Mr Reynolds is on fire on his
blissblog right now. His latest breathless entry, taking in Alan Lomax, Eastenders and Pere Ubu, concludes with this provocative paragraph
"Rock" (I'm using that as omnigeneric shorthand for everything that conceivably might be under discussion) has never decided whether it's a folk form or an art form, and perhaps that indecision or undecidability is crucial, enabling it to perpetually explode and re-explode a whole bunch of different binaries, make a nonsense of them. Stuff I like seems to fall into either category or best of all into both simultaneously (that scenius-genius cusp/interzone/overlap--4 Hero or Dem 2 or Wiley, the auteur nourished by a particular subcultural soil). There's a third category, though, entertainment a/k/a showbiz. That's the enemy, not because I don't want to be entertained, but because if that's all there is, there's nothing to talk about.
Part of the reason it's provocative (to me) is that people who loosely think of themselves as popists wish to redeem "entertainment" from the category of "mere". Though I imagine Simon would suggest that a lot of the showbiz I'm fond of (1930s Hollywood;1970s sitcom;Timbaland/lake pop) is actually the result of bohemias that have burrowed up into the mainstream (in Hollywood writers like Ben Hecht, directors like Hawks; in sitcom the classic postwar generation of English actors [eg Leonard Rossiter]; in modern pop the usual producer suspects [though funnily enough I often find myself defending Justin as the new Astaire against those people who see him as just another poppuppet spoiling an otherwise pretty good Neptunes lp]).
But anyway, I'll be interested to hear ILM's opinion.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 7 April 2003 08:13 (twenty-two years ago)
Another showbiz bohemia I should have throw in (maybe the key one): Brill Building pop, from Bacharach to Carole King. The flowering of so many creative minds under sweatshop standardized industrial conditions.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 7 April 2003 08:17 (twenty-two years ago)
I'd like to, Nipper, but I'm not sure what the question was. In fact, I don't think there was one, and probably that's the point.
I don't think I like the geezer Timberlake - so on that we disagree. I find it interesting how you juxtapose 70s sitcom, of all things, with eg Broadway musicals - I can't quite see what you're getting at here, or what in particular those programmes have to do with pop.
I think your question (?) is really about 'entertainment' and whether we think it's any good. In a way that invites tautology: I like things that entertain me (don't you?). So we maybe need a slightly tighter definition of Entertainment here, with clues to why it's meant to be bad.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 17 April 2003 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)
I happened to see a clip of Tom Waits doing one of his fake boho party pieces from 1977 - and if that wasn't "showbiz" I dunno what is.
― Dadaismus, Thursday, 17 April 2003 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)