Time lines of Rock and Roll/What is going to happen

(Ps. I have shortened descriptions significantly because a reader on the internet possesses less patience than a 'paper reader')

it is truly the age of misinformation and corporate thought/speak. internet and pre-manufactured pop and television is now the opiate of the people.

A kind of side issue - has there ever been a good 'history of pop music'?

Q: For whatever reason (probably too much free time), I seemed to have stumbled upon some sort of seven-year pattern in popular music - 1963 saw the Beatles release their first albums; 1970 had most important musicians either breaking up their bands (Beatles, VU) or dying (Hendrix); 1977...well, you know; 1984 had Zen Arcade and Let It Be and Double Nickels; 1991 featured Nevermind and Loveless; so, in 1998... this is a rather shoddy theory, natch. But, are there any bands or musicians that you would recommend as being possible leaders of this supposed Renaissance?

JT: I think you should go to graduate school or begin writing criticism. I'm not saying that in a pejorative way - I do one of those things and am planning to do the other. I don't mind when people make meaning that way. I am predisposed to it myself. I just wonder who benefits from the streamlining of history in that way. Why do we need to see music in those narrow functioning terms? - as if it's a code to be cracked, or an answer to be found, and then once the answer is presented, the audience must measure their experience in relation to that external fact of, say, "the 7 year pattern". With regards to your example, it certainly didn't speak to me that way. I was listening to Nirvana and MBV at least 2 years before when you said so I don't fit your pattern in those terms, and if you are talking about the cultural affect of that music on mainstream audience - well, Nirvana's effect is plain to see, but MBV is just fetish and speculation.

On an entirely different point, I think everyone has music that they draw inspiration from. They tend to discuss only the bands that have a critical following. Some well-adjusted musicians will add less hip bands to the cannon and maybe we all will begin to re-evaluate their work as well (Nick Drake, Beat Happening, The Silver Apples, Mission of Burma, etc.). In the best cases this widens the possibilities (for example, Henry Rollins re-releasing all the great old Go-Go records), and in the worst cases it just adds to the list of bands that one should name drop. It's interesting to me how history chooses its pillars in any field. Zora Neale Hurston (author of Their Eyes Were Watching God), who is read in probably every women's writing course, was out of print up until 15 years ago when Alice Walker started name- dropping her and working to get her books published again. It's a great example of how history is manufactured. (Sometimes in good ways).

Back to your original question. I couldn't choose bands that fit into the "Renaissance". I like too many of them and I wouldn't want to leave anyone out. I'm more interested in the idea that they were all there than the fact that some floated to the top. There couldn't have been a Nirvana without a Beat Happening. Kurt had a K tattoo. How does that fit into the 7 year plan?

Pre-manufactured pop is soulless. Especially the pop music of today, as it is completely controlled as a money making proposition. Pop music has glory days and very wrong days. 2000 to 2001 equals very wrong days. You can show me examples of very good pop - ie. destiny's child. But I can show you and validate very bad pop - Nsync, backstreet boys, o-town, sugarjones (and the list runs on infinitum as long as the reality show is reigning supreme).

I know, I know, we've been here a hundred times. Sorry.

Just give this a thought, will you: Reality shows = money through the selling of records. If this concept of popstars fails, would corporations be backing this concept? No.

Thus it is done, strictly for money making.

Popstars is a very successful program? Is it not? One band is created through each seasons. Hype = Money behind the band. The band is promoted, etc. And eventually the band reaching the top of the charts. The band eventually dies down only for another band, of the exact same nature to take the place on the chart.

Everything is decided by the corporation for these bands. Image/Songs/Production. It is in effect, something designed, purely to make money.

Mind you, I am not (and again, personal opinion) writing off pop music as a genre, but I do think that this is insideous.

The above-mentioned examplfies what is wrong in our 'culture'. It is gleefully misinformed. I do not accept post-modern takes on my argument. The majority of the bands are created by corporations strictly to make money. It's a business. And the reality shows are the new puppet.

The partridge family was a very good pop band that had a successful television show as well as the monkees. However the difference is that they are not 'reality led'.

Spare the insults and tell me how I am wrong, please.

But OK, why I said you were wrong - a version of the pop "80s" which is "about cold hard greed" and leaves out the flowering of hip-hop and the roots of dance music and indie just seems wilfully lazy. Ditto a version of the pop "60s" which reduces pop to "a lifestyle" and ignores girl groups and soul. You're willing to allow the 1990s to be complex and fragmentary, why not any other decade? "Simplification" is all very well but simplification beyond a certain level becomes useless. It was in the context of that initial posting that I was suggesting you might like to be less snotty in asking us to "give it some thought".

OK - the questions behind reality TV, the internet, and pop are linked: this much we can agree on. Those questions seem to be to be - Who creates 'content' and who profits from it? The current problem is not with the content being created but with the fact that the people making money off it aren't generally the people creating the content.

And I did not mention various genres of music, ie. don't have the time as I would like to post (am posting from work).

So forgive me...

Maybe pre-manufactured pop is a bit much. Professional 'American Psycho' pop would be better?

It's a product, reality show pop. Takes the ideas of Lou Pearlman one step further.

And it blands out culture and we pay the taskmasters.

But here is a thought - take the recent issue of reality television bands and then multiply it by the number of solo albums that are going to be coming out by each of these bands..

And remember, the american psycho pop bands are multiplying like bunnies!

Simple logic. What does this hold for the future of music. Each of these bands take up media space, selling the corporate product.

Spice girls = five solos albums.

O-town = five solo albums

edens crush = five solo albums.

ad nauseum.

POINT ONE tho: is the feedback cycle of fan- fiction pornography, interlocked with the intensified voyeurism of JenniCam and Big Brother et al. This didn't exist (not in real- time) back in the days of the Partridge Family.

There were three other fab points, but I dun forgot em. Help me, ppl with POWERFUL CORPORATE MACHINERY which you think helps you when actually it enslaves you. (I alone am free and not a number, for my LC475 = rubbish on stilts...)

I like the concept of Internet music: sections recorded by individuals and sent to friends to be combined into a big group project. There are probably lots of people doing it already but it's not a big booming business.

Can things be discussed without everyone getting so bitchy?

Pre-cliches? If your discussions are so fabulous, why have they not inspired me? Touchy about your pop music, then?

I'm interested in the blanding out/resurgence of: culture. Especially musical culture.

If no one wants to participate in a "reasonable" discussion without speaking in bitch code, then that is fine, otherwise, let's continue.

I will stop using the phrase 'American Psycho Pop' (how about Patrick Bateman Rock (he would defintely enjoy Hootie and the Blowfish, Hear'say, O-Town but be a big fan of NYSNC and Backstreet Boys. He would have unholy fantasties of Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and pontificate on same during murders).

Cold Hard Greed pop - which is not necessarily bad, is something that just is. But basically it is the music described in the American Psycho book (which I found very funny and fascination).

Bland is:

Politically Correct Easily digested by everyone Fueled by a need to make money, or money being its soul purpose.

And then like the radiohead comment, there is adventurous blandness.

NYSNC, Britney, Backstreet Boys: The mini malls of North America.

The trash littering the 7-11's at the mini-mall.

do you mean, patrick bateman pop v. radiohead.

it is the eighties again!

patrick bateman pop v. dodgy goth

In an effort to have more meaning to the music, could make it even blander than patrick bateman pop? ie. radiohead's newie.

Hmm.

Is that what you mean?

FWIW "cold hard greed" as I understand it = Mel and Kim's "FLM" and Sinitta's "So Macho", a fraction of a genre of a part of a period of the 80s. Where did you learn your history of pop, PF? The Ben Knowles Learning Zone Special?

I was thinking that if this continues, eventually music will reach a nadir. And something unique will come out of it.

ie. Seventies: Prog Rock turned into Punk Rock/Disco.

I can already see the babies of radiohead: ie. Elbow coming out with meaningless yet very pretty and atmopsheric records.

Pop Culture is on a cycle.

But found your point about pop very interesting, so vacous that you could read what you wanted in the records, regardless of content.

Good defn of "bland" for me, for immediate purposes = the original thread question itself, a sequence of abt 12 by-the-yard generalisations which kinda imply that NOTHING OF INTEREST EVER HAPPENED EVER (except maybe "youth rebellion") . Which I don't believe mr sloane really thinks. What used to be that now can never be, sloany — and what wd you ACTUALLY LIKE TO SEE? (= hear, I spose, also)

I find th!s a h!ghly dub!ous statement, !nd!cat!ve of a reakt!onary m!ndset. Not only does !t seem to suggest that only one form of mus! ck can ex!st in thee popular !mag!nation at a t!me, !t also equates punk w/ d!sco, which !s absolutely r!d!culous. I was actually around then (old fart), and bel!eve me, the punk yoof and thee d!sko yoof were 2 *very* seperate and oppos!ng kamps. It alzo equates prog w/ some k!nd of "nad!r" which !s yer standard NME-style rece!ved w!sdom laz!ness. It also assumes that on reach!ng some kind ov music kultur "nad!r", s.th GOOD & FRESH w!ll automat!kally spr!ng forth from DISAFFECTED YOOF. I don't bel!ve we're in a mus!ck nad!r, just a music !nfo-da+a one, but !f we were to f!nd ourselves !n such a state, I wouldn't be at all supr! zed !f th!ngz aktually just kept go!ng down & down. It's at least az l! kely as thee alternative. Why assume that rock/beat/whatever mus!c will be around forever? Why assume anything? Free yr mind, d00d.

Thee futur=diversity, atom!zat!on/balkan!zat!on ov musick kultur into t!n!er & t!n!er fan-groops. everyone famouz for 15 people (momus) Rez!s+ance !z fut!le. Korporate fazcizt muzick kulture = d00m3d!!!!!!!!!!! zinker on m3l+k!m "FLM" = Korrekt!!!! xoxo

"creators" = not at all well defined in "corporate" pop (there's another war going on there, sometimes)

hear'say phenom (in UK) potentially very powerful, since process of "manufacture", far from increasing corp.control, decreases it by several notches (eg contestants are ALREADY, pre-selection, capable performers — can't comment on Eden's Crush, Bardot etc as haven't been exposed...)

As for the other who posted: could barely read your post, so gave up trying.

However, disco and punk aesthically and musically were very different, understood. But it offered a lifestyle choice of dancing and drugs and sex.

I also asked you what you'd LIKE pop music to be: you don't answer.

The best pop?

What would I like to keep in pop?

I would have to think about it.

The best pop for me was Motown/Destiny Child/En Vogue/Pet Shop Boys/Momus/Dusty Springfield. For the most part, a pop song hits or it does not. As with all music, I liked Cher's Believe etc..etc...

Where I can recognize the human in the whole process. As for the pop of today (esp. Reality Patrick Bateman pop), I can just quote Johnny Rotten 'Ever get the feeling that you've been cheated'?

The simple point of this is: The corporations will force feed the children with their version of pop. The market becomes over- saturated. The money men pull out and then something new takes over.

TRY To iMaGiNe THiZ WoRLD oV KuLTuR WHeRe aLL KiNDS oV iNTeReSTiNG CRoSS-CuRReNTS, THReaDS, aRTiST iNFLueNCeS HaPPeN. eG iNFLueNCe oV PeTeR HaMMiLL (PRoG RoCKeR) aLBuM "NaDiR'S BiG CHaNCe" oN YouNG JoHN LYDoN.

THRu HaZY MiRRoR oV WeeKLY MuZiCK PReSS CLiCHe, THiZ & MuCH iNTeReSTiNG LiKe iT=DoeZ NoT EXiST.

WaKe Ye FRoM Y00R ZLuMBeRZ, LaYMoR!!!!

x0x0

Funny, I wz just thinking abt yr Joe Orton q down-thread — to which I have gvn a v.feeble answer, may I be the first to say — and realised that my Theory of Hear'Say = pure ortonism! (ie unplanned potential to unleash *unexpected* sex; which is I believe self-evidently greater via the popstars feedback-cycle than eg motown/DC feedback-cycle, where structure of grooming and/or control is quite difft, whether via berry gordy or beyoncé)

Orton would stand out as a giant among the aphids of culture today.

Assembly line pop but enduced with great vision on how, they, want the pop to sound like, look like, act like. One person, making very excellent records.

But what is the next point: How is music going to be moving once the patrick bateman pop lifestyle dies out (and it will: Saturday, shopping at Liquidation World, I came across ALOT of Backstreet Boys merchandise).

Will it follow the trend and music will be like it was after the initial Tiffany, NKOTB, Debbie Gibson patrick bateman pop explosion or will it differ?

That's next to impossible.

The Beatles were a boyband. So were the Pistols. And the White Album was C.Manson's signature — so that makes the Beatles Patrick Bateman pop as well!!

What's your beef with the net: you haven't explained that yet.

I can't really write about Joe Orton because I am too close to the subject matter to fully understand why I enjoy the works so much.

Quotes from "The Good and Faithful Servant" used to litter my conversation when I first started working/etc/etc/etc/...

As it stands, I do find a true inspiration for living and his words through humour discussed much that is still true about society today.

Even though, rereading the above sentence, I find it is empty and without meaning to fully express the complete adoration I have for Joe's plays.

If it was not someone that obsess and love completely, then it would be easy to discuss and reference his works in a critical manner, but I can/could not.

Back to boybands:

Sure, the Beatles were a boy band but hardly patrick bateman pop. It is not new. It is not shiny. It is not vacous. It is not empty. The music and the image was controlled by the Beatles. Alfie are even a boy band, but the music and image (or lack thereof) are created and controlled by the band.

Patrick Bateman would dismiss *NSYNC's POP single as to left field and black.