From today's Observer Music Monthly
Jon Savage on the Privatisation of Pop:
With events like Live8, you might think that pop has won. Forty years on from the inauguration of the mass media age that they inaugurated, the Beatles have triumphed, and with them much of the perception that they first embodied. (It was heavily symbolic that the Hyde Park show began with a rousing cover of 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.)
Yet to this writer, it feels like a hollow victory. Pop has lost its scarcity value, the sense of being different that gave it so much of its power. Once made by outcasts for outcasts, now it is almost mundane. Although still charged with a generational importance, its current multi-time and multi-age market helps to reduce any likelihood of it exercising this function.
Indeed, today's privatised music economy has reneged upon its historical task. Once the most vital expression of the pluralistic democracy that marked the postwar mass age, it is now part of the American-driven consumerism that is becoming obsolete, if not actively toxic. To retain its energy and power, pop must develop a critique of its own position - and it is always possible that it will do so. But in the meantime, it's hard to regard it as anything more than a palliative: music while you work playing again.
And Paul Morley on pop tv
I used the red button, and started to experience the choices that the BBC was offering me as a music fan. Unfortunately, they induced in me a rather unfortunate panic attack. There was something about using the interactive red button in the way you do to change camera angles during a football match so that you could spring from stage to stage and act to act that made me weep for humanity, but not in a good way.
[...]
As I passed through an airport terminal, I heard someone on MTV suggest that Madonna was the Freddie Mercury of this event, and I have to admit that eventually hearing the whole London8 conclude with Paul McCartney and company singing 'Hey Jude' placed me in a red button sort of a mood, making me think that very little has changed since the 1960s except that there are now a thousand times more people playing rock music, and a thousand more places where you can see it covered.
Well you might dismiss this kind of thing as middle-aged rockism from most writers... but from Savage and Morley?
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Sunday, 17 July 2005 11:40 (twenty years ago)
"it is now part of the American-driven consumerism that is becoming obsolete"
wow, i guess it's nice to know that this is becoming obsolete! last i heard, consumerism was alive and well. i guess i haven't been following the papers that closely.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 17 July 2005 12:31 (twenty years ago)
"To retain its energy and power, pop must develop a critique of its own position - and it is always possible that it will do so."
"The mechanic raised up from under my hood
He shook his head and said, "This ain't good
Your timin' belt's done shrunk one size too small
Those spark plug wires are a little too long
And your main prodsponder's nearly gone
Your injector ports are stripped and that ain't all"
"The torque converter's runnin' low on torque
And that water pump's nearly down a quart
But we caught it all in time so you're in luck"
He said, "I've got the time and I've got the parts
Just give me the word and I'm ready to start
I think we can bring her in for eight hundred bucks"
But don't be downhearted, I can fix it for you, sonny
It won't take too long, it'll just take money
Then he said, "Ain't you that songwriter guy?"
I said, "Yes, I am," he said, "So am I"
And he sat down and played me a song by the grease rack
When he finished singin' he gave me a smile
And I closed my eyes and pondered awhile
And he said, "What do you think?
Now don't hold nothin' back"
Well, I gave him my most sorrowful look
And I said, "This song's got a broken hook
I can order you a new one from Nashville but it won't be cheap
And I know you've been using a cut-rate thesaurus
'Cause your adverbs have backed up into your chorus
Now your verse is runnin' on verbs that are way too weak"
But don't be downhearted, I can fix it for you, sonny
It won't take too long, it'll just take money
And I said, "Hold on friend now I'm not through
I hate to be the one to give you the news
But your whole melodic structure's worked itself loose
It's got so many dotted eighth notes in it
I'd keep her under fifty beats per minute
I mean, that's just me talkin', it's really up to you"
And you've got a bad safety problem with
That dominant chord with the augmented fifth
Just see how dangerously high it raises you up
So just go on over there and work on my car
I'll sit here by the fan and chances are
I can straighten this thing out for eig...nine hundred bucks"
But don't be downhearted, I can fix it for you, sonny
It won't take too long
You guessed it
It may be a hit
I like it"
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 17 July 2005 12:36 (twenty years ago)
"Pop has lost its scarcity value, the sense of being different that gave it so much of its power. Once made by outcasts for outcasts, now it is almost mundane."
as far as i know, most of the spice girls are still recording music.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 17 July 2005 12:43 (twenty years ago)
I have to say (and Savage, being a gay dude, would probably appreciate this) there's a weird parallel between the arguments bemoaning pop's victory as omnipresent force as the key reason for its mundanity -- it was oh so much better when it didn't get any respect and was always under the hammer of The Man -- and arguments bemoaning the sanitization of gay life now that we have some degree of rights, respect and media attention.
Is it correct to call pop music "consumerist" in an age where a LOT of music fans "steal" music? ("the American-driven consumerism that is becoming obsolete, if not actively toxic" -- just say LATE CAPITALISM fer chrissakes, you know you want to.)
― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 17 July 2005 13:05 (twenty years ago)