sadmanbarty
Well-known member
you look back over the smiths oevre and at some point you have to think to yourself "what difference does it make?"
it makes none si.
it makes none si.
Cultural Cowardice
- Thread starter sadmanbarty
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- ballin at the mall barty's mum's cunt again. cheeky tags chopped and screwed clairs corpse's mates crybabies disco-gs fig rolls fuck off fucking youtube goldsmiths fanny high fashion mood music john eden was talking sense kill for love luka is a crypto-jungian luka is an oxford don mystic snakes sassy si see you on the other side spunk ritual steve madden handbag the beatles are worse than hitler
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
can you remember exactly how it happened? what clicked? when?
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
uk garage: cultural cowardice
discuss.
discuss.
blissblogger
Well-known member
i didn't see your earlier replies to my first sally
yes, exactly what you say there... a backing away from the postpunk principles
BUT the point is.... pop music, or popular music, moves dialectically (i think that's the right word)
postpunk became a dead end, it pursued its logic or rather its various directions until they became barren and worse than that, familiar
you had the Cabaret Voltaires and then you had second-wave sub-Cabaret Voltaires or sub-A Certain Ratios that were just repeating the formula - bands you most likely would never have heard of, for good reason, like Hula or Chakk
and even Cabaret Voltaire themselves kind of stuck, they went as far as they could with that sound, and then tried to take it a little bit mainstream, that didn't work
A certain Ratio decided they wanted to make proper black-sounding records and ended up like Level 42 shadowed by a vague unease
so what is the swerve out of that dead end?
for a lot of people at that time, rediscovering elements of Sixties music did seem like, if not the Way Ahead, then somewhere to go - and bringing back certain things that had been lost (a new approach to the love song
others soldiered on as if postpunk never stopped - so you had a band like Nitzer Ebb which was essentially a DAF tribute band. all of that Electronic Body Music.
yes, exactly what you say there... a backing away from the postpunk principles
BUT the point is.... pop music, or popular music, moves dialectically (i think that's the right word)
postpunk became a dead end, it pursued its logic or rather its various directions until they became barren and worse than that, familiar
you had the Cabaret Voltaires and then you had second-wave sub-Cabaret Voltaires or sub-A Certain Ratios that were just repeating the formula - bands you most likely would never have heard of, for good reason, like Hula or Chakk
and even Cabaret Voltaire themselves kind of stuck, they went as far as they could with that sound, and then tried to take it a little bit mainstream, that didn't work
A certain Ratio decided they wanted to make proper black-sounding records and ended up like Level 42 shadowed by a vague unease
so what is the swerve out of that dead end?
for a lot of people at that time, rediscovering elements of Sixties music did seem like, if not the Way Ahead, then somewhere to go - and bringing back certain things that had been lost (a new approach to the love song
others soldiered on as if postpunk never stopped - so you had a band like Nitzer Ebb which was essentially a DAF tribute band. all of that Electronic Body Music.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
more detail. in what respects (sonically and culturally)?
luka
Well-known member
although part of me does feel uncomfortable with that argument because it
was part of the still quite new cultural conversation between a multicultural london working class, which in itself was quite utopian. it was a shared space and an ongoing conversation which stalled to some degree after grime as we've discussed on here before. it's a tricky one.
was part of the still quite new cultural conversation between a multicultural london working class, which in itself was quite utopian. it was a shared space and an ongoing conversation which stalled to some degree after grime as we've discussed on here before. it's a tricky one.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
were stock aitken and waterman far more of the vanguard than the smiths?
discuss.
discuss.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
be contradictory then luke. let it all out. consistency is the currency of the redundant.
or you could go to 80s rnb/boogie, early house imports. fatback, c abrams etc.
did anyone do this?
luka
Well-known member
i think there is various ways you can model it and what the thread is about probably, more than anything, is this question. how can we best model this process of scouting, penetrating the unknown, revealing it to the world, showing the way to others who come along, explore that territory themselves, everyone at this stage involved in mapping and discovery until the point comes at which it's done. there's nothing more there to be found. it's gone from terra incognita to another suburban neighbourhood with front lawns and two car garages.
and then the question becomes
what do we do now. where do we go now? and who will show us the way?
blissblogger
Well-known member
it was the single "This Charming Man"
i think before that i had heard the Radio One evening show sessions that were later on Hatfull of Hollow (and which i loved then - but when i first them heard, it sounded very monochrome. literally like a black-and-white movie). vaguely aware of this buzz but sort of don't get it.
then i heard that single
but also it was writing by my favorite music writers that made me listen to them again - the review of 'this charming man' by paul morley, and then a fantastic piece by Barney Hoskyns that went into the whole Genet thing and the reinvention of the love song and the gender politics etc
also seeing them perform on TV - and the heroic gaucheness thing that Luka mentions - really made it clear what was being represented, what the stance was
i feel quite fortunate i was 20 when that happened, because if the Smiths had come along when I was 16 it could have locked me into a glamorisation of isolation and misery that was quite destructive and imprisoning
i was at just the right age to still be able to feel the allure of Morrissey but not have him as a model for life (or unlife, more aptly)
just unhappy and alienated enough to understand the phenomenon and not laugh it or write it off a sort of melodrama of maladjustment
blissblogger
Well-known member
well, New Order did that. they were listening to New York dance radio mixes by Shep Pettibone, Italo disco, a lot of the NYC club tracks that would now be filed as postdisco or boogie.
they were definitely some postpunk-era units that explored sequencers, drum machines, synth-bass, sampling etc.
Depeche Mode - who i didn't really care for much at the time - did that and made some music that so much more audacious and interesting than it did back then
Scritti Politti would also be a paradigm example of a postpunk band that keeps riding the wave of black dance music innovation - responding to it, incorporating it, and even contributing to it to a degree
luka
Well-known member
well what you think ringmaster? essentially rave couldn't take down the establishment. it aroused so much opposition that it was crushed. it couldn't organise it'self to fight back so the reality principle was reimplemented. a door slams shut. just as it did after may '68. these things happen.
we make the dream as real as we can make it but they are bubbles and always vulnerable to being popped.
but some of the boundaries which dissolve stay dissolved and jungle is partly a product of that cross-cultural conversation facilitated by rave. it's not as dreamy but it's probably better music for that.
again the balance is fairly delicate though and the alliance fractures and is reassembled at a later date with garage.