured') popstar - manufactured not the right word, but whatever it is which connects manufactured britney and non-manufactured beyoncé?

so MIA is notoriously not part of a) (not that a) is any guarantor of success, hello grime) but for whatever reason doesn't succeed as b) either (and arguably b) is a dying model anyway)