Two Excerpts from 1978 Black And White Minsterel Show and some questions

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

some questions for the britshes:

1) is this really what punk was working against? because if this went out to 18m homes, and sold number ones, that is the story of punk defeating traditional middle class culture? i dont have my reynolds with me, but i do not remember he mentioning this?
2) why are the men blacked up and not the women?
3) Why was this so popular, between the stage shows, the traveling revue, the tv show, the singles, the albums, the charting--this was a massive success.
4) How do critics of pop integrate this kind of material into the narrative of the UK? If we are poptimists, is there a way of redeeming this? I mean Where Dead Voices Gather by Tosches has a connoisseur's taste, a crate digger's sense of history, and founding mythology to rest his rennovation of Emmet Miller on, if one was going to write about this, what lens would you use?

I am mostly thinking of Tom's upcoming entries on early 70s pop on poptimist, an the comments about the history of UK no. 1s, but anyone can pop in.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

But in the clips above those pop spasms - broadway musical numbers and trad jazz - are exactly what the B&WMS is offering. I think the specificity of previous spasms had got a bit compressed by the most recent biggest one.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

youtube causes my computer to freeze so i couldn't watch it

but yes, i think by the late 70s this is exactly what was happening, you were getting a kind of one-stop shop for pop fads before c.1940 say (musicals have a bit of a long tailer tail) and within that, a complex -- and contradictory -- setting aside of ways in which this terrain had earlier been a kind of salad of all the ethical battles, when all concerned were a lot younger

of course this is the same as troll-you-come-to-love dynamic, isn't it? modern vs trad jazz being a battle so whiskered by then that really the combatants HAD long ago Got a Room, and that room turned out to be the BaWMS ---:o

so yes: there was also -- maybe -- in the fandom for this type of show a tolerance (by trad fans, say) of minstrelsy, despite its still seeming stupid and dated, bcz where else could they enjoy trad on telly? and the degree to which trad fandom had once (long ago) also functioned as a kind of symbolic anti-racism for a particular half-generation, was somehow dovetailed into this love-to-hate odd-couple deal?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

was there a (very late) period where the show remained exactly the same but with no blackface, or am i imagining it? i guess it kind of segues into summertime special in my head at this point...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes I half remember that too!