Scritti Politti

Nomad, i wasn't bashing you for starting the thread, I know you didn't.

Your definitions of pop and indie are fine. Mine are "pop=popular" and "indie=non mainstream independent rock." If Bunnymen were indie then so were U2......
I just got into that because I felt you were contradicting Swears willy nilly just cos you disagree with him about SP.

anyway work'll be over soon, have a nice evening :)
I am only writing this cos I am trying not to worry about my mum who is not very well.......

about love/hate:
I come here in the hope that I will hear about something good that I didn't know about, this thread is just a bit depressing. I suppose it was meant to start a discussion or something.

But why don't you do a thread telling me about something great? You don't have to gush, you can be balanced in your praise.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I don't think this is a slanging match, in a way I suppose I'm trying to convince Nomadologist rather than show her up to be an idiot or something. (Which would be hard because she's clearly better educated than me)

Anyway on the subject of indie, you had independent labels obviously. Chess was an independent, but you wouldn't call the music released on it "indie music" it was RnB. I don't think the term indie to describe a genre of music was around until '85-'86.
You might have had predecessors to that style like Orange Juice, in the same way Kraftwerk were predecessors of techno, but my main arguement is that Scritti were a post-punk band when they started out and that the idea of indie as we've known it since the mid-eighties wouldn't have entered their heads.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
My bad. I was aware that my original post and subsequent ones yesterday may have been a bit vociferous, you'll excuse me for that I hope, I had at that time been up for 56 hours non-stop watching my sister die of oesophageal cancer, ( true ) and my disgust at life probably came out at Scritti Politti.

Which, I would hasten to add, is Reason One for them to exist.

I would, however Edward, refer you to my original statement in the post, which was 'that anyone in possession of their records should be shot', which you will note is a reference to their fans and not the artists themselves. I have been slyly aware of some bloggers / journalists of some worthy note bending over backwards to incorporate Green's work into an alternative cannon, and merely sought to enquire why this should be so as I hold their work to be dishonest. ( thanks for the links alexsy )

I find this dishonesty in Green's desire to be taken seriously - the big fish in a little pond syndrome - within the pop music cannon; his neoist drive to work with anyone fashionable at the given time - as swears has duly pointed out; and within his current propagators. I've never seen Green as interesting - although I do wish his work had won the Mercury Prize - and can find many, many more examples of work that is interesting, as you'll find in my numerous posts on this forum especially during the past six weeks when it's been one of my sole points of solace as I watched my sister die, for which I am grateful to you all.

But you can solipsistically read theories into anything, and I've always found the hyperbole around Green's work to be lazy in the extreme. I would refer anyone to the musical works of Leroy Hutson and The Natural Four, Willie Hutch and Discharge for works that I would prefer theorists to read into rather than falling upon the rather insipid whoring that I find within the collected works of Scritti Politti.

Having said all that, and I refer to one of my early posts, 'Confidence' is a truly great pop moment, and I occasionally hum it while murdering other such populist sacred cows.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
very sorry to hear about your sister. My condolences.

Thanks! I'm aware of the weirdness of mentioning it, but also aware that I bummed people out so thought I should explain a little. I hope it doesn't come across as liberal apologies though, I stand by what I said :eek:

Oh, and Scritti Politti also begat Tricky I guess, so maybe Green shouldn't be erased completely when I get my time machine(s).
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Edward, I would never make up arguments just to be pointlessly contrarian, though I can't say I'd never say something just to give Swears a hard time. We're all big kids, we can take it (I hope.)

That said, sounds like it's been a terrible month all around for quite a few of us. I hereby volunteer to be a punching bag for anyone who needs something/someone to absorb some displaced anger/hurt/despair. I promise I won't even flinch. It is not weird to mention these things, silly Brits. It is human and, on my part certainly, wholly understood and sanctified.

Swears, I see what you mean about indie. But I definitely would say U2 pioneered the sound that would become British indie and later "Brit pop."

I did a thread about Black Devil Disco Club a while ago. I also have the "Elaste" Vol 1 slow motion disco/cosmic disco comp if anyone wants me to break laws and make it available to them, let me know. Just got it today (I let my rich bf buy the CDs or it would never get done) and I'm already way into it. I think Swears would like a lot of the songs.
 

dave

the day today tonight
i split buying cupid with my older brother because neither of us could afford it on our own. all i remember now is absolute... i wonder if he still has my side of the record?
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
That said, sounds like it's been a terrible month all around for quite a few of us. I hereby volunteer to be a punching bag for anyone who needs something/someone to absorb some displaced anger/hurt/despair. I promise I won't even flinch. It is not weird to mention these things, silly Brits. It is human and, on my part certainly, wholly understood and sanctified.

I wouldn't want you to be a punching bag nomad, unless you're a celebrity in disguise. Surely celebrities are there purely FOR that purpose. To punch and kick, demonise and deify. Green just happened to have been around at the time :)....
Something in me says that he kinda likes being punched and kicked as well. I would posit the idea that what theorists find exemplary within the Scritti is a beauty found in masochism. Dunno if I could defend that, and there's nothing wrong in it, but my gut tells me I'm right....
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Surely celebrities are there purely FOR that purpose. To punch and kick, demonise and deify./QUOTE]

yes yes yes!

Lol. Although what they did to Jade Goody in BB wasn't good.

They're ciphers tho, no? And to put oneself up as a cypher...why oh why don't maligned celebrities go on the rampage and murder their producers, their PR people? When is the first PR serial killer going to be in our midst? What's wrong with our society?
 
oo i watched the video for boom! there she was on youtube last night..... gave me shivers, he is so wooden and out-of-place looking as a popstar. the "dancing" is hilarious. 3rd rate copying of moves from black artists of a couple of years earlier....
i guess i liked it at the time cos i hadn't heard anything beyond the charts.

still like wood beez tho.....
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Damn Edward I never even thought to look at Ytourube

now i see why Swears has a boner for this, it being exactly his sort of thing from that era.
my womanhood, on the other hand, took a turn for the particularly arid and clenched in mortal fear when i saw that blond hair peaking out from under that hat, saw the proto-running man moves busted, and the backward high fives slapped. i think i just went into a biological state of suspended animation that only half reflected my existential dread.

no but really. this video reminded me of like Stop Making Sense filmed in a parallel universe where David Byrne was a child molester/some sort of British Mister Rogers (or should I say Mr. McFeely?) and the keyboard player who was sweating profusely all jacked up on the crackcaine and sweating pearls that matched the studs and sequins on his seriously jampumped stagewear finds himself replaced with 15 studio musicians who thought they'd signed up for a Benetton ad but are just psyched to be here anyway.

this is my real issue with them: given the above video i've linked to and what i'm assuming must be a lot of similar material, could scritti politti be one of those bands that people try really hard to justify liking for non-"ironic" ways, just to buck the received critical notions and posit something counterintuitive to flex their writerly muscles? because, to me, SP seem to be desperately chasing relevance by so earnestly simulating that ineffably camp quality super-MOR stuff like Steely Dan pulled off comparatively effortlessly that they fall flat on their shoulder padded backs.
 

shudder

Well-known member
nomad: you do know that scritti didn't always sound like MOR-lite, right? you've heard the "early" EPs, which are all scratchy post-punky (which you may or may not like, obvs). The relevant chapter in Reynold's Rip it Up really explains where they were coming from and trying to head to, and would probably make you a lot more sympathetic (even if you still end up not liking them...) I'm no expert tho.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
P.S. Tina Weymouth is replaced by a bunch of Puerto Rican girls who got lost on their way to the outdoor sleepover line to wait for their chance in the Flygirl auditions on what would one day be the soundstage of In Living Color.
 

jenks

thread death
I thought that this was some kind of troll moment to flush out the SP-love that must infuse this board. However I was wrong!

So shoot me for loving Green and his fey ways; for loving Skank Bloc, Asylums in Jerusalem (complete with track entitled Jaques Derrida), Provision, Cupid and Psyche, The First Goodbye (off Anomie) and The Boom Boom Bap (off White Bread); for turning me on to a whole world of literature and for being an entry into all manner of shiny pop practices.

and since when have the Pet Shop Boys been a bad thing?
 

DJL

i'm joking
I've listened to all of the 'Early' compilation and found myself repeatedly playing a lot of the songs over and over until the point now where I feel I have over done it and haven't listened for a couple of days. I read the k-punk article and Simon Reynolds interview (thanks for the links) and found them very interesting. I haven't really listened to the lyrics on the songs from 'Early' but I'm astounded by the melodies through the songs. There are clearly shit bits but they make the good bits better. I haven't listened to any further SP yet but the Cupid & Psyche album sounds like the next step if I do but I am very worried I will be massively disappointed by the change in style. Maybe that is the point though?
 

swears

preppy-kei
I concede that....

Green is a shit dancer
he can't rap
he's pretentious
he's a big girl's blouse (I am, to be honest)
he was arrogant in his youth
anomie bonhomie isn't much cop

Still love him, though. Sometimes flaws are endearing.
 
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