ILMism ?

Was this anything characteristic of ILMism? Was it a smirking, ironic in-joke, or did everyone really love Ms. Spears' music that much? Personally I never thought it was terrible... but never anything approaching great; music that wore thin for me rather quickly. Anyone want to save me the effort of searching for those old threads and fill me in?

You'd better get out of here. There's a posse forming.

Oh I agree, there's no way Loveless should be as high as Britney!

Haha, there, you got me. Only took 4 posts for someone to spit out "rockist" at me like the most foul of insults. Yes, I find full albums more rewarding than singles, yes I personally consider Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine to be - frankly - incomparably better than Britney Spears. No, I don't put borders around what genres I like, and no, I really can't see anything especially redeeming about Britney Spears' music (certainly I realize this could be because of overexposure via every median channel, but the fact remains). Yes, I do like Annie. Etc.

Honestly, how does the word rockist have any meaning when it's not being levelled at a music critic? If I'm not deriding music for not adhering to rockist values, if I'm not trying to tell you what you should like, why should it have any relevance that I - *gasp* - tend to enjoy (though not as a rule, obviously) rock more than teenie-pop? Yeah, I guess this is ILMism, though certainly not everyone exhibits it.

ps what is "teenie pop"

pps weirdo americans feigning BEWILDERMENT at ILM is ILMism as much as any popism. "Now I'm new here, and hence I SPEAK IN A DETACHED TONE" etc etc. what a fucking loser.

Whatever. You were gagging for it.

hehe. Ignore this tendency, & it's really not a bad board to discuss,get info about a fair range of off-the-radar music.

p.s. how about the Sugababes? Backstreet Boys? Gareth Gates? etc

;-)

or, what ronan said.

xxxxxpost

now.. that pretty much defines feigning BEWILDERMENT.

but each to their own. Just ignore it if you don't care about it.

Like this whole thread.

-- Ronan (ronan.fitzgerald6NOSPA...), November 12th, 2004.

Haha, I get it. Hey everyone, Ronan is such a typical ILMist! It seems like everyone's greatest fear here is being pidgeonholed or labeled in any way. Shake it off, it's a joke. Really, the whole topic behind the thread is a bit of a joke if you think about it.

Anyway, it looks like you misread my post. I only asked whether people were serious with the Spears thing. I wasn't feigning anything: I realize that people have very different tastes, but when there is a reasonably broad consensus on a piece of music, I usually try to check it out. More often than not, even if it's not music I'm generally into, I can find a quality in it to appreciate and enjoy. So this was kind of an anomaly for me, what can I say?

Really don't know how to respond to the ps and pps. I mean, I don't tend to see a lot of trolling on these boards so I won't assume anything, but... meh, I'll just leave those alone.

In conclusion, I am rockist, as much ILMist as any brand of popism is, a and a typical weirdo american.

For you that would be the Britney discussion.

For me - Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx

How about crack?

I don't want to site examples, because I really don't want to get into the argument that much. Of course there can be differences of opinion on whether it can be just as worthy/enjoyable as 'real' music (another minefield given the workings of the music industry...)

I just think denying all knowledge of the concept of teenie pop is a little bogus. How much you like it is another discussion entirely and totally separate from the politics imo.

Not really, at least not consciously. While skimming the rockism thread, the thought did pass through my mind though - what relevance does "rockism" as a concept have if we're not talking about music criticism, and just someone's tastes? I dunno, that's a discussion for another place and time I suppose.

I don't think anyone's denied that! If anything it's more a subject that is taken for granted, much like the fact that record companies and charts are subject to corruption and influence that has jack to do with whether or not people like something that is popular.

xposts

Most people who discuss these things are really passionate about what they discuss. I would never believe that a thread loving Girls Aloud would be anything but serious, even if it isn't my cup of tea. People make pop, make money from pop, live pop, and know what a good pop tune is. Me - I prefer microhouse and grime right now, but it moves around. I think the idea that some grown individual can't appreciate a pop tune itself is quite anal - someone has to write it, and they sure know their stuff.

There are some possible answers to that on this ILE thread, which mostly avoids the subject of music criticism, and for long stretches even manages to avoid the subject of music.

;-)

Missed this one. Well yeah, I do like these boards so far, I just remember seeing a few trends on ILM and was wondering if they rang true to anyone else. I've never heard of sugababes and gareth gates. To be honest, I didn't really give the BSB a fair shake, so I'll withhold comment ;)

xpost

manufactured pop sounds just as deriding to me, but ok, substitute that for teenie pop in my previous posts i guess.

This has honestly never fitted the Sugababes. As far as Backstreet go, I'm not sure - which age bracket do gay folks fall into ;-)?

seriously, half the rubbish boys-with-guitars groups that pop-haters tend to love could be defined like this too.

xpost: sleep

I may not be being totally serious with some of my choices above ;-)

ppppppps. This isn't really the only music board I've seen this tendency on, but it probably gets discussed a lot more seriously and with in-jokes and meta references because a high percentage of posters here are journalists, dj's etc.

I agree with Lex and BARMS whatever.

Mostly I just could not give two shits about the whole is/isn't manufactured argument. Any company that exercises creative control in their contracts with artists can be accused of cynicism period.

Anyway, back to the silly/fun topic. I won't say ILMism is popism, and there does seem to be a very eclectic bunch of tastes here. But it almost seems like the main hallmark, if any, of ILM as a whole is that wants to be anti-anythingism. Some sentiments I picked up when I found the old ILM Top 100 thread. First and foremost, rockism = bad, throw out the canon, next list will be singles/songs only instead of albums, etc. If it's mentioned on any other list (especially RS), it can't be on ours. "Not enough rap." "Can't believe canon-album-x made top 20." Stuff like that. It just seems like it's implied that there was some greater goal than just listing your favorite music, i.e. the list was supposed to turn out a certain way, something that went to lengths to spit at anything canonical.

I just skimmed the thread, so tell me if I misread anything there (likely :p).

No Melissa, you're off the hook! You like Radiohead!

in any case it's stunning that you could be so insulated that it doesn't occur to you that people can happily like britney spears. how many albums did she sell again??!! maybe these aren't people with whom you usually hang out.

-- Alex in SF

Fair enough. But I thought a few of the recent rockist threads brought some tendencies that could be traced back to the same attitudes I saw on the old top 100 thread. I think it was Hurting that was immediately called out as a rockist when he "admitted" that he didn't care for 80s music, and generally liked music better 30 years ago. It was as if this was clearly an uninformed, ignorant opinion to hold.

Personally I can't really get into 30+ year old music as much as I can with more recent tunes, but the sentiment was familiar to me. I have tried to enjoy lots of different music, and in some cases I guess I just don't get it... and in other cases, I think it is just bad. This happens a bit in all genres, not just mainstream pop, but it's not something I feel the need to change in order to dodge a label.

Slipping back into rockism-debate territory again here, but like I said, if anything it's the forceful rejection of anything 'canonical', the aversion to any set of tastes that can be labeled, and a little bit of popism that best defines ILMism for me. A lot better than traditional rockism, in any case though. I mean, get over the fucking beatles already am I right?? :)

*clings to a 13 year old album as favorite-of-all-time* :(

in any case it's stunning that you could be so insulated that it doesn't occur to you that people can happily like britney spears. how many albums did she sell again??!! maybe these aren't people with whom you usually hang out.

-- You've Got to Pick Up Every Stitch

Thank you, a straight answer! :) Yes, that was my question, and I see how it can be construed as an insult (you actually *like* this??) but it was honest.

In response to your second paragraph, I'm just going to answer as straight-forward as possible. I'm not so insulated that I think people can happily like britney spears, and I am aware of the fact that she has sold millions of albums.

However! My impression of this board was that most of the users didn't fit my imagined (and apparently quite flawed) demographic for that music, quite simply. Looking at the millions of britney cds sold, I imagine a vast majority of those cds being sold to teenage girls who watch TRL every day; again no offense meant here. I hear britney spears playing - I turn around, and it is coming from a teenage girl's car, it is being played outside a middle school. Etc, etc.

I see people talking about picking up 5 records a week, people talking about lots of music I like, people having been to concerts of now legendary bands back in the 80s, and generally just having a pretty vast knowledge of artists from the popular to the utterly-fucking-obscure. For me, when I started exploring music beyond MTV and Clear Channel radio, I found a lot of it to be a little more rewarding than most of the stuff I heard on radio and TV 24/7. Like I said before, maybe I just disliked popular artists due to overexposure... but even going back and revisiting this stuff, it seems just as likely that blink 182, celine deon or staind would be at the top of an ILM list as britney spears. They've all sold a bunch of albums too, no? :)

So, it doesn't so much baffle me that peoples' tastes differ from mine, but like I said this particular choice was for me an anomaly. I couldn't figure out what was so great about the song that it - in quite a lot of peoples opinions, apparently - trumped nearly every other album/single of all time. I guess I really do just have strange tastes, and I'm the one who's missing out here. Ah well...

oh come on, I like about half their hits and I still know what's wrong with Blink 182.

(you know, when I went to see Britney, a very large proportion of the audience were twentysomething women, and I myself was surprised at the relative lack of young teenage girls.)

It's not like you have 'strange tastes', Sleep, they're just not those of a vocal portion of ILM who /do/ exibit v catholic tastes, and not those of a large part of the record-buying public. It's not like populism is the automatic rule, after all.

Also, dammit, there is nothing wrong with Blink 182. And they don't act as immature now they've gone emo!

...wait.

this is the nub of the matter here, it seems to me, not whether or not Britney is good or bad, or better or worse than [insert artist name here]. Sterling's post upthread now doubly OTM. Please stop pigeon-holing people

You're losing a fighting battle here, man. You're a rational man in a pit of devil's advocates---RUN!

Very funny. I never said their tastes weren't valid, I said I didn't imagine the posters here to fit that demographic, and I don't think I have met one person outside that demographic which has enjoyed that music (at least not more than nearly everything else). If you are, in fact, (legal) teenage girls, please post pics ASAP thaaanks! Let's cyber am I rite? 19/m/nyc/model etc *lolz* next

and wtf is wrong with blink 182?
-- adam

Nothing; in fact nothing is wrong with any music, really, since it is subjective, a matter of taste. Again, I didn't imagine the users here to fit their main demographic (now talking about middle school and high school guys).

What I find interesting is the idea that being a very active, five-records-a-week, consumer of music, knowing a lot about, liking stuff Sleep likes, etc is seen as automatically excluding someone from also liking Britney Spears.

Simply a trend I've noticed among 99% of people I talk to, plus myself. Not so much a rule, really. Like I said, usually I check out stuff that is recommended (not having the time to check everything out myself, of course) and almost always, I'm pleasantly surprised to discover music I enjoy. Not so here, so I asked, and now I have my answer. Shouldn't be very mysterious.

this is the nub of the matter here, it seems to me, not whether or not Britney is good or bad, or better or worse than [insert artist name here]. Sterling's post upthread now doubly OTM. Please stop pigeon-holing people

-- zebedee

OTM and thanks to ILM, I have now learned a valueable lesson which is also the meaning of Christmas! Merry Christmas everybody!

Sleep, PUT THE MOUSE DOWN...BACK AWAY SLOWLY FROM THE KEYBOARD....
You're losing a fighting battle here, man. You're a rational man in a pit of devil's advocates---RUN!

-- jay blanchard

:)

Jay: I can only imagine your reaction to all of this, given your attitude on ILF. :)

I'm sorry, I was unclear. I meant just in the case of the Britney single. My tastes have coincided with ILMers on other things, and in my short time here I discovered at least one new group/album from an ILMer.

now everyone's making sleep out to be an asshole because he's suprised there's so much Britney love? What's silly is how everyone always pretends like this world has always been filled with people who give equal love to "rockist" type canon faves AND pop. Maybe I was reading the wrong magazines, but during say, the entire 90s I do not remember anyone saying "you know what's great, My Bloody Valentine and Mariah Carey" in 1991. Perhaps that's because what was charting then wasn't as good as now(which I believe) and because writers/journalists were more "rockist" then then they are now (they were) but to act so defensive when people are suprised to see this type of serious discourse given to pop music that they've always assumed is crap is silly. Would it be so hard to defend yourselves by saying "no, really, you should check out Britney Spears, it's great stuff" instead of "fuck you you asshole for saying the pop music I love is crap."

I'm only responding in this way because this thread is not an isolated incident, and I said this earlier in an email off-list to a friend:

I would admire these bloggers/critics more for their support of said pop songs, if they didn't always have to present their support as some sort of superior stance in opposition to the conventional wisdom that pop sucks

to quote myself.

That said, I truly despise Britney™ and her vile ilk. :)

honestly is 50 people on one shitty net community really so hard for some of these rockist assholes to take?

I said this!! Not in a magazine though. glider and tremelo and "vision of love" were some of my favorite things around then.

So, some more level-headed posts showing up now, which is nice. I don't want to retread the whole Britney thing in response, but suffice it to say that there really was a decent moral (summarized best by jaymc, it seems) buried in all the (rather hilarious) vitriol upthread. Dan's point seems particularly pertinent, and it's interesting to see how that played out the main thread of discussion here.

So who wants to tackle ILMism then? :) Or was I right earlier: there is no such thing?

a) I'm really glad I stumbled on ILM several months back, it's definitely helped me become more open-minded about things I used to dismiss out-of-hand (ie. mainstream pop)

but b) I think popism, ILMish, whatever you want to call it, is still just as rigid and contrived as rockism, it's still based on certain set assumptions about what music is supposed to do and how people value it - I've said before that it's almost too easy to defend and therefore inherently suspicious - anyone who argues against popism is automatically branded a snooty, out of touch elitist.

I was just thinking the other day about this debate while listening to the pop country station at work. Obviously alot of ILMers champion pop country b/c it does such a good job of reflecting its audience, but doesn't the much-hated Postal Service do the exact same thing? It's just a different audience, maybe one that, in the popist mindset, isn't as valued.

poor persecuted Ronan. Britney/chart-pop et al already rules the airwaves of radio and television as well as mainstream rags (see Rolling Stone covers, People, Us, Maxim, etc.), now you're complaining about how it doesn't rule the upper echelons of crit-dom. BOO-HOO. I have no sympathy for you.

Is it that they are too emo? I usually hate that stuff but I still listen to Postal Service, and pop country, ugh.

Terry Riley's alive? Who knew!

xpost - I guess it's just a matter of taste then.

No, he's very much alive and you ALL owe it to yourselves to check out his website, if only for the design!

http://www.terryriley.com/

(xpost: if they didn't reflect such a stauchly "corny indie fuxx" worldview/perspective, i think they'd be beloved on ILM. = OTM)

yes!

While I don't quite love the Postal Service (that album is like two great tracks, eight ARGH SOMEONE SHUT THAT GIBBARD BOY UP BEFORE I TAKE A SLEDGEHAMMER TO HIS HEAD) I find the whole hating-the-pop-emo meme completely alien. Especially when it is EMOTRONICA.

I also die a little inside every time the corny ilm fuxx make snide comments about Jimmy Eat World fans.

Also I hope to fucking god this isn't why anyone champions any music. What a fucking lame ass reason to like anything.

Oh, we've moved onto the Postal Service. xpost then.

xpost really Alex? because there's a few bands I like where part of why I like them is because I'm really interested in the mirror-dialogue they have going on with their audience, which includes me.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), November 12th, 2004.

Alex, OTM. If that's the case then, Creed, Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd must be championed by ILM'ers because they do a good job of reflecting their audiences.

you know, I bet Dero really thinks Wilco is fun and I bet he really enjoys listening to their music, I doubt he really just champions them b/c they're more IMPORTANT and SERIOUS than Britney Spears.

xpost

To follow a tangent completely off-topic, right now I can't get enough of wilco - yankee hotel foxtrot, having recently discovered it a few years late. About a week ago I had the hook to every song on that album running on repeat in my head. I understand they're not well-liked around here, but that's easily one of my favorite albums of the moment.

haha hector

again, i don't CARE who the postal service's audience is. and me and my bride love phoenix. although i was kinda underwhelmed by their new album. i couldn't help but be really. i love the first one so much. still, sounds like a band that got a little lost in the studio. Yeah, i love all kinds of indie crap. postal service ain't no trembling blue stars, that's all i'm saying. their songs just went right by me.

There should be a "Music I share with my wife (or significant other) thread"

Is it just me or do partners play a huge part in stabalizing music listening patterns.

Huge x-post in every direction.

Right about now is when somebody chimes in and says, "Yeah, but it's no Wolf Eyes."

Would you consider this a good or bad thing, or does that kind of judgment not apply?

This isn't obvious to me at all, Josh. Who do you think does that? And why??? Can't speak for anybody else, but I champion Big & Rich (say) over the Postal Service because I like Big&Rich's music about 50,000 times more. Though I do think that Times cover story the other day about how the Postal Service have struck up a deal with the *real* US Postal Service (which I *am* a fan of) was pretty cool.

if you come to ILM looking to find a variety of opinions that don't directly correlate with your own, then you will get it.

If we're going to start making assumptions about ILMers I might have to whip out my Why Fat White Guys Love Certain Types Of 'Dance' Music theory. For kicks.

see: the decemberists, the yeah yeah yeahs, now it's overhead, interpol, of montreal, broken social scene

xpost

It may escape you that I actually don't live in the US, and hence my perspectives on this matter could be different. At least Dan S acknowledged this.

And to be honest here is one of the first places I ever found good writing about pop, and FT in the past, and now NYLPM have always been interesting alternative perspectives. I strongly resent any jabs at the popist side of ILM because for a time, and still to a certain extent, ILM was/is the only forum I've ever found where you can say you like something and be guaranteed that someone will agree with you, or disagree with you. It irks me in a massive way to see someone attack this, however subtley or unintentionally. If you don't like a forum where anything is arguable then go and post on another one. Chances are if sleep has got this far he probably does like ILM, so be it.

Anyway I think the main reason alot of ILMers like pop music is because sonically it's closer to the areas of music they do like, ie it's electronic. This goes back to my earlier point; almost everybody (in fact I'd say everybody) who posts here likes a great deal of non pop music and a certain amount of obscure stuff. It's severely ignorant to assume popular alt-rock is the only alternative to "teenie pop".

x-post Miccio's theory is "cos they're fucking homos". I'm going for a beer.

x-post: Ronan, grow up.

I consider it a good thing now but at first I thought of it as a bad thing. My wife had a similar effect to my listening that ILM did. She forced me to take my taste less seriously, which the whole popism aspect of ILM did, and turned me on to good things I would have never thought of listening to before.

Popism is actually kinda cool, but it gets just as dogmatic as anything else. Sometimes just cause things sell a million copies doesnt mean its great.

i still think this is the best place i've seen on the 'net for a multiplicity of ideas on music, but to pretend there's not a definite hivemind on ILM is kinda disingenuous.

mmmmm.. Ravecave.

MOTHERFUCKER, I LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEE MUSIC!

Not always. I have lived with a few people that had no opinion on music or their taste was so outright horrible that I was content to continue to mine my own strands of interest.

Whether that says anything about my relationships I will decline to comment on.

Josh, I've written a few thousand words on this. Seems pointless to repeat them - check my lead Voice review, and the Big and Rich album of the decade thread, But none of them really have anything to do with the bands' audiences; they have to do with the bands' music. Postal Service are okay, I guess. They strike be as piddly and timid, but they're fine; I have nothing against them. But they really leave no impression with me at all. I couldn't imagine getting excited about them, though I don't doubt those people who they *do* excite.

Hahahahaha! Yesterday, I was listening to a German children's choir sing negro spirituals live in Japan. We live in a wonderful world.

This is an interesting point, Ronan. Sometimes it occurs to me that liking chart-pop isn't that huge of a leap for me, given that a lot of what I listened to in my indie-ghetto days was keyboard-friendly indie-pop and IDM.

xp

At the end of the day, I'm a metal kid turned cornee indie fuc, and nothing will really change that. I used to get really upset about people torching my sacred horses on ILM, but after awhile I took it all more with a grain of salt, realized that there are some really tremendous writers that post here, and enjoyed it for what it is....it's certainly made me reexamine favorites and look at things I wouldn't have considered worthy of examination differently, so that's a good thing......basically i guess just lighten up and enjoy the show and you'll be fine.

I don't know if I have the time to persuade you that 20 years of music wasn't crap, but i would like to say that it's nice to see current chart-pop, rap, and other new musiks finally begin to catch up with what miami bass was doing a zillion years ago! hahahahaha! But it's true. I can prove it!

haha...jeez is "sacred horses" even a real term...i guess it's sacred cows!

and anthony, i meant transparency in a very good way, but honestly maybe it is part of the dissatisfaction I have with pop-country, which does such a GOOD job of communicating reality as most people experience it (hell, I heard a pop country song the other day, it was called "Living Together" and I think the artist was Amy Dalley or something like that, and it sounded more like a simulacrum of my own life than anything else i've heard in forever), consequently I find it a little lacking in that, umm, transportative (probably not the best word) quality of other great kinds of pop music - I'm not getting all those giddy little musical highs that make you fiend for a good pop song like it's a drug, obviously there are tons of great hooks and melodies in the genre, but I think maybe the super spot-on nature of the lyrics might actually ground the songs themselves too much for them to really take flight.

of course this isn't always true, i'm just speaking in really broad terms here, and plus i'm a pop-country neophyte, so this is just based on what I have heard.

I said chart pop. More specifically, what you'd hear on the top 40 radio and on MTV. Miami Bass, LA Techno-Hop, Detroit House/Chicago Techno, NY/NJ house were all wonderful from that period, but that's not what I'm talking about, and while some of it may have leaked through with freak pop hits, none of it really had that wide exposure...never saw a video for Inner City or Debbie Deb on MTV.

This was in the 80s mind you, so for all I know their current crowd could be gay urban cowboys.

In a similar vein I never dug Screwdriver although I was assured by many, including a girlfriend, that they rocked.

MTV Dance (UK) plays this fairly regularly fwiw (Good Life/Big Fun).

But even that latin freestyle and post-madonna stuff went underground, or at least ghettoed to WKTU by the mid/late 80s. I remember Lil Suzy getting video play on the Video Jukebox, but that was about it.

Yeah, I know you did. I guess I should have said that I didn't know if I had the time to persuade you that 20 years of chart pop music was crap. But that's what I meant. I mean, I'd be here all night. Even more then usual even.

PERSONALLY, I can't think of much chart pop that I liked during the 90s, the stuff you mention Chuck, while it did chart, def. faded away in the 90s. OF course WKTU never stopped playing it...

Scott. Please find me one example of anyone calling their music disco in the 80s or 90s. My point was never about the sound, after all deep house/italo/hi-nrg etc are all disco, but the associations with the NAME DISCO WHICH WAS UNIVERSALLY DERIDED THROUGH THE 80S AND 90S AND ANYONE WHO DENIES THAT IS LIVING IN DENIAL.

thank you.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean, and I really don't want to revisit that thread, I said all I needed to say there and everyone can go read it. But it got to the point that people were claiming that dancing to the macarena = disco was cool, when if you told those same people you were a disco dj, they laugh at you.

In fact when I tell people, co-workers, relatives, other DJs that I'm a disco DJ today, they still laugh at me.

I went to college in the 90s and distinctly remember a faddish disco revival of sorts...seeing the Sat. Nite Fever soundtrack in dorm rooms...theme disco parties and such...maybe people weren't taking it seriously, but i really remember these kinda ironic funny type parties.

basically:
disco never died. period.
but people called it many other names instead. period.

i'm pretty sure everybody here agrees on both statements.

i never said anything about what people called it. I said that people made disco music in the 80's and 90's. And you seemed to think that you could only call something "disco" if it was from the original wave of 70's music that people knew and loved. Which is silly. Cuz it never went away. Ask madonna, ask anyone.

xp

xp

But a lot of your VV stuff got shared out over here in the Weekly, though -- unless I'm COMPLETELY misremembering! I mean, the Weekly had its own fine writers too, like the estimable Gregg Araki, whose tastes are almost scarily in line with mine (but who alas hated the PSBs).

It may escape you that I actually don't live in the US, and hence my perspectives on this matter could be different. At least Dan S acknowledged this.

I am literally in tears here. Did anyone else think I was accusing Ronan of being blinkered and reactionary? (I mean, I'm definitely accusing him of being reactionary NOW because seriously, WTF?)

I admit I was rather confused by his words.

thats the point I was just making.

basically:
disco never died. period.
but people called it many other names instead. period.

Indeed, I never disagreed with it. I've only ever made the point regarding the connotations of the specific name "disco" and the culture surrounding it.

OUR VERY OWN Chuck E.'s piece on Introspective in the LA Weekly in late 1988 or so, which mentioned disco,

Chuck Eddy, then and now, is hardly the barometer for the taste and attitudes of the american public.

and besides, italodisco fans DID call their music disco in the '80s!

italodisco was given that name and defined in Italy and Germany, which may not have shared America's biases. It's popularity in america was marginal except for the occasional crossover hit that was hardly talked about as being "italo-disco".

Matos wins the special prize for citing the Pet Shop Boys. Congratulations. ONE band who drew directly on gay hi-nrg that had the balls to call their dance remixes by the name "disco". Put that on the map near the very beginning of disco revival, please, but I'd hardly say that refutes my point.

I can't believe how utterly and completely I totally disagree with most of you about this. Chuck writing about Fun Fun in the Village Voice does not equal the popular opinion of almost the entire country!

Mutant Disco came out in 81 and is a specific attempt at expressing itself as an avant-garde version of something that is considered mainstream and derided. Same with Death Disco.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/fuzzdance.jpg

xpost, otm hector

Saying that, I am a sucker for this stuff. Although I don't like reality television at all.

scott, you're arguing against a point I never tried to make. After much discussion I have continuously clarified that the point I was and am making is regarding the language of "disco". I was responding too people telling me there was never a disco backlash when everything I've ever read or experianced proves otherwise.

and as much as you want to stretch the definition of disco to mean many kinds of dance music, which is fine, there are specific sonic and visual charactaristics that most people associate with Disco, much of which did disappear, and eventually came back. How many articles about Metro Area does one need to read to see this. In dance music circles, Metro Area and Faze Action were considered revolutionary for using live strings which was gasp, so very disco.

not including gay hi-NRG bands

who had to come up with a new term for their music so it wouldn't be confused with disco.

whatever you say, crybaby

Again with your high school flame-war attitude Matos. That's real cool. I may disagree with Scott and Chuck, but I don't mind debating the points and discussing examples. You however, can totally fuck off, which is about the harshest thing I've ever said on the internet.

http://fp.thesalmons.org/lynn/sand.jpg

what was baltimora's "tarzan boy" called by the dance public? i'm not arguing; i am just really curious.

also was "hi-NRG disco" ever called that, or just plan "hi-NRG"? (or "music for a hot body" -- i swear, i have a compilation that called it that. some radio stations in the '80s and '90s even had noon aerobics shows where they played this stuff. it was great! but i don't know if anybody called it "aerobic disco" or not.)

dead or alive were even more disco than the pet shop boys! and guess what, i just picked up a rentacar, and that bloodhound gang hit from a few years ago (the "you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals" one) came on the radio, and i remembered that its backing music sounded TOTALLY like gay hi-nrg dead or alive italodisco. and that was around 1999 or 2000, i think! so modern rock radio may NOT be better now than then after all! franz ferdinand do not have any songs that good!

though I'd love to hear Dan wring his way out of some disco! preferably while I were on a crowded dancefloor.

What does this mean? Seriously.

what was baltimora's "tarzan boy" called by the dance public? i'm not arguing; i am just really curious.

also was "hi-NRG disco" ever called that, or just plan "hi-NRG"?

(And I haven't even mentioned Miami Sound Machine yet!!)

the second thing: you are a DJ. you play disco. sometimes when DJs play records (usually not disco records, but let's have fun and pretend those, too) it's called "rinsing." I was making a silly pun.

Saying that Paradise Garage was going way into the 80s as was Frankie Knuckles in Chicago. Eventually the name changed to house but Larry Levan was probably still calling what he did disco till he died in the early 90s.

don't know why this dropped off...I don't know where the term comes from, whether it's derived from the Evelyn Thomas song High Energy or she's just referencing the new phrase/genre. I do know that by the time I got serious about dance music in the late 80s/early 90s, HI-NRG was it's own genre seperate from house and techno. I remember reading this is some club music trade magazine where they seperated the charts and for the life of me had no idea what HI-NRG was.

what was baltimora's "tarzan boy" called by the dance public? i'm not arguing; i am just really curious.

Pop Music? I really doubt the american buying audience knew the term italo-disco. Was Laura Branigan called "italo-disco?"

chuck, I'm not saying strings are the be all end all of disco, but to most people, that's a big part of what disco is.

Disco's Revenge was the song Matos used on the previous thread to prove that people were always making disco and there was no backlash. My response was if there was no backlash, what was Disco revenging?

etc.

http://www.trasnochando.com/cosas/disco/DISCO-08.jpg

or more to the point, "disco's backlash had subsided by the time the record in question came out" /= "disco never had a backlash"

I would say we're almost on the same page, but the first statement doesn't take into account the point I was making, which was due to the backlash, the term disco, the connotations of disco, dissapeared(except as novelty). Of course to certain degrees disco's backlash started subsiding right away...and continues to do so. But I remember when that Pet Shop Boys record came out and the first thing I thought was how funny it was that they called it Disco. And I remember when filter-disco started coming out and I remember how all the house/techno heads thought it was strange at first, and how it then became hip to like disco. But even in this enlightened age, I still find remnants of the disco backlash quite strong.

the second thing: you are a DJ. you play disco. sometimes when DJs play records (usually not disco records, but let's have fun and pretend those, too) it's called "rinsing."

I've actually never heard that term.

also when I say CALM DOWN it looks worse on paper than I intend it to.

xpost: you certainly know what "disco" and "crybaby" mean, come now.

not my best, but some good moments. Last week's addition kicked ass and we'll hopefully have that online soon.

For the record, Il Disc shirts are becoming the lastest rage amongst NYC djs.

I really can't get enough of Off the Wall era Michael Jackson. Did he do another album with that feel?

Are you sure Scott? John from !!! and Gabe from the Rapture are DJing tonight...

Fuckity fucking fuck that ever fucked a goddamn fuck.

ATTENTION WE NOW HAVE AMERICA'S NICK HORNBY; HORNBY CAN GO HOME NOW.

I mean, actually read one of the proper discussions about Britney's music, or indeed any other pop star, or any other musical discussions in which ILM regulars participate, and you will see this is definitely not the case. The Popist Strawman is even bigger and more detached from reality than the Rockist Strawman (for whom we at least have Sasha if we're ever in doubt).

It sounds like Chuck Closterman is describing a musical phenomenon (ie. "why is this music selling and that music not selling?") rather than passing aeshtetic judgment. His argument seems to built on a Noah's Ark of odd assumptions floating on the floodwaters of meaninglessness, but that doesn't mean he's saying "pop-country is great because it reflects its audience."

You be ILMin'! As in:

You promised you're girlfriend you'd take her to a show
But you went to the WFMU Record Fair
You be ILMin'!

I think I am mixing up Run-DMC and Cool J here, but so be it.

http://www.werenotsorry.com/images/notsorrydamn.jpg

Nick, whatever your problem is with the rest of the thread, this sum-up of Chuck Klosterman more than makes up for it. I'm afraid I'm going to have to quote this anywhere and everywhere the man's name comes up.

klosterman = ihhtp:www.fleshlight.com/main/images/products/featured/smf_butt.jpg?

er, so i just noticed that, on the noize jackazz board or whatever it's called, dan selzer accuses both me and matos of claiming that disco never had negative connotations in the '80s, when neither of us ever said anything such thing here or anywhere else, and when matos repeatedly (see above) took pains to explain the obvious, which is that acknowledging that disco never died (which it obviously didn't) does NOT mean that the word never had any negative connotations (which it obviously did). so dan: do you still not get it, or what? i thought you did, but now i'm confused. either way, please stop putting words in our mouths. it's not nice at all.

>I don't care about nice (Ok, yes I do, you can talk about music without trying to belittle someone) but Disco had incredibly negative connotations in America during the 80s. Everyone BUT Matos and Chuck Eddy acknowledge this. <

-- Dan Selzer (danselze...), October 8th, 2004.<

anyway, it was comments like:

In other words, the specific SOUND you're referring to in the late '70s never died, get it? It's still probably the biggest kind of popular music in the world. It didn't just mean Saturday Night Fever leisure suits in 1978; why should it mean that later?

from Chuck that started this off. I will repeat, and maybe it was my sheltered upbringing in suburban New Jersey but to most of the people I've ever spoken to, to almost all representations in popular culture, to most of america, disco meant EXACTLY that and I'd bet millions of dollars that if I walked up to Rico, the white camaro driving 20 something that was dating a high school friend of mine in the late 80s who made me my first mix straight off WKTU of club hits and back then said, do you like disco? He, like most of america, would have laughed at me.

another great Chuck quote. Chuck, if you think all those things share the same relationship to 70s disco that 80s italodisco does, you are not spending as much time with dance music as I am. And even if they share the same "relationship" which, not being familiar with fast Celine Dion and Leann Rimes songs I cannot attest to, it is just the slight differences, that make for the creation of different genre names. I think you are being way to universal with the term DISCO and that that is unfair to disco!

and finally, I think proving my argument, Chuck again:

I don't even think people who bought Shannon's "Let the Music Play" or Michael Sembello's "Maniac" or Irene Cara or Laura Branigan records in the early/mid '80s considered themselves disco fans; they probably would've just called it "pop" or something! But again, not realizing you like disco is hardly the same as not liking disco.

You can call it disco all you want, that doesn't change the fact that Shannon didn't call it disco, and her fans didn't call it disco. And it didn't sound much like what most people thought disco sounds like, and I don't consider it disco...and I think I have a wide idea of what disco is!

Just not as wide as yours.

Yes, it did. If "Let the Music Play" had come out in 1977 or 1978 (when disco meant several different kinds of sounds that people could dance to, not just one, though for some reason Dan always seems hesitant to admit that), people would have had no problem at all calling it disco, and that goes for any of the other examples I give in those italicized quotes. Just because the music industry taught people to call disco other things (*because* of the negative connotations that the word had accrued by the time Steve Dahl built his disco bonfire etc.) doesn't mean the music industry wasn't full of shit in doing so.

Oooh, now it's "Mad World"!)

I will say that I too have been confused by Chuck's views on 'disco backlash' in other threads. He did point out to me that it was not universally reviled by actual music critics (by showing me a P&J poll from the late 70s - maybe even '80) which was interesting, but I'm not sure how he (sorry, 'you' Chuck - haha) feels about how criticisms of disco worked in the broader culture/press.

YOU KNOW IT. God, I love that song.

I am now listening to "So Addictive". This is maybe the best work mix I've ever created (it's 5 hours long).

but chuck is def NOT ILMism, I don't know what ILMism is anymore...

xp

I would LOVE to be in a position that everyone just says "let's go to that party where Dan is DJing because he plays good music" but people want to know the genres.

funny - i was just watching *diner* last night (found a VHS copy of 3 bucks while xmas shopping, hadn't seen it for years), and there's that scene where the guy gets mad at his wife for misfiling one of his r&b albums in the rock'n'roll section, and all i could think of was, "well, lots of r&b IS rock'n'roll" (i mean, we're talking 1959 here, folks). the couple times i tried organizing my vinyl by genres, i got totally frustrated, because lots of music if not most of it just plain DOESN'T fit neatly into one genre crate. at least not much music that i LIKE, since i tend to prefer stuff that straddles genres and lands on the cusp (i mean, donna summer was using rock guitars on *Bad Girls* right when the Stones were going disco with "Miss You," right?) In some ways, I'm jealous of the kind of literalists who think music classifications are way tidier and simpler to figure out than I do. But maybe our brains are just wired differently; who knows.

New Wave Dance 1, New Wave Dance 2, NYC Club Classics, Disco 1
Italo-Disco, Hi-NRG, Freestyle/Electro, Disco 2
Chicago House and Detroit Techno, New York House and UK techno, Hip-Hop, Newish stuff

and the bottom 4 cubes are filled with random crap.

Had all of these been alphabatized, it would take me a ton more time to pull out records. Now I just think about the kinds of stuff I want to play and I know where everything is. All the records that I don't play at dance clubs are alphabatized in a large shelf. The only confusion comes from bands I like to play, when I file them away into the big shelf, I always forget to bring them to parties. Some bands are split up, like New Order's LPs are on the big shelf, but the 12"s of Perfect Kiss, Confusion, Blue Monday etc are on the Ikea Shelf.

Chuck, I consider myself a pretty eclectic DJ, and a fan of many many types of music, but I think genre classifications are a necessary evil, that can sometimes be your friend. Despite all those cubes, every few records I come accross something where I just can't tell where it goes, and certain records are constantly getting moved around between different cubes depending on what I think it is at the moment! Esp between the "NY Club Classics" and the "Freestyle Electro". I keep moving things between those two.

imagine Herbert tracks made out of the furniture, or sexy Luomo tracks with lithe Euros intoning the names of the different products, maybe get Bob Blank to do some remixes . . . let's do this!

I think what makes me uncomfortable about genre is that I can hear a word like disco or punk or r&b, and I get an abstract idea of a form of music, but I con't define the genres at all, without referring to bands as examples. I suspect genres are phantoms, and close examination only reveals more and more problems. But maybe "Any classification is superior to chaos", I don't know - I think I do alright without one.