Arctic Monkeys

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_blissout_archive.html

Comments

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I think Simon has seriously lost the plot over the last couple of years, but this still makes me want to properly hear the record, just in case it isn't as bad as assumed it would be. Kind of a check that my knee is jerking in the right direction.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

It's the whole no innovation line (particularly in "dance" music) that disturbs me. Does anyone else think this is true? Why does Simon think this is true?

[dorsalstop.livejournal.com]

No, the record is actually extremely shit. And that 'Vampires' song is one of the WORST songs on there (I had to review it for Subjectivisten (http://www.subjectivisten.org/archives/002130.php#002130), is how I know).

I didn't like the k-punk article AT ALL, the Arsetic Monkeys thing being the only OTM remark there.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

The k-punk article annoyed me too, even though (perhaps precisely because) I have probably expressed identical thoughts 10+ years w.r.t. britpop. No old person likes being reminded of their younger selves. Right now I would much rather read an anti-rockist appreciation of the AMs than another "we (pop) could have it so much better" rant.

Simon's piece may or may not be it. I've only skimmed it thus far. I also had high hopes that mike t-diva might be the one to write such a piece - he actually went to queue for tickets for the AMs gig in Nottingham, only to be turned away empty handed - but he actually seems to like them (and indie in general) for k-rockist reasons.

For the record, I like both the AMs' singles, but that's all I've heard.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never read a word of Hoskyns, but Simon makes him sound interesting and not so unlike me (even if I was bored by the Birthday Party). The reason my eyes lit on the name "Hoskyns" is that when Ben Thompson reviewed my book in the Independent he wrote me a note apologizing for using me "as a stick to beat Barney Hoskyns with." So in one little apology note Ben has completely refuted Mark K-Punk's thesis! I am the pop-rock nihilation! You can hit 'em with the Kogan nihilation stick. (Isn't "nihilation" something of a rub word (as you Brits say)?) But - excuse me - does Mark K-Punk think that all social conflict is at an end? The fact that "pop" vs. "indie" is now a particularly boring trope doesn't mean that day in and day out people don't define themselves and their tastes in relation to the other guy's selves and tastes. I think where Simon needs to go with his argument is to understand that "New Pop" vs. "New Rock" is way too broad to encompass or explain Morley vs. Hoskyns, and that the latter (or some equivalent, your girlfriend's middle child vs. your girlfriend's oldest child, for instance) is way more interesting.

I read that "great" Greil Marcus piece that Simon refs when it first came out and thought it was hysterical and ridiculous, the man pumping himself up into a gas-balloon rage over virtually nothing so that he could fool himself into thinking that Nirvana had supervast significance (and he thereby had little to say about Nirvana's actual real-size significance).

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Which Poison video were they discussing? Poison videos are great!

[(Anonymous)]

Mind you, I'm sometimes a Greil Marcus fan (though a rarely attending one these days; not even sure where he posts), but when he goes righteous he goes stupid, usually.

Here's the quote:

There's an image of present-day rock 'n' roll that I've been unable to get out of my head since I first bumped into it on MTV a few years ago. It still runs on the channel, but with the set on or off it comes back to me all the time, without warning, capable of tingeing any musical thrill with nausea.

It's a video by Poison, one of L.A.'s blond heavy-metal bands - the clip for "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," a good ballad. You see singer Bret Michaels striding through backstage corridors on his way to the stage, where cameras, visible in the video itself, will soon make it appear as if infinite numbers of fist-thrusting boys and weeping girls want nothing more than to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the band's life-force. Backstage, adoring fans, looking at once giddy and scared, are huddled against the wall, as if pressed back by vibrations emanating from Michael's forehead.

He's flanked by two bodyguards - mountains of flesh with heads so blocklike they barely seem human, no expressions on their faces, just a readiness to smash apparent in the way they move. It's slow motion. Though nothing is really happening, tension builds. The disdain on Michael's face, in his walk, is precise and studied, a parody of every rock-star swagger from Elvis to Jagger. No one is laughing, Michaels least of all.

The pose is too obvious. One more gesture is called for. Michaels is carrying a drink in a big paper cup; he tosses it against the wall. There's no anger in his movement, merely contempt; in your mind's eye you can glimpse the bottomless well. Still in slow motion, the drink splatters and drips down the wall.

As in almost any video, symbolism is the currency. As the clenched fists will symbolize self-affirmation, the tears submission, and the visible cameras that what you're seeing is very important - important enough to be filmed - here the meaning is equally plain: The star pisses on his fans and they are blessed.

(It goes on, but that gives you the idea. My thought the first time I read this was that if he could read all that into the scene and feel nauseous for years after, he needed to see a doctor.)

koganbot

[(Anonymous)]

And Chuck Eddy's response, in his Pazz & Jop ballot for 1992:

Greil Marcus argued in Esquire in August that rock has to either absorb the events of the world at large, and somehow bear a promise of unsettling that world, or else be doomed to a mere banal balancesheet existence. But when a Poison video upsets his world by flaunting a kind of arrogant contempt that makes him sick, Greil doesn't embrace Poison; he opts instead for Nirvana, who reassure him that the spirit of "Blue Suede Shoes" might still be viable. He's contradicting himself, opting for what goes down easy.