what is the point of bloc party and franz ferdinand when i still have all my old post punk records?

:::splutter::: WHAT!?!? ::::splutter::::

I'll take "Damaged Goods" and/or "To Hell with Poverty" over "Take Me Out" any damn day of the week.

x-post

Because as we all know here on ILM, new is better. Old is for the weak and frightened.

Seriously, lots of this new stuff (FF, Rapture, Hot Hot Heat, first Liars disc) is good. The Bravery need to be dropped in a very deep, dark hole, though. One Jack Whatsisface (from TSOL) was enough; we don't need a new one fronting a bad indie-disco band with Beatle/Jet haircuts.

It's not a question of whether or not the kids do it better, but the fact that people buy albums that are new and advertised in larger quantities than albums that are obscure and perhaps out of print. Question is what's the point of the half of your collection of old post-punk that isn't as good as the other half? and what about the lesser half of that half? and why do you have more than one old post-punk record?

And Franz Ferdinand has just as much substance as Go4. "Romance is dead, blame capitalism, I hate my pee-pee" vs. "Romance is dead, let's fuck anyway, c'est la vie!". They reference Terry Wogenheim you know.

You heard the new Hives and wanted the Remains, right Scott? You'll probably think of some Nuggets band who did this better even though the modern band incorporates some post-punk shit in there (Hives got some Devo with the Remains and FF throw More Songs About Buildings And Food in there)

and? so? was 1986 a big year for Gang of Four?

Put it this way, when Andy Gill was producing the first Chili Peppers' album and they told him they were all big Go4 fans he said, "Oh come, nobody likes/liked the Gang of Four"... or words to that effect

yeah, i liked INXS okay. in their earlier new wavier incarnation and their later shinier version.

I reckon personality and content are far more important these days and as long as you have those two things in large enough quantities (ideal example being Pulp) then you can pull everything else off.

One of the major problems I have with The Strokes, Interpol, even Franz Ferdinand is that by and large there is no personality shining through. Its like an entire scene of Casts and OCS's.

i'll admit that i can't keep up with any kind of innovation, but when i *did* was when cast, ocs, etc, were running things; and i don't find ff's late-60sisms any more interesting than ocs' mid-60sisms ('take me out' is probably as good as 'the day we caught the train').

but then i'm not totally won over by all the love for post-punk: surely a lot of this stuff is fashionable now *because* of the imitators. go4 haven't been canonical for that long, and i can easily see them slip back into semi-obscurity.

-- Bimble...

you know how many people must've said that about Go4 originally too?

Can we talk about their first two singles on Rough Trade for a sec? They're perfect. I think those singles are better than Bloc Party and FF's entire output combined.

see i think this can be applied to Girls Aloud too, i don't see their personalities really coming through in the music, which is otherwise sparky well produced, written and orchestrated pop.

/internal debate

xpost

I think GA have more personality than FF. All FF geez does is raise his eyebrows like he's above all this in the videos. the aloud have well-differentiated personas, but not in a naff programmatic way (like the spice girls). how does FF's bass player's 'personality' come over in the tunes?

actually this may not be true either, but all we've got here is men who like current pop generally more than current indie saying that GA have more 'personality' than male guitar bands...and i'm not sure how you can really back that up

The vast majority of hip-hop is not especially innovative. Ditto Europop, but you will rarely see the kind of argument used against Franz Ferdinand or Interpol chucked their way. Significantly, both genres are at their best where there's the biggest force of character and personality (no matter how plastic or contrived).

Also, rate of change and progression always slows down when the genre in question has been around for a certain length of time - look at drum and bass! Could you imagine going onto a country or folk thread and slating the artists within for being backward-looking? As far as I can see, the only reason indie gets particularly singled out in this regard is that its set up as some kind of vanguard.

not convinced of this at all, despite warming to them/liking a few of their songs in the last two years

obviously 'innovative' is a slippery and slightly crap term, but clearly dressing up like bands from 25 years ago and making "spiky, angular" guitar music... very little hip-hop is that retrograde (okay, but when it is it's being 'old skool' -- maybe FF need a similar GOOJF card).

indie bands always go on about how they're such a breath of fresh air blah blah though, so different to that other crap in the charts.

Actually I doubt many people said that at all about Gang of Four, because unlike FF, Gang of Four weren't hyped relentlessly all over the TV/radio/printed media by some multinational corporation(s).

Well yes that's what I was talking about with regard to vanguards. I don't like FF, Take Me Out excepted, but this thread question is only really valid if FF bring nothing new to the table. Otherwise we're in "what is the point of electroclash when I still have all my Gary Numan records?" territory.

i'm so suspicious of this sort of remark tho! it's almost exactly like when people say 'Girls Aloud? not into that manufactured stuff really but i do like that one they did about sound underground or whatever'. i can't see what 'Take Me Out' has that nothing else on the album does apart perhaps from a glaringly obvious and rather unchallenging hook and hit factor ('Matinee' has a faster, busier chorus and hook but everyone picks up on one annoying line regarding Terry Wogan and this kills the song? come on!)

Okay then, Blount, upon their debut -- who did Gang of Four IMMEDIATELY court comparisons to?

no they're not the only ones but white rock's always been on top, which makes it seem that bit more annoying than dance purism et al

It's less about specific songs and more about style.

but this doesn't make it auto better surely. best track on the album to dance to fair enough tho.

I'm pretty sure, in 1978, some grizzled old geezer was whining about Gang of Four being nowt the bastard offspring of Dr. Feelgood and Capt. Beefheart
-- Some Dadaismus Implied (dadaismu...), March 3rd, 2005.

I didn't say it did, I just said I liked it more!

cash in music can often be good too

Fuck Retro!

um gee alex maybe the dozens of other fucking postpunk bands? not to mention (and i know this term will be unfamiliar to you) FUNK bands?

Why do you think that I'm unfamiliar with funk? Moreover, while yes, Gang of Four applied elements of funk to their music, one would be hard-pressed to confuse them with the more conventional funk bands of the day. Look, I don't know why you're having such a hard time accepting the notion that Gang of Four were simply more of an innovative band that Franz Ferdinand. It's not rocket science.

"Take Me Out" swipes a Zep hook, yes (specifically "Trampled Under Foot")

helpful to RETRO ROCK FANS.

But Gang of Four songs can be catchy too. ;-)

In Praise of.....Mothership Connection by Parliament

(In the same way the Hongroite line that the Beatles are de facto superior to Public Enemy because of melodic and harmonic complexity. The counter being "well then, they're both shit. Look at Mozart and Beethovern).

In Praise of.....Mothership Connection by Parliament

I reckon personality and content are far more important these days and as long as you have those two things in large enough quantities (ideal example being Pulp) then you can pull everything else off.

One of the major problems I have with The Strokes, Interpol, even Franz Ferdinand is that by and large there is no personality shining through. Its like an entire scene of Casts and OCS's.

..which I really agree with. I hear the bands mentioned in the thread title, and I don't know, there just seems to be no... no life there. Nothing, I guess, vital about them. shades of "will this do?" I agree w/gareth that innovation is overrated, I'd just rather hear something that sounds like someone wanted to make it, rather than, you know, dutiful..?

Fucked that singer from the Fiery Furnaces?

Whether that equals modernity in itself or whether it just means that house is now another retro element to add to the mix has I'm sure been done on a million DFA threads I can't be arsed reading.

well Swygart did draw a comparison to Daft Punk when 'Take Me Out' first appeared

Actually, useful to fans of ANY kind of music. Definitely better to think of music in terms of traditions, it's much more fair and sensible. When you think of things in terms of "retro" you're stuck entirely in terms of the marketplace. It seems like the urge to dismiss these bands entirely as retro is mainly a self-serving move to elevate the bands of your youth or to just glorify the past in general and treat those artists as though their ideas are dead things irrelevant to the present. If anything, you ought to be thrilled that those ideas are still alive, even if you prefer the old stuff.

If anything, you ought to be thrilled that those ideas are still alive, even if you prefer the old stuff.

Well I am, and I'm also well aware about what bands work for me (Ratpure, Bloc Party, Franz F) and what don't (Interpol, Killers) -- being able to put into words, not so easy all the time.

Definitely better to think of music in terms of traditions, it's much more fair and sensible.

it's more fair TO RETRO ROCK FANS. i mean work 'in the tradition' of rock music, but add something new. being 'traditional' is one thing; copying old styles is quite another. p-punk peaked 25 years or more ago. that's a long time in the history of music.

the inner dialogue lp is not overrated

i dont really like this postpunk stuff, then, or now, its a bit drab

its a bit drab

'Fryston Main'?

I find most of these bands* a bit irksome cos the gulf between what I feel about them (boredom, apathy) and how they are perceived in some quarters (vital, thrilling) is depressingly big. It is because I am old. (* - I don't even know who I mean by this).

(Oh, Shriekback's guitarist was my tutor at recording college a couple of years ago. What a nice man.)

Alan says: Maybe the self-parodying, never serious world of Pop and the student-angst world of Indie are no longer so far apart – and POP HAS WON.

as far as the glut of bands on MTV2 playing like Go4 or The Jam again, this need only be a remembrance of how fun that kind of thing can be to both play and hear, in conjunction with the cyclic shift from what was popular ten years ago (not that) back to twenty (that). easy as pie really - innovation probably not an issue as can't really be done now can it?

the other problem is, the chasm seemed a lot wider in the 90s than now. if not only because bands capable of bridging the gaps like Franz and the Scissor Sisters and GA didn't actually seem to exist then.

Didn't we have this argument about The Darkness a couple of years ago?

i think you're in a rare bubble there tho actually Matt. i have never ever actually worked with anyone who actively loves girl pop AND student indie in equal measure, tho i did encounter a few at university prior to entering FT/ILM bubble myself years later. but maybe i'm not wise-up to how much the chasm has contracted.

The fact that some of 'these' bands are selling lots of records and appealing to a very different crowd than the 80s groups is quite interesting (its newness is not its sound or attitude but its market penetration and demographic).

I look forward to 12-y-o girls fainting at gigs by Dem Babouns (groop I will manage to immense success in 2015 by copping the sound of Draft 7.30 and fronted by androgynous-laptoppers-with-cheekbones).

(Many x-posts)

but i still don't think many people accept this stuff as pop -- the bands look awkward because they haven't been to stage school. in the US hip-hop managed to saturate pop music, and the hip-hop video is a major institution. british rock/indie has never achieved anything like this -- FF look by turns awkward and superior when engaged in the pop process. kaiser chefs in the charts feels anomalous, and in fact even at the height of britpop the big-selling records were mostly house and rnb, iirc. britpop was still like a raid on the charts.

Point? Why must there be a point?

this brings to mind their terrible dancing in the 'Matinee' video, where they do indeed look rather awkward if not just plain irritating. i think Kapranos looks good enough when furiously strumming and bopping from the waist up however.

the indie as exclusionary thing is a bit straw man, anyway, to an extent, but, as tom suggested, its less so still, today

i like the idea that the indiefallbackclassics (stone roses etc) are absent, but i dont know how true this is. i have the feeling in london, these tracks are now gone, but, they are still there in rest of country (certainly in leeds and manchester, the weekend before last i had the misfortune to hear cast and kula shaker while out)

clarify? about what?

i'm sick of the 'straw man' term more than the music!

i wonder if you can still hear 'fools gold' or 'step on' in london clubs (inc. college bars e.g. Collide-A-Scope at Kings) too, as you still did three years ago.

i think this is unforgivable! but we're back to the whole 'ten years ago more unfashionable than 15 or 20 years ago' thing i guess (not that hearing 'Fool's Gold' or 'Step On' would be much better, but they didn't seem to really lose popularity for over ten years after the height of it did they? the same perhaps cannot be said of 'Hey Dude' and 'Finetime'

i haven't read the whole of this thread but FWIW I thought the tracks from the new bands on the "post punk" compilation CD that Mojo are giving away with the latest issue fared okay betwixt the "classics"

I mean why the endless necessity of "DO YOU LIKE THEM/OR NOT" when most of the time you might like one song but not want to buy their scarf and go to watch them play away to Huddersfield etc.

There are countless dance acts for whom I like one single, and it's no problem, there is no badge of identity there, I get so sick of having to categorically like or dislike indie band after indie band when talking to people who categorically like or dislike indie band after indie band, despite the fact they aren't that fucking different.

No other genre has the same polar opposite madness to it, you don't see people on the microhouse threads going "GAH I FUCKING HATE PERLON, THEY SUCK SO BAD, KOMPAKT ROCKS"

Ever watched Jon King and the other Go4 members dance? They make Simon Le Bon look like Isadora Duncan.

but how does this compare with your own vigorous 'defence' of Dance Music, or at least scathing reaction to mis-conceptions of Dance Music? you could say Dance Music is/was a club i support(ed) and defended passionately against critics and willed to win. i'd agree now that this is/was 'wrong' but it was perhaps a necessary evil at the time. same would go for other enveloping genres (hip-hop, pop and yes, indie) i guess. the thing is that these four all somehow 'won', they reached the top of their initial mountains to climb in gaining respect critically as artistic forms to varying extents. so the problem is with this idea of the press and media, and 'idiots' you meet and their narrow minds when it comes to perceptions of what's popular, what's important culturally, what's artistically more worthy/deserving/honourable, not the music itself or the trends within it.

One of the major problems I have with The Strokes, Interpol, even Franz Ferdinand is that by and large there is no personality shining through. Its like an entire scene of Casts and OCS's.

OTM, I can't get into these bands 'cause I don't see how they "speak to me, mahhhn." But also,

Ronan OTM. Buying into a band as a personality is such a weird, yet so intuitive thing that it's rarely questioned.

the question then is 'isn't it better that bands like FF and The Killers (subtract for over-exposed hip-hop, dance or pop artists if you wish)' get all this attention, keeping the actual, real Scenes underneath the radar, where they 'should be'? or is it all just propping up itself for it's own sake ("we need to hype up some bands to justify our own position/salaries"?)

i may have lost my thread a bit here...

I mean, if someone as sexy as Alex Kapranos or Julian Casablancas fronted the Go4, what a fascinating dialectic it would have been! I can concentrate on Walter Benjamin and Adorno better.

Alex Kapranos and Julian Casablancas are not sexy. At all.

i haven't actually heard a huge amount of Go4 but my impression is that any innovation lay in them not actually being very orientated or particularly technically competent as musicians (see also Stooges, Pistols...) but i could just be talking out of someone else's arse. i like a lot of what i've heard of them anyway (THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING I LIKE GANG OF FOUR ;)

-- scott seward (skotro...), March 3rd, 2005.

I believe that this notion comes solely from anthony saying that there is supposedly a lot of "Kinks/Raiders shit" in Franz Ferdinand.

"Punk is more than just a Mohawk hairstyle," Tolbert said. "For us back in the '90s, punk was a way of life. I see these kids today hanging around Gilman Street in their leather jackets with their wallet chains, and I just want to say to them, 'You think punk is a costume, man?' Back in'93, it was about so much more: It was a rebellion against outmoded belief systems. It was a cry of outrage against the repressive authority of the Clinton Administration."

"Those so-called punk bands they listen to today? Sum 41? Good Charlotte? The Ataris? They're not punk. Back in the day, man, we used to listen to the real deal: Rancid, The Offspring, NOFX, Green Day. Those guys were what true punk rock was all about. Today's stuff is just a pale, watered-down imitation. There's no comparison."

"I saw some kid wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt the other day—he couldn't have been more than 9 when the Pistols did their Filthy Lucre reunion tour," Tolbert said. "I was like, 'You can listen to the music, you can wear the T-shirt, but I was there.' I had fifth-row seats at that goddamn stadium, man, right up front, close enough to see Johnny Rotten's wrinkles. Did you see an original member of The Clash play during Big Audio Dynamite II's last tour? Did you see two of the four original Ramones play at the KROQ Weenie Roast in '95? You did not, but I did. I swear to God, they're like a joke, these people."

"The thing I can't stand is when they get all self-righteous and act like I'm the one who doesn't 'get it,'" Tolbert continued. "That attitude is totally contrary to the whole inclusive spirit of what punk is all about."

if you go put me on that thread i'm gonna strangle you. how many times do i have to tell you: drugs+age=yer the one fer me, fatty

But this has been the MAJOR cornerstone of rock forever! It's not suddenly going to vapourise! Opposing it to pop consumption doesn't really work either: a massive great whack of pop is consumed in exactly the same way. Certainly, if any pop artist achieves any modicum of success, a hell of a lot of the consumption of that artists output is going to be rooted in some notion of fandom.

and ff sound no more like go4 than go4 sounded like funkadelic btw.

again with the !!! tho, their album didn't seem to make ANY end of year polls! which struck me as a bit odd

They have better songs.
They actually understand what it means to rock *and* have some idea about what makes good dance music.
They are much more fun to dance to.
They use a much wider sonic palette.
They are extremely entertaining live.

1. Wittier Lyrics
2. More interesting melodies, the hooks still there but not rammed down your gullet.
3. Music not paint by number nor does it rip off one style or influence whole cloth -- turns influences into own sounds.
5. Enjoyable singles.
6. They don't sound like Gang Of Four
7. ONE SENSE OF HUMOR.
8. I don't like the Talking Heads.
9. Tim Harrington is a better dancer.
10. I have a beard.

Hm? Fuck the greater good, I only care about my good.

selfish motherfukkah, wot about da childrensssss!!!????

Also, MIA was probably the last good band Las Vegas ever produced.

why don't you stick to never bothering to share your dim thoughts on anything then, in future.

There are some really good Scottish rock bands tho! Most of 'em aren't really recent. Europeans have gotten soft, is the problem. Even Mogwai is too twee for me, too twee to BLEED.

(Orange Juice and Josef K and Teenage Fanclub (at least the early stuff) and some others are pretty twee in a sense but I still like them better) (now that I think of it, I blame the Pastels - now there's one crappy Scottish band)

(I'm not even sure if the ct are scottish but whatever)

scott you've been living in new england too long.

What, you mean like Richard Strauss?

the Fire Engines jut did this, no?

No other genre has the same polar opposite madness to it, you don't see people on the microhouse threads going "GAH I FUCKING HATE PERLON, THEY SUCK SO BAD, KOMPAKT ROCKS"

No, of course not but you might hear someone say "what is the point of Kompakt and Perlon when i still have all my old Guerilla and Transmat records."

RickyT: But this has been the MAJOR cornerstone of rock forever! It's not suddenly going to vapourise! Opposing it to pop consumption doesn't really work either: a massive great whack of pop is consumed in exactly the same way. Certainly, if any pop artist achieves any modicum of success, a hell of a lot of the consumption of that artists output is going to be rooted in some notion of fandom.

Taking Sides - Age-old mods v rockers, Beatles v Stones, prog v punk, Blur v Oasis, NKOTB v Take That VS "every posse and crew, the future is before your eyes"

Best post ever.

selfish motherfukkah, wot about da childrensssss!!!????

What about 'em! (More seriously, an era/time with a huge amount of what is available mixed with astonishing ease of availability = those who care will look further all the more easily than before, those who need not care so much won't need to, etc. etc. Nothing has really changed except the idea it's a struggle to discover something anymore -- it isn't, it's all down to one's own desire to look around/listen to something.)

(xpost?)

and they sounded more like the gang of four than any of these moderne guys, and so did the membranes, nightingales, and limeys like that.

ned, what i meant by this was: some folks use those oh-so-cool soundz of the past to make pop music that will infiltrate the central nervous system i.e. MTV and the like. and some use those noises to make a racket like Mahjongg and have no intention of getting their music on the radio. and the greater good if you like those soundz is that you hopefully get to hear good to great songs on the radio that use those sounds. or in the mall. or on t.v and i realize that you don't drive a car, watch t.v. or shop at a mall, but some people do! and those people are the future, ned!

and i'd be interested to read Simon Reynolds views also i think

i think it ties in, in a way, esecpially the LSF vs FF thing, to how dance and hip hop are perceived on each side of the atlantic, could you say that hip hop is the american version of dance?

one thing is evident though, no good music has ever come out of Scotland (including Dawson)

OTFM

one thing that interests me in all this, is, would you say that this was dance music? is dance music primarily a european thing, or could you say that MC5 were dance music?

oh wait, you're being "ironic" again, right?

I liked Dawson.

No, not the dance music Pandora's box!

english people dont do irony!

charlton you are crazy.

hstencil you are not sure what the difference is.

and yes, the MC5 are most definitely dance music. mostly on the 3rd one though. "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)" and "Future/Now" and "Sister Ann" and "Over and Over" swing WAY harder than any of the crappy bands this thread is about.

But Scott, you know you're creating an overly simplistic model -- it's not a model without validity, of course, but it increasingly comes into question. The central nervous system is not necessarily an automatic conclusion -- the MTV/Clear Channel 'this is the mainstream and always was and always shall be' approach is wish fulfillment first and foremost, and open to economic challenge as much as anything else. Similarly not everyone creates something just to get on the radio but not everyone is creating some sort of aggronoisefuck piece either (if anything the argument that those not specifically working for radio airplay are by default creating a 'racket' feeds into a top-down model of what music creation is like). You can be listening to a narrowcast XM satellite in your car, you can be walking the mall listening to your iPod, etc. etc.

Now obviously this is partially a full on 'the possibilities are limitless!' fantasy when reality is not quite so clear on the point. That there's an intertwining of the music one hears (the books one reads/the games one plays/etc.) with a level of social acceptance that's astoundingly important for some, that can change and grow more or less important depending. But it's in flux and will always be in flux.

Everyone is the future, my good Mr. Scott. ;-)

true. not way harder than Guns N Roses and Montgomery Gentry and AC/DC and Teena Marie and "Surfin' Bird," though.

And I like radio as a medium and I want to see it get better not worse. So there.

Bahahahaha

very slight update in production values aside, FF could easily have slotted into the post punk scene of 1982. i doubt gang of four could have slotted into whoever its being suggested that they sound like.

ive got no problem with people saying FF offer a fresh, smart revivalist reenactment of post punk styles of 20 years ago, but when they start going on about brilliant and new and amazing they are, as if theyre reinventing the wheel or something, it gets a bit hard to stomach. i dont hate ff, like the strokes, they sound fresh to me, although they are a bit robotically stiff (someone lubricate their arms and guitars please and teach them more than that one riff and one song which they seem to enjoy repeating), but original or, *snicker*, new? not by any means.

when did it become okay to be openly derivative in indie/rock? to not even attempt to try something different, never mind innovate? TVOTR might not have dozens of brilliant songs (they do have a few at least though), but at least theyre doing something new and sound original.

there i just did it.

I think you should have stopped after the second question.

Stormy, Adorno's approach to materialism is not the only way.

anyway, can we forget my TVOTR comment? ;)

Tell that to O-Zone!!

er...1981, maybe? (or 1977?)

Nicholas Southall, of this parish, thinks it was The Jam.

And c'mon guys, Elvis invented "indie" rock = Sun was an indie = Elvis imitated black r n' b = c'mon laugh at my joke will ya? = not sure I was actually joking but hey

often seems totally fucking random to me!

1. younger ie. not old ie. not around since 1979
2. willing to play the press/publicity game (tho Pave were obv. wary in a way that made them endearing to indie types as opposed to Circle X's obscurity!)
3. photogenic
4. fairly melodic (tho pave had noizy bits too!)
ad infinitum!

that's not an indictment, btw. Obv. some bands will never break big. But it's not an accident when bands do, by any means. Phone calls, faxes, emails, promos, etc., etc.

xpost - and sometimes it seems random but it's not! everyone cites Nirvana but DGC gave them a HUGE push.

xxpost - not entirely about looks but it's not absent either!

but could you play it next to some original punk or 60s stuff now and say 'hey that could easily have been from (insert respective era being aped)'?

granted, you could probably tell the differences between FF and the original post punk bands due to minimal production differences, but FF seem to operate as though theyre trying to ignore any developments that have taken place since the early 80s (well apart from the wogan show). that very enclosed, flat production they have, while obviously not a direct recreation of 80s sonics, seems to aspire to similarly cold, closed, reverb-less properties.

who could have conceivably had tons of hits in the U.S. if they had been marketed enough

is indie-weirdness at its finest! Indie rock usually finds its level, just like water. okay maybe that's cynical but I really doubt Stereolab could get any bigger than they already are.

anyway I gotta run and go do an underground (literally) noize laptoppy show.

Understandable. But then comes the the other half of the one-two punch. For every ILXor who's too tired of poking fun at Kings of Leon NME covers and reminiscing fondly about the mid 80s, there's a Jon Williams or two who've taken up the crusading mentality. Indie fuxxors beware: with can of Bud in hand and fingers precariously poised over a keyboard ready for abuse, our hero hesitates for a moment to ask himself life ultimate question. Are the killers just as bad as the strokes, or are they worse?

I can see where this is coming from. Hype sucks. NME hype sucks. Spin hype sucks. Pretty much most music journalism that claims to be intelligent is anything but. There are bandwagons and there are people who ride them and jump from one to the other, living lives which their contemporaries find pretty fucking empty, disturbing, and just plain stupid. In that sense, let the Franz hate continue.

Having said that...I go to college in a secluded Midwest school whose dilapidated Brezhnev-chic buildings are the only thing more depressing than the scene, i.e. "people who take their music seriously." You rail against teh Strokes and teh Franz, I rail against douchebags who read pitchfork like a bible and get high to Blueberry Boat to feel hip. And this is the height of culture here, mind you. For mainstream, we're still talking about frat boys riding around in cockmobiles, blasting whatever could possibly have the most "fuck bitches" lyrics in it, and spending their parties holding up lighters to commemorate the beauty of 90s alternarock circa Everclear and Bush. I have seen these people and drank their beer, and inwardly I have asked myself "is there hope for us? Does it still lie with the proles?"

What, Jon, is this universe where instead of drinking skank-ass beer and beating up on fags, frat boys listen to Franz Ferdinand and girls take you to their room to make out with you and listen to the Strokes? If those harrowing stories you keep repeating are your idea of a musical or cultural hell, I'd like to invite you to Ohio University to get your face beaten into the ground.

Oh, and I haven't really had a lot of time to get to know post punk, but the reason I started liking Franz Ferdinand is because "Auf Achse" reminded me of the same sort of careless, hedonistic abandon and desperation so shamelessly embodied by ABBA in a song like, oh, "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)." Which sounds much more pedantic than my actual reaction, but oh well. For better or worse, I've had this sense that you don't really see that in a lot of American music, which tends to take itself much more seriously or descend to Pavement-like degrees of distance for purposes of irony or general wankery.

The Beatles will never make it in America!

cleary not but "what the public wants to hear at the time" (obv. v. subjective since the public is pretty massive/passive) /= luck!

okay really going this time.

okay now i'm late. fuck.

and calling the massive passive is the oldest cliche' in the book. yes, promotion of records has an effect. to act like it is the only variable that turns records into hits, though, is sheer idiocy.

Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" was a socialist manifesto, and it went #1. (As did the Singing Nun!) (Stereolab, on the other hand, kinda suck.)

before them: dirty vegas, maybe? (not "rock" i guess though).

or (xpost) what Blount said

http://villagevoice.com/music/0331,tracker_writer.inc,45510,.html

Jet, surely

"Now that "punk rock" is not just hardcore anymore, it's re-embracing the general sweep of the old punk and old new wave, from the Heartbreakers to Lene Lovich to the Bangles to the Raincoats. In fact, the concept "neo new wave" might be more to the point: Punk was better than new wave in 1978, but now that punk is rigid and revered you're better off going back to the silly new wave for all the glitter and trash that punk originally tried to reinsert into rock."

Frank, here, is putting it all in a punk rubric and I don't know as that I see the intent of a band like Satisfact or the Rapture or Franz Ferdinand as being punk. I don't think it was a "punk is dead so new wave is the new punk" move.

-- Some Dadaismus Implied (dadaismu...), March 3rd, 2005.

shoot the kids!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007P78RQ/qid=1109900635/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-4204839-3895845?v=glance&s=music

(i'm serious about that comparison too)

I woulda liked Stereolab when I was 9, but I was a fucking weird kid who read Breakfast of Champions and owned a tape of the Repo Man soundtrack in 1986 and spent half my summer looking through books of late '70s European graphic design at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's library.

Hey, y'know where I heard "The Free Design" on TV? Viva La Bam!

but i think the problem with all of This Stuff (the neo nu new wave, that, as everyone has said, doesn't sound much at all like Go4) is that it's bringing back a certain sound, or set of sounds, but not the method that went into making them.

this is what's underneath the "it's not innovative"/"innovation schminnovation" back-and-forth: the post-punk outfits, whatever they did, they did in the present (and all this history gets compressed, and i don't know it with any detail anyway). so let's take the standard line about post punk, it was rock with rock stuff subtracted, or black american or african stuff tacked on, or tried, or some kind of "conversation" attempted with "funk" or "the dancefloor" or "technology."

well, what would it really mean, HOW WOULD YOU GO ABOUT MAKING A RECORD that did all that, only with all those terms translated to what's around us now? would it sound like Franz Ferdinand, or what? no one seems to think so.

if there is one point of forgiveness, i think it is that the post-punk Moment is pretty great! i mean, ESG playing before Larry Levan! the sense of, i dunno, more permeable borders, something...

FAMILY FODDER ARE GREAT TELL ME MORE ABOUT FAMILY FODDER.

i'm being selfish. i just want my moment, i guess, i want the present to feel like it's worth something. it's not a totally healthy impulse. or at least, i want to feel like, when the message comes down that says "this is the thing," i can more-than-half believe it. i was BORN in 1978 for christ's sake. and no rave for me, i grew up in iowa. so, boo hoo.

i'm romanticizing postpunk's "openness" i'm sure (and like i said i know fuck all really), but stuff like FF just makes me kind of sad more than anything! what once was a sense of possibility is now: there they go in their dark ties, ticking off however many of this list of already-solidified options. and then there's the response, "well it is pretty catchy." it's not enough.

if i recall reynolds and mark s had a big go-round on this point a while ago. wanting your moment = rockist, probably.

they were in Volvo and VW commercials ya big dummy!

postmodernism existed in music before it existed anywhere else.

Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" was a socialist manifesto, and it went #1.

this was played on the jukebox tonight, followed by springsteen's "born in the usa." never were two more lyrically depressing, yet musically peppy songs ever written (and taken to the top by a public that didn't understand them).

Then one day it shut down for a refit, and when it reopened it had a policy of 'nice' music only...

Rekkids I remember buying over the counter at the larger branch the moved to later - Action Pact "Suicide Bag" 7" Throbbing Gristle "Something Came Over Me" 7"

Virgin shop now = mobile phone shop for the most part

(creak, creak)

(*yes DLR made fun of the Clash during the Us Festival but he's DLR and you are not)

(nu)(post)punk sounds better on vinyl (maaan)

The threads are everywhere...