From sm Sent Sun, Oct 19th 1997, 21:50
From sm Sent Sun, Oct 19th 1997, 21:50
Eric Frans wrote:
>a) pop isn't necessarily a BAD thing. it's not inherently bad.
i think the validity of the term pop itself has to be questioned, when i think of pop it
can mean the spiky melodies of the ramones / talking heads, whimsy electronics of
depeche mode / omd or the pre packaged conveyor belt pap of the spice girls
datathief wrote
>...if bochum
>welt was writing his stuff in the 80's with some vocalist or other he
>could have easily charted...come to daddy has charted in the uk at
>number 38 or something.....which means a LOT of people are buying it IE
>it's popular music.
for once and for all the misnomer that pop=popular music must be
beaten into the ground, aphex charting at no.36, [which probably means
sales of around 3-5000,a single can get to no.1 on sales of 20,000]
don't make it pop in my book.
i've argued about this before, but i don't really buy this pop=popular
music schtick, sure i think there is an argument for pop=popular culture,
malcom mclaren said "the purpose of pop culture is to soften the blow of daily
life" and this has been the case for the last 40 years, the spice girls
are a classic example of how pop culture is used in subtle but manipulative
fashion to force people to react in a certain way to a carefully planned
set of images / values, i hasten to add there is not a lot of differance in the
way warp 'market' richard james [re: the recent chart on idm, if he was
listening to oasis instead of debussy would you still dig him?]
using the word in that context [pop=popular music] is an arcane throwback
to a strictly european set of values that defined teenage musical culture
of the late 1950's / early 60's, when the single was the dominant format,
pop was popular music back in those days
the death of pop in this context occurred with the birth of the long player[circa 1965]
as a valid artistic format and indeed the birth of the 'rock' aesthetic, up til then
albums were just as an excuse to cobble together all the singles with several covers of
tin pan alley or rock n roll standards as filler, artists like dylan, the who [tho the
who were a great singles band as well] & hendrix who needed the long playing format to
properly express their musical vision could hardly be classed as 'pop' artists, tho they
were indeed popular..
even by this time the word 'pop' had right or wrongly, as it is now, become synonymous
with superficial and shallow artistic values, it's a bit more complex than that, but
i've got friends who were teenagers in the mid 60's and they dug floyd and hendrix who
were considered cool & underground and hated the beatles who were considered pop & for
screaming pre-pubescent females.
enuf said
stuart @ mfr
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