Scritti Politti

swears

preppy-kei
uck, and why do white musicians with those vocals and overall sonics have to sound like Steely Dan's dumber, more AM-radio friendly retarded stepchild while doing it, gumdrops?

Terms like "MOR" mean nothing now. Everything has been absorbed into the mainstream, your average noisy guitar band is as much commercial potential as your average slick, sweet sounding crooner. Let's drop this pretence of the "alternative."
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Terms like "MOR" mean nothing now. Everything has been absorbed into the mainstream, your average noisy guitar band is as much commercial potential as your average slick, sweet sounding crooner. Let's drop this pretence of the "alternative."

Ok, but really, what is there to like about Scritti Politti? or his fans?
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
it internalised his deconstruction of the music industry!

(i have no idea really, the only SP i know is the sell-out, sorry, i mean 'subversive' pop stuf from the 80s, the hip hop-inspired albums in the 90s and the new album)
 

tht

akstavrh
if anyone could point out music they wrote where they didn't use words like "hegemony" (i'm sorry, but nothing that calls itself a pop song has any business including this word, let alone using it for an entire chorus) and naming songs after theorists. if you don't know why naming a pop/rock song "derrida" is vomitously ridiculous, then i don't know what to tell you...

srsly, that track off the last ghost/sun god mixtape

snowed under like chronic
got blinded subsonic
condie and dick are thru hegemonics
now shes got fucked like johnny mnemonic

no i can't see this having a future

scritti i think are fairly weak, the skank bloc crap or the entryist stuff but i'm sure they're loved in good faith
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Tate, it's perfectly possible to watch/read all those things and disagree.

Swears, I'm using "MOR" here to mean the things that were originally dubbed MOR. I don't believe in "alternative" at all. I hate most alternative rock. I don't like production values as horrible as I've heard on SP on anything, let alone melodic "pop" songs with very deliberately embedded references to Lacanian psychoanalysis (whats that song about "be my lack"? you don't want to hear what I'd tell someone who asked me to be his "lack". it would involve his physical birthright to the phallic in the symbolic order and a swift kicking motion on my part). Gag.

MOR refers to a general sonics of washed out, watery, superbubblegum production values, anyway.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I'm surprised you like them, Swears, because they seem to fit squarely into that category of yours entitled music by indie rock wankers that is not entirely accessible but gets heralded by college radio fans who'd never listen to real AM gold or soul or funk as 'pop'

oh yeah, and lou reed and iggy pop may have been aggressive, but they were both considered "fairies" at the time and had gay sex, so i don't know about "macho"
 

swears

preppy-kei
I'm surprised you like them, Swears, because they seem to fit squarely into that category of yours entitled music by indie rock wankers that is not entirely accessible but gets heralded by college radio fans who'd never listen to real AM gold or soul or funk as 'pop'

"Indie Rock" didn't exist in 1982. A good part of Green Gartside's decision to go pop was based on what he thought was a futile, retro and unimaginative tendency he saw in British guitar music creeping in after post punk, which eventually, by the mid-80s would be known as indie. I'm not too keen on their pre-Songs to Remember work, but I respect it because they were genuinely interested in doing something new, fucking around with the form of a song.
I see Cupid and Phsyche and Provision as great hi-tech pop albums in the vein of Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Jam and Lewis, Timbaland, et al. I'm not really fussed about his academic pretentions (I've never studied any continental philosophy, so a lot of the allusions in the lyrics are probably lost in me.), but I think the idea of trying to bring some of these ideas into the mainstream is admirable, in a way. I'd rather listen to someone pretentious than someone playing dumb.
I think a lot of the appeal for me is the slightly prissy, uptight englishness rubbing up against their black, american electro-funk and soul influences. There's a nice little contrast there. All I can suggest really is listening to Absolute from C&P85, try and revel in the glossiness rather than being turned off by it.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Indie rock DID exist in 1982. It started in Britain and bands like Echo and the Bunnymen were the major players.

I feel bad for American black people for being cited as influences. The "rapping" is so bad it like hurts my skull in the crevices.

and I don't know that I'd call Kraftwerk "pop." Moroder was disco, definitely not pop.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I feel bad for American black people for being cited as influences. The "rapping" is so bad it like hurts my skull in the crevices.

Well, I'm sure Chaka Khan, Miles Davis (whom Green was a friend of) Shabba Ranks and Roger Troutman and Mos Def are grateful for your concern, all having worked with Scritti at one time or another. I don't think it purely for the money either, those artists were already pretty well-established by then. I will concede that Green's rapping is crap, but he doesn't do it that often anyway.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
must've been one of Miles' darker hours. his agent probably told him to do it for the cash so he could keep doing speedballs

ps just looked it up and i'd hardly call playing one trumpet solo on one track some sort of wholesale endorsement. thems the biz. jazzists were always doing session work, big deal. miles davis would have done session work for stalin if it paid off his drug debts. mos def seems like the kind of guy who would collab with them
 
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I like it
I don't like it
I like it
I don't like it

oh is that the time?

nomadologist doesn't like it and swears does but most of the attacks being made are nonsense

nonsense to say echo & the bunnymen were indie, they were on warner brothers and were often in the pop charts.
kraftwerk were number 1 in 1981 in the POP charts.
giorgio moroder made plenty of pop records, and disco was pop anyway in the wake of saturday night fever etc etc.
you can argue the details but the spirit of what swears said is right.

scritti's intellectual pretensions are annoying and most of their music is poor IMO but what's the point of this slanging match?
*****minor 80s pop band not all that good shocker.....***** so?

i quite like wood beez and the one with roger from zapp.
so what?

why not just say you don't like it and keep the hate to yourself?

how about a thread telling us all about something you think is great that we might not know about instead of sniping at easy target?
 
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nomadologist

Guest
ever heard of British Indie? Rough Trade records anyone? echo and the bunnymen fit in sonically maybe not literally as released on an "indie" label
 
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nomadologist

Guest
and I didn't start any threads about Scritti Politti. why not just tell me about something you hate and keep the love to yourself? i don't particularly care for gushing. uncritical praise is boring, completely bashing is boring. i like to hear reasons why people hate something as much as i do why they love it. and the interstices are the best part. (mostly i'm just bored at work. but it's 5PM so i'm done)

when i'm talking about "pop" i'm talking about songcraft
 
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