Where are the Beatles, the Bowies, and the Aretha Franklin's of this generation?

people will cite Radiohead as having made a lasting impact. Bjork too. Eminem undoubtedly. each decade generates new luminaries.

haha, poor Stuart

to answer the question- off the top of my head: jamiroquai, weller's solo stuff and mid-period M People.

Questions of long-term impact are misleading in a couple of ways. Firstly for a individual listener it's very hard to tell what will stand the 'test of time' - a record everyone else has forgotten or considered trivial may still be your favourite. Listening to music is more enjoyable - I find - if you're not worrying about how 'talented' or 'lasting' the people behind the record are.

Also, the question tends to push music into a particular shape - if you'd asked the qn ten years ago, for instance, lots of people would have answered "Nirvana" and they have had a big impact. But Dr Dre's impact at that time was still up in the air - a lot of people would have suggested it was a fad or wouldn't leave any positive traces. And the enormous diffuse impact of the hardcore dance scene has completely altered UK pop music but it would be difficult to point to a single artist responsible. It's a question you can only really answer with hindsight.

For me, bands like the Stereophonics will definitely endure, in the way Status Quo have endured, they will qualify for some sort of long-service medal but the 'impact' made on other music is negligible.

So, who are innovative and melodic out of today's acts then? Well, hardly anybody with success. Super Furry Animals and Beck would come close, but apart from the latter having one hit with "Loser", none of those have had the mainstream chart success that is needed to be able to be on the same level with Beatles and Bowie.
The same could also be said (although to an even larger extent when it comes to lack of mainstrem success) about Grandaddy and Flaming Lips.

So, really, I cannot come up with anybody at all, but I think that, maybe, Beck is closer than anybody else.

I think it wd be helpful if at the start of each post we made clear whether we're responding to it as a joke thread or not. I assume Geir has a smirk a mile wide.

Sorry!

impact isnt really the same thing as influence - i think her influence will manifest itself slowly and besides i think alot of people in the electronic arena ARE influenced by bjork - she's probably the one artist who could take the glitch into the mainstream. Alot of electronic artists are now mixing traditional song structures with electronics or acoustics with glitch to produce a hybrid and i think that, even if she wasn't the first to do it, she is influential in this respect.

So, being rockist and anti-rockist simultaneously, there is something to be said for his career - no band that formed in '97 has managed so much.

Next

18 Something 4 The Weekend Jul 1996
18 If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You Oct 1996
12 Ice Hockey Hair Jun 1998
11 Northern Lites May 1999
14 Juxtapozed With U Jul 2001
13 Golden Retriever Jul 2003

Something 4 The Weekend 12th July, 1996
Ice Hockey Hair 5th June, 1998
Northern Lites 21st May, 1999
Fire In My Heart 20th August, 1999
Do Or Die 28th January, 2000
Juxtaposed With You 20th July, 2001
Drawing Rings Around The World 19th October, 2001
It's Not The End Of The World 25th January, 2002
Golden Retriever 25th July, 2003

I would have loved SFA to have mainstream success, but having had 6 top 20 hits, the longest-lasting of which, "Northern Lights", falling off the Top 75 after just 4 weeks, doesn't qualify for that IMO. Ask the average 14-year-old American, European or even British kid who they are and he wouldn't have the foggiest idea.
Most 14-year-olds all over the world knew who David Bowie was in 1974, and they most certainly knew who The Beatles were in 1966.

As for Björk, I like her music, but I can hardly see she has influenced anybody at all (apart from Norwegian Anja Garbarek, who released a great internationally ignored album in 1994 called "Balloon Mood")

i'm sure Bjork was an influence on Moa and Emiliana Torrini anyway, not that it really means shit

In terms of voice itself, obviously not. Even if someone were to try to emulate her voice it wouldn't work. But elements of her style can be heard all over the music spectrum.

Fr'instance, listen to the last 2 minutes of The Roots' "Break You Off" and try to tell me that isn't at least a little bit influenced by Bjork. I mean, you could try, but you'd be wrong.

oh how dare she, really...who'd have thought someone would ever do that

Bjork has undeniably made an impact on music over the last 20 years. 'Birthday' was a remarkable record no? i couldn't stand it at the time because of the repetition and her heart-rendering wailings. i didn't really appreciate Bjork until she hooked up with 808 State, but even 'Debut' didn't do that much for me until a few years later. the fact she gets so many reactions out of me (from annoyance to awe) and the fact she does have quite a distinct - even unique - voice, style and approach (whether you love or loath) says something

Beatles = good, reasonably imaginative and charismatic musicians being there at the right time and place, in the midst of a cultural revolution which took popular music from being seen largely as light entertainment to something that had more profound social ramifactions, while fragmenting into the different genres that we know now.

Bowie = artist/performer type who came to popular music at a time when it was reaching out and soaking up modernist influences from art, literature, films, often to do with alienation and decadence, and thus made a good fit with his own sensibilities and magpie tendencies as a singer/songwriter.

The reason the Beatles and Bowie are such important cultural figures is that pop music at the time was so culturally significant and revolutionary, and I simply don't think you can say that about music today. The main genres are in place and have remained roughly the same for the past 20 years or so, since the inception of rap, electronica and dance music which overlaid the older genres of rock, metal, soul etc. Until we get futher major changes and a refocus on popular music as a primary locus of cultural/social significance, you're not going to get canonical figures emerging.

Hooray!!

wtf?!!

This is a bit much isn't it? Bowie 'not an important cultural figure'? This is almost objectively untrue, no matter if you like Bowie or not, simply because of his influence, and his ability to synthesize/rip-off (fine line). Weren't New Order just biting Chicago? Wasn't Chicago just biting Human League? Weeren't Human League...?

Whether pop music is revolutionary or not may simply be a question of semantics. If we accept the word as meaning "marked by or resulting in extreme change", I'd say it was revolutionary in the sixties at least.

Belleville 3 (minor impact)

Daft Punk (minor bordering on major)

Pitman (miner)

People's lives, maaaan, I guess (I was born 3 years after 'Heroes', so fair dos, I'm talkin out my arse), though the Beatles influence on mid-Sixties pop and the record industry in general was biggish?

When does something of this nature become a fact? Thousands of teens were 'influenced' by the Smiths, and continue to be, even if few of them form groups that sound like the Smiths. That makes them 'culturally' in the wide sense significant.

Re. Chicago/NO/HL, I think you'll find it was the other way round. Unless you mean Chicago the group, in which case I fear I have lost you.

I meant house, if I was wrong about that, then I'm not about other ways in which NO were influenced (and that not making them ambulance chasers) by NY electro/'baleric' house. HL definitely influenced Juan Atkins/Derek May, and they definitely influenced the course of dance music, but no-one's ambulance chasning there.

John Lennon stayed in bed with his girlfriend all week - if that's not a hugely influential socio-political gesture then i don't know what is.

Okay, no-one's arguing there. Neither has it led to a change in the relations of production, but it has changed the texture of people's lives. That in itself is culturally significant, surely? Unless history is simply the progression from one economic model to the next, culture matters - and you'd hardly write about music if you didn't believe so surely?

Socio-political influence of Beatles on tertiary industry in Liverpool : big time!!

Proof of Bowie's influence : Suede!!

I'm bored with the Beatles and can't be bothered arguing about their cultural significance, but it's impossible for a band to get that huge and iconic without being culturally significant, whether in a good or bad way. So many, including myself, grew up listening to the Beatles that they simply have become a part of the cultural landscape in a much more profound way than The Who, even if The Who were the better band.

The Beatles' influence on tertiary industry in Liverpool? For proof of its long-lasting effects, watch "The Boys From The Blackstuff."

Proof of Bowie's influence: Suede!!

Hahah, Enrique, that's a good one!!!

All appearing this weekend at Horace Mann's Fabulous Show Lounge...first twenty tickets get complimentary 20% discount at the salad bar.

MacDonald of course tells a great story - the Beatles' as half-epitome of their times, half transmitter from the underground to mass culture. Not having lived through those times I don't know how true it is - there's a mass of oral testimony now about the Beatles as life-changers but I often get the feeling that it's taken too uncritically, some 60s figure being asked about the times can say "Ah yes the Beatles" and nobody questions it, it's entirely uncontroversial, and the figure doesn't have to drag up potentially knotty or less easy influences. The Beatles Story means that everyone who 'was there' has an official backstory they can buy into too.

QED! Not that the Wilson govt was much different from the Heath govt in the 'revolutionary' ways you're talking about. IMac would agree, though, that the Beatles were an important part of the wider cultural matrix that led to Thatcher being elected, ie 'non-deferential' conservatism.

Put another way, what was the influence of 'Cathy Come Home'?

Okay Suede jibe lame (cd have got me staff position at NME in 1994, tho). But 'tertiary industry', also poor gag, about Beatles-based entertainment trade there.

Joy Division were much more influenced by Iggy Pop and the Pistols than by Bowie. Otherwise: well, Robert Smith, the New Romantics - now come on, would the world really have been poorer without their existence?

but it's impossible for a band to get that huge and iconic without being culturally significant, whether in a good or bad way

Would certainly argue more "bad" than "good" - I mean: Klaatu! Oasis! The Alan Parsons Project! What a legacy they bequeath to us!

This wasn't a joke thread, and I'm sorry that so many of you presumed it was. I don't read ILM very often, so perhaps I approached the whole thing the wrong way, but it was a valid question.

I was influenced tremendously by punk, despite only being 10 or so when it was at its height (older siblings playing Never Mind The Bollocks at full volume seemed to capture my imagination at the time)and later by the post punk/new wave/ska stuff of the early eighties. Perhaps it's looking back with rose-tinted specs at the music of that time, but there seemed to be a greater number of artists with staying power then, who dominated the charts week after week, and who were I think a real influence on later music.

It just struck me that in twenty or so year's time, if someone had to put together an "I Love The Noughties" TV programme, wouldn't they be hard pressed to remember anything really worthwhile?

Okay, but this thread could easily have had 'John Lydon, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed' at the top. And their influence is just as overstated, just as tired now. To an 18 year old NME reader, I'd bet they're no more or less irritating an omnipresent influence than the Beatles were once.

That's a pretty ignorant thing to say.

Oh, and the Libertines.

I've argued before that Slade strike me as sounding incredibly like the early-ish Beatles (a connection also drawn by Noel Gallagher who did a Slade cover). They (Slade) were quite good, weren't they (he offered timidly)?

New Labour and Britpop. If we're talking about articulating ideologies, I don't reckon John Harris' analysis is too bad.

So, no, the Beatles were not Friedrich Hayek, but the impact of mass culture on trad working class culture is not insignificant, far from it. If self-perception, group-self-perception, is not far removed from class consciousness, then the Beatles had an effect in this regard, for better or for worse. Jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm has no problem with noting their significance in cultural life.

sorry Marcello, but everything you have written so far has left me open mouthed. One thing, you've derailed the thread entirely with totally biased and misguided remarks, particularly the stuff about the Beatles becoming "less important" because of the reissues and Anthologys, I mean - what the fuck are you on man??! Maybe you don't like the Beatles or maybe you've just gone off them and prefer the Stones or the Velvets - this has no significance to this thread what so ever.

If the Beatles aren't important, then why did we sing Obladi-Oblada, When I'm 64, and Yellow Submarine in school assemblys when I was little? Why did John, Paul, George and Ringo appear in Asterix? Why are they still recognised by a very large amount of people, young and old as the greatest band in the world? Why do so many people know what Yoko Ono looks like? Why is Charles Manson's name synonymous with the White Album? etc. The Beatles have affected me as a person a lot more than 9/11, and that's a significant thing - so therefore they must be important.

Also - stay on topic shall we?

- I don't really know..it seems like those late 70s/early 80s artists were the ones lacking in "staying power" - how many continuous years did, say, Blondie or Kansas or Human League totally dominate the pop charts ? - as compared to artists today, particularly "auteurs" (ok, slap me) in the hip-hop world, like Jay-Z (who's had an incredible 8 year run, inclusively, as the critical/commercial king of new york) and Missy/Timba (7 years, still going strong). The r&b world has at least one long-lasting figure - Mary J Blige - who has been around for literally a dozen years now, with no indications of popularity slippage. Even less critically adored rock bands like 311 or No Doubt have built up this solid/loyal fanbase around them which have allowed them to enjoy incredibly long-lasting careers in the public eye, longer than anyone would have imagined, and you can't discount the importance of the Internet in maintaining the cyber cults of acts such as Tori Amos.

In fact, the Internet is really an important factor in discussing longevity these days: it supports the concept and practice of long-term devotion to acts built around the principle idea of a shared fandom/community, thereby guaranteeing that the artist/idol remains regularly worshipped, despite the frequency or quality of new product/blessings from the given idol.

Why is it that people using the interweb so routinely understate its impact? The net and mobile phones have changed social and cultural interaction in the West (which lets face it is what's being talked about) immeasurably.

I just sort of think it's futile to look for the "Beatles," etc sort of figures in this or any other generation, since those acts were so large and defining of their time period, that you couldn't possibly hope to find an analogous band in other eras -> there were a number of different (unprecedented) factors that led the Beatles to become who they did at that particular time, and something like that is very unlikely to happen again. So it's useless to compare acts not of that time to them, and wonder why there's no one around with that sort of myth/meaning anymore. It's really an unfair question; this is going to make no sense, I know, but to my mind it's like asking what books today are the Bibles of this generation, or something like that, hahah. I didn't mean for that to sound so hyperbolic (or to overextend the Beatles = divinity metaphor, in any way), it just came out that way, and I used it since the Binle was the first book I could think of that is larger-than-life like that...hm, maybe a better option would be saying, it would be like asking what books today are the dictionaries of this generation? Maybe now I won't even wait for someone to call me a mentalist, and will just shut up

There was social change, toiling in his lab... these mechanistic constructs tend to underplay the active role people have had in shaping their world, and in that way underplay culture. There were social changes in the 50s. These did not lead inexorably to teen culture as it emerged. And what invented social change in the 50s? Political and social movements played a part. And in these, ideas, culture. You couldn't write a meaningful history of the Labour Party without reference to working class culture, from music hall to pop.

Put it this way, 45-51 and 80-85 are the big periods of change in post war UK history, one in favour of social interaction, one against, if you like. The sexual revolution : Ken Loach's mid-Sixties 'Up the Junction' seems to embody it among da yoot. It hasn't happened yet though, you ask me.

greil marcus said in uncut a year or so ago that he felt that when mark chapman murdered lennon one of the things he killed was "lennon's place in history" - that is, he made him (and the beatles) a frozen figure in time, not a cultural termite like elvis or the sex pistols, who remain interesting (he said) because they provoked so many different kinds of responses and couldn't be nailed down to "this record is important because it led to XXX." he also wrote something strange and bitter after lennon's death, about one of the tributes, which he called an attempt to (paraphrased, i don't have the article in front of me) "tell us that john lennon and yoko ono were better than the rest of us, more worthy of attention, and better people." this may not be exactly what you meant, marcello, but i'm curious to see what you think about it.

And anyway, as arfarf said so much has already been said and done in these media anyway that there is no huge ground to be broken still.

Maybe.

i am unsure that the appeal of the beatles has lessened due to heritigization and reissue culture. i think it increased, but then dropped back to a default level from which i cannot see it changing. people believe that opinions and perceptions are facts, so they sort of become facts, or, at least, difficult to imagine changing

It has been said that the 1970s were the 1960s of the masses.

is the best thing said on this thread

Didn't they stop doing the Vietnam war because John didn't get out of bed with his mistress for a whole week, or something?

In a fair world, those three bands (all of them musical geniuses) would all have been among the largest names of the past 30 years. :-)

Punk was sort of an antithesis, obviously (as was also disco), but then again, new wave (in its UK meaning) became sort of a mixture of punk with Beatles influence, through acts such as Elvis Costello, The Jam, Squeeze, Boomtown Rats, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker and Madness, all of them clearly and undeniably influenced by The Beatles.

I guess you could say The Beatles were not particularly important as an influence on 80s music. New Pop was only slightly influenced by the Fabs, while the emergence of dance/hip-hop was possibly even more anti-Beatles than punk and disco put together were in the 70s.

But in 1989 Stone Roses arrived on the scene with a style that suggested they had listened to their British 60s pop history (and, as such, The Beatles influence cannot possibly be avoided). Several of the "baggy" acts that followed had a clear influence from The Beatles, which was also apparent in Britpop through to several of today's UK indie acts such as Doves, Super Furry Animals and Electric Soft Parade.

And, if these crazes were mainly British phenomenons, there are also numerous examples of American 90s acts being influenced by The Beatles. Kurt Cobain was a fan, and you could hear the Fab influence in the way he would write songs. Later, you have clearly Beatles influenced North American acts such as Beck, Barenaked Ladies, Dandy Warhols, Flaming Lips and Grandaddy. Not to mention the entire powerpop underground, with acts such as Fountains Of Wayne, Matthew Sweet, Posies, Cotton Mather etc.

So there's no denying the impact of The Beatles on today's popular music. Certainly, they may not seem particularly relevant to the average 13-14 year-old, but those 20 somethings and 30 somethings that enjoy the acts I listed are still young enough that they weren't around when The Beatles happened in the mid 60s.

So The Beatles' relevance on popular music doesn't stop. It only took a brief pause during the 80s.

They are "cult" acts in a way, only their "cult" has become quite large lately.

Hip-hop needs a gay Queen Latifah

i so agree!

!

Hip-hop needs a "sissy" male rapper that will rap, in a feminine voice, about all the beautiful guys he has seen recently. The entire macho image of hip-hop needs to be thrashed.

So let's just say the world needs a hip-hop Boy George

Sorry Doc, but isn't that a bit like saying chickens come from eggs but eggs don't come from chickens?

Punk (to take an example close to both of our hearts) was certainly a symptom of cultural change - but it also caused quite a bit too, didn't it?

'Nelson Madela Freed in Daring Ska Assault'

On a mass scale, what did punk change? Clearly the way that music could be made and distributed altered dramatically, but in the scheme of things that's a minor detail.

What are the major details in the scheme of things? For what observer? I take your point, big things happened in 76-81 that didn't involve Tony Parsons, the 'legendary' Screen on the Green gig, etc, sure. But weirdly the major stuff - the IMF crisis of September '76, for example - seems to evade people's [my parents'] memories. So what counts, what's important?

i think the qn. posed is really quite simple : what's comparable to the "influence" of the beatles, bowie and aretha these days. so, what does "influence" mean (for the purposes of this discussion, not some journo-hack cliqué).
ok, a lot of what happened in the '60s and the '70s happened largely concurrently, and it's surely a matter of opinion as to the how much bowie, beatles and aretha (the bba ?) were wagging the dog with respect to all the social reorganisations happening within those two decades or vice versa. yet clearly these musicians were an enormous part of the new cultural directions for young and not-so-young people, even if bba might have been riding those chchanges.

but that's all a moot point to me. isn't this thread about fingering musicians with similarly jesus-like charisma or resonance, with(pseudo) political fan bases today?
ie who are they today who could be compared to those bba musicians who seemingly went against the traditional music industry practises of the times, the recieved wisdom, the straight options, and still gave people the feeling that they (the fans) were part of a new direction or whose fans might have felt (however consumiserably) that that music formed part of their overall political conscience.

isn't this thread simply asking: who are those musicians whom, however cynically, form part of the changing cultural/ political climate, if that still happens ? (surely a far more important qn than the yesterdays old rope of "if that ever did happen")

Doesn't Jon Savage argue this?

Well, no, he doesn't Enrique. But Thatcher was more punk than Callaghan, or Foot.

But then how did Thatcher win the election? There are people who'd say that even naming Thatcher is superfluous because the iron laws of economics meant that following the stagflation era, there had to be public spending/borrowing cuts (which in any case were started by Callaghan in '76). Was she even a minor details in the scheme of things?

Oh well, you could say that - if you believe, for instance that Hitler was a minor detail in the scheme of things circa the 1930s.

This would suggest three things:

1. You know nothing about punk.
2. You know nothing about Thatcher.
3. You know nothing about Michael Foot.

1. You know nothing about punk.
2. You know nothing about Thatcher.
3. You know nothing about Michael Foot.

Well, I was paraphrasing Jon Savage, but anyway there was nothing punk about the old labour state, and nothing particularly collectivist about punk. And John Lydon has since spoken in favour of Thatcher. Most leftists in the late 70s hated the Labour Party almost as much as they hated the Tories. So back at ya, what the hell is punk about Michael Foot?

And, umm, anyway......what George said :)

2. What exactly is or was the "Old Labour State"? I wouldn't call it a Socialist Utopia because it was neither Socialist nor a Utopia.

3. Punk's class make-up was exactly petit bourgeois - errrrrrrrrrr, how do you work that one out? Seemed to cross class barriers to me. Oh and petit bourgeois as in "of, relating to, or characteristic of the petit bourgeois, esp. indicating a sense of self-righteousness and a high degree of conformity to established standards of behaviour".

4. "And they wore swastikas. Nuff sed?" Nuff not said!

5. "Sham 69 were quite little englander I'm told." Well I'm told differently but who cares about Sham 69 anyway?

6. No-one could claim that post-war "consensus" governments were a success but there's no real comparison with the carnage that followed after them.

= indie

Thatch was crypto-fascist, but I'm not and criticizing CAllaghan/Foot doesn't make you so, unless, I dunno, Stuart Hall, Eric Hobsbam, were all hiding something. It was the old labour state because (this is obv a v ambigiuous critique)... it was incredibly top-heavy state-wise, and most especially because the labour power machine was seen as, erm, faceless, bureaucratic, technocratic (esp in its 'modernization' of the justice system). Which isn't socialist.

What does this refer to?

I don't really know what Callaghan has to do with Foot, other than the fact that they served in the same cabinet. Admittedly Foot's politics became less radical the closer he got to power in the Labour Party but you really couldn't find two figures further apart in the Labour movement than a right-wing, "working class", Union-backed machine politician like Callaghan and a left-wing, middle class intellectual like Foot.

Well the most glaringly obvious one must be the entire nation's attitude towards the monarchy. In 1977 the Pistols records and tours were being banned and there were questions being asked in Parliament because they dared to criticise The Queen and you couldn't walk down the street wearing a GSTQ T-shirt without fear of either getting your head kicked in or arrested on some bizarre obscenity charge AND your head kicked in. Nowadays her position's being regularly questioned not only in Parliament but even on the bleedin' BBC; and absolutely no-one seems to give a flying FCUK what anyone's got written on their T-shirt.

I'd say punk was also instrumental in beginning a process that's led to fundamental changes in our attitudes towards government, racism, homophobia, sexism and in totally changing our sense of humour.

"Clearly the way that music could be made and distributed altered dramatically, but in the scheme of things that's a minor detail."

Do you believe that was restricted to music? Wouldn't you say that same DIY ethic has pervaded all sorts of other activities as well?

"Thatcher winning the election in '79? Such was the power of punk to change things..."

Thatcher was caused by many of the same things that caused punk and arguably even caused BY punk....

"I certainly don't regard calling Thatcher a crypto fascist as a "bit much" - in fact I think it's probably a little unfair on crypto fascists."

LOL! Dadaismus OTM!

"And they wore swastikas. Nuff sed?"

Unfortnately, a lot of people were either already in such an advanced state of shock and fear and panic to realise when they were being sent up, or they were just too plain fuckin' stupid to understand the concept of irony in the first place.

Speaking of which....

"Sham 69 were quite little englander I'm told."

I think Sham 69 (or at least Mr. Pursey) thought they'd be able to get a larger following if they could somehow make themselves appeal to the skinhead boot boys.

They could precisely what they deserved.

"On a mass scale, punk has been directly or indirectly responsible for most of the irony-drowning cultural laddism from which we now suffer."

Sadly true - although only after it had been filtered through the minds of the Sham 69 fans.

Well the most glaringly obvious one must be the entire nation's attitude towards the monarchy. In 1977 the Pistols records and tours were being banned and there were questions being asked in Parliament because they dared to criticise The Queen and you couldn't walk down the street wearing a GSTQ T-shirt without fear of either getting your head kicked in or arrested on some bizarre obscenity charge AND your head kicked in. Nowadays her position's being regularly questioned not only in Parliament but even on the bleedin' BBC; and absolutely no-one seems to give a flying FCUK what anyone's got written on their T-shirt.

I'd say punk was also instrumental in beginning a process that's led to fundamental changes in our attitudes towards government, racism, homophobia, sexism and in totally changing our sense of humour.

"Clearly the way that music could be made and distributed altered dramatically, but in the scheme of things that's a minor detail."

Do you believe that was restricted to music? Wouldn't you say that same DIY ethic has pervaded all sorts of other activities as well?

"Thatcher winning the election in '79? Such was the power of punk to change things..."

Thatcher was caused by many of the same things that caused punk and arguably even caused BY punk....

"I certainly don't regard calling Thatcher a crypto fascist as a "bit much" - in fact I think it's probably a little unfair on crypto fascists."

LOL! Dadaismus OTM!

"And they wore swastikas. Nuff sed?"

Unfortnately, a lot of people were either already in such an advanced state of shock and fear and panic to realise when they were being sent up, or they were just too plain fuckin' stupid to understand the concept of irony in the first place.

Speaking of which....

"Sham 69 were quite little englander I'm told."

I think Sham 69 (or at least Mr. Pursey) thought they'd be able to get a larger following if they could somehow make themselves appeal to the skinhead boot boys.

They got precisely what they deserved.

"On a mass scale, punk has been directly or indirectly responsible for most of the irony-drowning cultural laddism from which we now suffer."

Sadly true - although only after it had been filtered through the minds of the Sham 69 fans.

the idea of Thatcher-as-crypto-punk seems absurd to everyone on some level, but it's easier to understand if, like me, you think in terms of collectivist-individualist rather than left-right. I took Enrique's idea of Thatcher as more punk than Callaghan or Foot to mean that she was far more aggressively individualistic than them, less respectful of people's established positions in society (well, Callaghan at least, Foot might be a different matter but it was still a grave mistake to appoint him rather than Healey as Labour leader at that particular time), and by those criteria it works - I also think, with his post on mass culture vs traditional working class identity, Enrique hit almost accidentally on why Labour lost so badly in the 19*5*9 election. I think we should be looking into why 18 years of Tory governments did not prevent the death-of-deference that Stewart's talking about, because LOGICALLY they should have done, the core voters who put Thatcher in would have wanted it, the National Front sympathisers who returned to the fold when she talked about being "swamped by an alien culture" regarded her as their missionary to prevent punk's influence spreading any further into society ... the answer has to be that the Thatcher govt *didn't* respect established positions in society, it *didn't* respect the idea of the Strong State (which is part of the reason why the monarchy used to be beyond criticism; Old Labourites like Callaghan were as monarchist as you can imagine while the mid-80s "radical" neoconservative student axis allowed anti-monarchist views to be aired without criticism). it certainly changed more than the Beatles, rightly or wrongly; the real point of Marcello's post upthread, as I see it, is not that Heath wasn't that different to Wilson but that he wasn't that different to Macmillan (Supermac had played down his public-school elitism to attract a newly consumerised lower middle class in 1959, which is why it seemed a natural progression to Heath as the first non-public-school Tory leader). the root of Enrique's post is the fact - an uncomfortable realisation for those like Dadaismus who cling to the reading of punk as impeccably leftist with no other accidental connections (I don't deny that the similarity I'm about to detail *is* accidental, from both ends, but IT EXISTS) - that punk and Thatcherism were both different expressions of the death-of-deference process, and they both despised the Strong State; what they wanted to replace it with varied wildly, but what they wanted to get rid of was remarkably similar. what Tico Tico says above captures the point I'm making here; punk wanted something radical to change, Thatcher and Murdoch (who the punks affected to despise as the agents of Ronald Reagan and Phil Collins) actually made possible something that was remarkably akin to some of the original punk demands, just interpreted from a different starting point. you could even say that the Tories and the Royals have imploded from '92 onwards for the same reason; trying to appeal to two fundamentally different audiences and wings of the population at the same time, and finding that they'd overdosed in the 80s and couldn't square the circle anymore.

incidentally, Geir Hongro is slightly underestimating Mary J. Blige's appeal in Europe - her "Family Affair" hit #1 in Eurosceptic France (TM).

I disagree Robin most strongly. The Thatcher government respected those established positions which forwarded the interests of THEIR class: the City of London, the Police, the Judiciary, the Church, the House of Lords, private education, private business, and very definitely too, the Royal Family. They dismantled or undermined those "established positions" which they perceived as barriers to middle class power and prosperity: Trade Unions, public education, public housing, the Welfare State. They pulled off the major trick of persuading people that the State was the enemy, that their fellow citizens were to be feared and despised and NOT the financiers, the bankers, the civil service, in short THE ESTABLISMENT, etc etc. But then Hitler did much the same thing - claim to be dismantling the establishment when in fact reinforcing it and destroying any possible barriers to its continued power and influence.

an uncomfortable realisation for those like Dadaismus who cling to the reading of punk as impeccably leftist with no other accidental connections

Again, you're wrong, I don't consider punk particularly leftist, in fact it was largely apolitical and much the better for it. In fact the kind of dreary grey RAR/SWP/ANL (choose your own abbreviation) orthodoxy of post-punk (ie 1978-81) which followed was a major snore.

What are you basing this on, 'cos it's certainly not how I remember it?!

I also think, with his post on mass culture vs traditional working class identity, Enrique hit almost accidentally on why Labour lost so badly in the 19*5*9 election.

Hey - enough with the 'accidents' anyway, I've been reading 'The Uses of Literacy' plus (even better) Stuart Hall's 'The Popular Arts'.

Anyway - what Thatcher did in re: establishment was complex. Because the city is not full of public schoolies, and her front bench was not packed with 'wets'. The city was full of barra boys (ref: 'Serious Money' with Gary Oldman), the front bench full of terrorists like Portillo. Thatch claimed to minimize state power, but as is well known did not - nor did she manage to cut taxes.

I'm not keen on Tories - but let's not go overboard on the Hitler comparisons?

I saw Ms Dynamite on the cover of the Torygraph. Robin, you're right, this is a biggish deal, and in the week of Dempster's replacement. But... I don't know, the Torygraph is defo one to watch, as in a way is the equally heinous Saturday Times. Maybe it is victory pure and simple. Ms Dynamite has top New Labour connexions, right?

I don't disagree with Enrique about the Thatcher govt, which introduced some disgraceful attacks on the right to protest and set the tone for the Major govt to produce the genuinely fascist 1994 Criminal Justice Act, but it also radicalised the City of London and private business (Big Bang etc), and my own view is that despite everything they failed in the things Dadaismus mentions - there is much less respect for most of those institutions than there ever has been, much more rampant disregarding of their beliefs and assumptions, much more utter unashamed disdain. the racist tendency in that Tory government, which Thatcher always indulged (initially so she could bring NF sympathisers back into the fold), also hasn't stopped the recent appointment of a black Chief Constable in Kent (to take an example). so you can say that the Thatcher govt succeeded in making the British people more aggressive-individualist (I'm part of that, as much as anyone), but not in making them revere the Unquestioned Establishment; on that level it gratifyingly failed because the instincts of liberal babyboomers were too strong in the end. Norman Tebbit could encourage blind reaction-politics among the mass of the population, and Britain was/is worse off for it, but he couldn't stop Rowan Williams becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

the other thing the Thatcherites had no instinctive feeling for whatsoever, but which earlier Tories *had* understood, were the idiosyncracies of various regions of Britain - for them, only the south-east counted for anything - and that also benefitted pop music as a whole, because it reduced and weakened the desire of certain areas of the country and their cultural gatekeepers to react against aggressive, consumerist, international pop music. I don't think a more paternalistic Tory government would have been able to prevent the pop generation taking over every last institution - the fact that babyboomers were inevitably going to be old enough to run such institutions would have done for that anyway - but it might have held out for earlier, pop-culture-resistant values. certain pop stars in the 80s / '92 voted Tory because they knew the government was sympathetic to those like them who wanted to form a new kind of establishment; they would never, IMHO, have voted for a quasi-aristocratic Tory government. by the same token, I doubt whether the Campaign for Free Radio would have encouraged their members to vote Tory in 1970 if they'd had an Old Etonian leader rather than grammar schoolboy Heath.

Tico Tico - I think you're slightly misunderstanding the context of the Telegraph thing; if it had been simply an interview on the arts pages or an article in the weekend supplement I'd agree that it doesn't count for much, because such things are commonplace in the paper today (they simply can't ignore it now - the babyboomers and younger are just too dominant in society). but the mention of Ms Dynamite I alluded to was in the COURT AND SOCIAL page! the page where you'll still find out that some royal dignitary "called upon His Excellency in order to bid farewell ..." this is one step further into the Old Establishment's private universe than simply being on the front of the paper, surely?

the Thatcher govt succeeded in making the British people more aggressive-individualist (I'm part of that, as much as anyone), but not in making them revere the Unquestioned Establishment

In succeeded in making the British people that it doesn't matter about "the Establishment" anyway as long YOU are doing alright.

By the way, in my personal experience I've found those in favour of "collectivism" to be the most bright, interesting and "individual" people (cf Michael Foot). In contrast, those in favour of "individualism" to be the dullest, most narrow minded and most "conformist" (cf Thatcher)

Oops that made no sense: in succeeded in making the British people believe that it doesn't matter about "the Establishment" anyway as long YOU are doing alright.

your point about Thatcherism is broadly true, but that couldn't-care-less model is disastrous if the Establishment want to retain the unquestioning respect they once received. if people couldn't care less what they think of an elite, it surely becomes harder for the elite to control the wider culture.

Why, because he fits your model better? Using the phrase "conservative-collective" is somewhat leading isn't it? Michael Foot was (and is) certainly a collectivist, left-wing middle-class intellectual or not. I know what you're getting at however

Why does it become harder when people are not actually doing anything that conflicts with the aims of the Establishment, are not confronting their power? The Establishment is fluid - the Old Establishment (the Church, the Crown) required respect and deference, the New Establishment (capital basically) does not in fact I would apathy is rather welcomed on the whole

(And, although I like Bowie, putting him up there with The Beatles, and mentioning nobody else in the same breath, is overrating Bowie too)

Aretha Franklin is both v. great and v. overrated; in some ways I think of her as a sort've Coltrane figure, where inarguable virtuosity - in terms of 'technique', range, expressive whatsit - obscures or overwhelms 'objective' critical evaluation.

Of course there was popular excitement, it was a major historical event the same as say the moon landing was (and of course not everyone who watched the moon landing necessarily by definition agreed with the space race)!

The fundamental difference between the atmosphere surrounding the royal wedding 1981 and the atmosphere surrounding the silver jubilee in 1977, as I remember it, was that there was that the blind acceptance seemed to have gone. Not only were there were more people questioning the validity of it all but there was also a far greater recognition of and acceptance of dissenting voices and opinions.

No-one afaik was getting spat on in the streets or beaten up in 1981 because they said they didn't agree with it all like they were in 1977!

Sure it happened after the 'Pistols but does that invalidate the significance of the impact of GSTQ reaching number one in jubilee week? Actually I tend to think that all the efforts that were made in various quarters to supress GSTQ, the 'Pistols specifically and punk in general, not only gave the whole thing far more publicity and more credibility but maybe ultimately actually helped to arouse the public's interest, imagination, and even their sympathy.)

Let's not also forget that 1981 saw rioting in major towns and cities the length and breadth of mainland Britain and civil disobedience on a scale unprecedented in the lives of the punk generation. Another one to be chalked up to the combination of Punk and Thatcher!

I'm sure that was an element Robin, yes.... in retrospect 'though (particularly now we all know that dear old Charlie was going off shagging Camilla on a regular basis throughout that entire period!) it's tempting to wonder to what extent the whole thing (possibly even including the choice of Charles' wife) was actually deliberately engineered specifically in order ".... to allow for a less deferential approach" in recognition of the marked changes in attitude that were already taking place throughout the country.

Excellent snapshot of '81: Martin Amis' 'Money', his one really great book.

but I'm certain none of the people setting the Telegraph's party line give a damn about what sort of angle the paper has on pop or the stuff that gets praised

Interesting zone, because the Telegraph's arts writers are often to the left of the Guardian's.

Maybe we could do without Court & Circular pages altogether.

The answer to your final question would therefore be: "follow their own agenda".

C&C - Freudian!! Now I see.

Possibly Ms Dynamite's appearance in the Torygraph C&S pages is a (belated) arrival by the Old Establishment that this stuff isn't going to hurt them anywhere near as much as they feared. Especially when they can be put on a stage to sing while thousands/millions of people glorify in how great the Queen is. And lets face it, all Ms Dynamite's stuff about how bad inner city gun culture is is hardly inconsistent with right-wing thought, is it?

One of the old London "gentleman's" clubs (I'm 99% certain it was Whites) used to vote one of its members "Shit of the Year" annually. As a young man Charles won it more than once, owing to his penchant for shagging other members' wives. This was well known stuff at the time (in Private Eye etc). No-one remotely in the know will have been surprised that he was shagging Camilla, the only surprise was that he appeared to have settled on someone regular.

Matt - somehow it seems almost too obvious for me to mention these things! obviously the nature of "the Establishment" has changed, but interestingly the most stereotypical Telegraph readers I know - people who talk about "wogs" and "racial integrationist propaganda" - seem to oppose its support for US militarism and Israeli expansionism. obviously the 'Graph is targeting the New Right, who I can sort of sympathise with on some non-political issues because they don't have the extreme cultural anti-Americanism / anti-modernism of the Old Right, but of course they crucially extend their pro-Americanism into an unforgivable *political* position. this will only continue and become more and more obvious under the paper's new editor, Martin Newland, because he's 41, has spent much time working for Conrad Black's Canadian paper the National Post, and doesn't AFAIK have the Eton/foxhunting background which has lately been the only thing preventing Charles Moore being seen as a 100% (as opposed to 99%) Bush / Sharon lackey. those of us who think the New Right's acceptance of modern popular culture is welcome but regard their political views - specifically surrounding Bush's America - as the vilest imaginable won't be deserting the Grauniad / Independent / Observer any time soon.

Everyone I told this to in recent years, said "wow" etc, apart from one who worked in the secret service, who just nodded.

Juan Formell (founder of Los Van Van): "Look, I wanted people to dance, to dance to Cuban music, and that was my guiding purpose. But the melodies I liked had to be updated to satisfy the tastes of young people in an age when world music had been forever transformed by The Beatles."

"LPF [Leonardo Padura Fuentes]: What do you owe to the Beatles?
JLG [Juan Luis Guerra, a very major Dominican musician]: A lot--both to the Beatles and to George Martin, who's their arranger and who's almost never given the credit he's due. Since the first song I played on the guitar was one of theirs, I think that marked me forever. Later, I continued playing almost all their songs, and I learned George Martin's arrangements very well. On 'Ojala que llueva cafe' for example, there's a tribute to the cornets on 'Penny Lane' and to the violin arrangements on 'Eleanor Rigby.' And if you look at the way I arrange the voices on any of my bachatas, you'll also see the influence of the Beatles."

Radames Giro (Cuban musicologist): "And don't forget that this was the decade of The Beatles, when the music world received that enormous impact and people could no longer project music as they did in the 1950s--neither in its dance function nor in its function as a literary or melodic message."

Yes, she's not even Top 20 Soul/R&B singer

You know, just because something is conventional wisdom doesn't mean that it's wrong. And with all the other people piling on Aretha's body and giving it a good kicking I'm starting to think you whippersnapper indie pop kids know bugger all about soul music.

^^^ this

Beck is the Bowie/Prince of his generation.

ELO were The Beatles of the 70's, possibly 80;s too

Seriously, I never realized how many of their songs I knew till' i got that new best of they put out. Hit after hit, like a hotboxed bathroom

I happen to think the Stereophonics have a shedload of talent and that they'll be around for a while.

Valuable old posters.

ELO were The Beatles of the 70's, possibly 80;s too

Seriously, I never realized how many of their songs I knew till' i got that new best of they put out. Hit after hit, like a hotboxed bathroom

This is a great Accidental Partridge.

In defence of Stereophonics, they did release Dakota after that post. Still a great tune.

In defence of Stereophonics, *farts*

/I happen to think the Stereophonics have a shedload of talent and that they'll be around for a while./

Beck is the Bowie/Prince of his generation.

that's just geir

Surprised by the anti Aretha shit talk

One for the ages:

Hip-hop needs a gay Queen Latifah

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 4:39 PM (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fake Geir.

if only Oasis had kept it together. at least we have Stereophonics who have still been making their influence felt in 2020

worse than the premise of this thread is the fuckwit rock boys scoffing at the notion that Aretha could be mentioned in the same breath as mediocrities like Bowie & the Beatles whose greatness apparently goes without saying. she getd a lot of bashing on the old threads- is this some kind of anti-tokenism one-upmanship or lingering fallout from the soulboy wars? there are other pretty transparent motivations ofc

*gets

was it more hipster/rockist/cornyindie to love or to hate aretha frankin in the 00s?

i'd venture to say it was good old fashioned learned racism.

Sometimes I wish I'd joined ILX a bit earlier, then I see these threads and nah.

the first person to say she's overrated is geir hongro and he's pretty sui generis as far as his musical outlook

Is it ok to like all three?

no

sorry I mean yes

anyone who says Aretha is overrated while defending the Beatles might as well put a white hood on afaic. Straight up racist bullshit.

The Beatles are timbrally more varied overall, which I'm sure is what Geir was getting at, he was known for his spirited defences of timbre.

there were plenty of tedious anti-beatles diatribes on old ilx, tho they're certainly less offensive than the misogynistic attacks on joni mitchell (tbh almost any old thread on a female artist is sure to include posts commenting on her appearance) or racist slurs against aretha franklin or bob marley

I mean, anti-Beatles diatribes are deserved.

The rest is racist and misogynistic nonsense.

Like to even compare them is a little weird imo.

I'm sat here with Alice (20) smiling at the comment from Alice (3) upthread, and wondering which Bjork clip she had the same hair of.

mark that post, completely out of context, needs to be new board descrip PRONTO

bob marley

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, August 24, 2020 2:48 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah there's some fucked up shit in the marley threads here

lol Geir is trolling ILX from the past!!

who's geir?

Geir is eternal

Geir is eternal

Weird

ACCORDIN' TO THE FACT THAT GEIR IS ETERNAL

Every time I see people leaping to the defense of Joni Mitchell, I want to post the album cover she did in blackface

i just realized i have spent the last decade or so not really knowing how to pronounce "geir"

it's approximately like "gayer"

geir and gimble in the wabe

I was just going to try to explain Geir to Austin but it's kind of hard

Turning and turning in the widening Geir

geir and gimble in the wabe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en1uwIzI3SE

I noticed that he replied me by name, which for Geir is a rare thing.

DJP, yeah, Joni's blackface period continues to be brushed aside in a really bizarre way.

tbc I don't think people should be sexist about her but... can we reckon with that plz

We talked about it a bit here:

Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

huh I thought I was in that conversation but apparently not, which means people are/have been reckoning with it in multiple places

I think I just want to bring it up constantly because, to my knowledge, she never apologized for it and never took on board how fucked up it was

Her explanation in the recent (excellent) biography also remains uh unconvincing.