British Popular Music and 20th Century British Popular Culture - an undergraduate module

Electronic Music
History and Aesthetics of Popular Music Since the 1960s
http://www.courses.dce.harvard.edu/~musie145/

also, no charles shaar murray's 'crosstown traffic', no credibility.

Not a very British record, when all is said and done

imo these are the wrong who and stones LPs, cos those stones especially are more 'american' than early hendrix. with the yardbirds, i'd just go with a 'best of' -- probably with the who, too.

Mr Geir Hongro's music history essay

A HISTORY OF POP By Geir Hongro
http://www.oli.tudelft.nl/jc84/

how can the screening for this *not* be 'this is spinal tap'? i guess the students should have seen it already.

Energy Flash: Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
Simon Reynolds
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0330350560/

Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock
by Simon Reynolds
published by Serpent's Tail, London, 1990
http://members.aol.com/blissout/bo.htm

include in listening:

Comus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comus_%28band%29

Week 12 Post-Rock

a.r.kane
Talk Talk
Bark Psychosis
Insides
Mogwai
Disco Inferno
Seefeel
Scorn
Techno Animal

Essential reading:

Simon Reynolds Post Rock Article in The Wire
http://tinyurl.com/ecrxt

But did anyone buy Comus records when they came out?

No.

re this week, it should be split up into further sub modules

Post-Punk: Pil/ Gang of Four/ Joy Division etc

Synth Pop/ New Romantic/ Futurists/ New Pop

Goth and Industrial

Week 13 The Rise of Drum N Bass/ Jungle

Prehaps the most important / creative / original British music scene of the 1990s

John Peel archive on Radio 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/

Possibly also, as it does show one route these things went, Music Has The Right To Children.

Plus how many ads/trailers have they been in. TOTP isn't the only way to become part of popular culture you know...

The British Progressive House Music Scene - started in the Summer of 1992

Progressive house has its origins in Britain in the early 1990s, with the output of the Guerrilla record label and Leftfield's first singles (particularly "Song of Life") inspiring, according to various accounts, either Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame or then Mixmag editor Dom Phillips to coin the term. In 1992, what was to be the first superclub, Renaissance threw open its doors in the small mining town of Mansfield, and its DJs - particularly Sasha and the then-unknown John Digweed - were instrumental in pushing the sound in its early days. The music itself consisted of the 4-to-floor beat of house music allied to deeper, dub-influenced basslines and a more melancholic, emotional edge. Often, the ethereal "swirly" textures of early trance could be heard in the mix, and various other elements from across the electronic spectrum. [From Wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_house

...

1992 and 1993 were important times, however by 1994 Superclubs scene arrived big time and then it became default dance club mainstream.

yeah, definitely a MAJOR phase in british pop music.

Matthew Collins' "Altered State" is very good on the ahem 'social' aspects of dance music culture - any reason why Generation Ecstasy isn't on the list?

xpost Dom OTM about SAW - and where are the Spice Girls come to think of it? Tack Spice (1996) onto the end of the Britpop module, or better yet do a Bubblegum module taking in the Rollers, Wham!, SAW, Take That, Spice Girls...sorry to play the predictable 'poppist' here but this is a really important part of UK pop history/culture, even if you just want to present it as what the other stuff was 'opposed' to.

(If it was up to me there'd be a whole module on novelty records! But here we're moving into Martian territory I fear.)

i was there...September 2002 Cultural Vibes in Plymouth was one of the most important British clubs of the time. The underground vibe, superb music,...this music scene was very important...indie/rock clubs at that time in Britain were ghastly drab and dull in comparison.

xpost GLAM ROCK!! Blimey. More important even - dare I say it - than Cultural Vibes in Plymouth.

yeahbut a) you're wrong, b) the course isn't based on artistic merit but socio-cultural impact, c) don't be patronizing, it wasn't just the nme that made ppl like britpop d) it WAS just the music press that convinced people to shell out on ar kane (me included chiz).

Madness _and_ UB40 seems like overkill, one novelty reggae act is more than enough. UB40 don't really fit into that whole two-tone/rudeboy scene anyway do they, or nomoreso than, say, Aswad. I'd put The English Beat in there, because they strike me as a band who are about to come to the boil in terms of critical appraisal.

Aspergers and the Internet; "Britpop" in the Myspace age.

Guest Speaker; DJ Martian

Required Reading
rateyourmusic.com

Required listening
Leathel Bizzle - Cor!
MIA - Oi!
Kano - Meh!
Arctic Monkeys - Duh!
Milbun - Oi! Oi!
Less Than Jake - Ska punka rumble rama for fatties vol 4.

This course will critique the socio-cultural impact of British popular music between 1963 and 1999.

i. Critique is not a verb. ii. This assumes the music impacts on the culture and not vice versa. Where does the 'music' start and stop? How is popular defined (i.e. perhaps classical music was more popular for much of that period)?

Songs and LPs will be read as texts which can offer unique insights into British views of class, sex and sexuality, race and politics.

i. Are the insights going to be 'unique' or are they going to be the same insights every other 'text' of those periods also 'offer' i.e. cultural artifacts are turned into history and sociology. ii. Why treat music as 'text' rather than music?

We will consider the influence of American culture (Black American culture in particular) on British popular music, the impact of immigration on concepts of Britishness, changing concepts of youth, the impact of changing technologies on music production and consumption, popular music scenes and the importance of location.

i. Why concepts not practices? Only sociologists have concepts, people have practices. ii. What is 'influence'?

Scrap genre-chronology – a fake construct of the masculine conservative music press

More on modes of production – industry and recording; publishing, marketing, labels (independents vs majors) / impact of technology on recording and creativity. Marxist cultural theory – how does money drive music? What do songs mean and embody? Three Lions, Back For Good, Bittersweet Symphony, Barbie Girl, Crazy Frog

Semiotics – how do you “read” a song beyond cod-lit.theory lyrical dismemberment and away from strict academic musicology? Can songs be “read” musically and culturally without recourse to these techniques?

More on media – TOTP, Smash Hits, NME/Melody Maker; the influence of radio on music, the “loudness war”, history of pirate radio, music on television and music television

More POP – Wham!, Take That, Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, Kylie, Will Young, SAW, reality pop

Marketing – dave Clarke five, sex pistols, girls aloud, arctic monkeys

History repeats – revivals, a history of retro and comebacks and reformations

The image of pop – debord, baudrillard, stylists for “unstyled” rock bands

More dance – Prodigy / DJ culture, imported dance from Northern Soul through Chicago house and Detroit techno

More women – dusty Springfield, kylie, sinead o connor,

Reggae – immigration, British identity; Linton Kwesi Johnson vs UB40

The UK charts – the singles chart, a history of number ones, relations between singles and albums charts

The medium is the message – vinyl, CDs, MP3s; how does how and where and when and through what people listen affect pop music? Hi-fi vs sony walkman vs iPod

Adult pop – eurythmics, kate bush

The dawn of pop – 1956, cliff Richard, shadows

Subcultures – from punk to grime; the mining of subcultures by mainstream culture

Drugs and popular music – ecstasy, cocaine, mythology

Sex and popular music – identity, paedophilia (teen lolitas, industry indulgence [jonathan king], Queen, Will Young, George Michael

Simon Napier-Bell – black vinyl, white powder

The KLF – the manual

Brian Eno – bowie, fripp, sylvian, walker; art music, ambient music, talk talk

Black British music – AR Kane, long fin killie, roachford, lemar, massive attack, soul 2 soul, m people, dizzee rascal, ms dynamite, M/A/R/R/S – sampling, tricky, Bristol, ska and two-tone, the black drummer phenomenon (magic negro) in Britpop,

A history of dance music – backbeat, disco, Acid house / trance / drum n bass / gabba

The Mythology of Pop – what lies are told and why? Who benefits, who tells lies?

Crazy Frog – novelty hits; who buys them why? What is their audience? Mr blobby, bob the builder, edelweiss, cotton eye joe

Authenticity

xpost

oic

Kind of, aye. It was a tune written over a year ago (I first heard it in March last year) so the structure isn't to order. I'd wager that in Danny's head that 99% of the lyric to it aren't "about" football either.

It's all about the publishing company.

X-post - I work with loads of film academics aND TEAHCING THE SAME THING EVERY YEAR DRIVES THEM POTTY. Ooops caps.

'vertigo', 'peeping tom', 'the searchers', 'citizen kane', and 'battleship potemkin'.

Un Chien Andalou ARGH. My Beautiful Launderette ARGH.

ISTR Cotton-Eyed Joe was a Manual record too.

I saw Drummond's ex yesterday (she'd doing a PhD at the uni where I work) and she didn't think it was. It certainly seems to fit the forumula too.

I should ask her to ask him how many people asked for refunds, actually.

How about back to the topic now?

Semiotics – how do you “read” a song beyond cod-lit.theory lyrical dismemberment and away from strict academic musicology? Can songs be “read” musically and culturally without recourse to these techniques?

i think this is something very key: whenever pop music has made an incursion into academia, it has always been read and deconstructed as something else (lyrics-as-poetry, analysing the music according to traditional classical 'rules', or really basic and often erroneous sociological artefact). this goes back to something alex t said near the start - in what ways does pop music work as a 'thing'? as opposed to a text etc. and by what standards should it be judged? how do people listen to and consume it, and in what ways have these modes of listening/consumption affected it itself? and how does this make the study of pop music DIFFERENT to the study of poetry and so on?

because in intellectualising pop music there is always the danger of falling into dylan-as-keats territory.

I think part of this is that academic film books seem to be written a lot more often by people who actually are interested in the films in themselves and know them inside out. Academic popular music books often seem to be written by people who don't know the music they are writing about and are often riddled with the most stupid elementary factual errors.

Absolute Beginners (book vers.) very much should go on that syllabus--it's way ahead of any critical writing on pop at that point, and it's really funny.

(xposts)

I'm actually working on a big piece for Stylus at the moment about mastering/mixing/compression etcetera, and radio vs hi-fi vs live is a big consideration.

aren't they, following this, also made up from bits of the world, though, bits of tendentiously constructed social histories?

Why has film (say) developed it's own strong academic/critical language but popular music not really?

key question, basis of life's work etc.

There are surprisingly few good academic books about popular music and the average quality level of the bulk is way lower than in film writing.

well, yeah, but music writing in general has hit higher levels than filmwrite. imo academic film studs have apoor hit-rate. one of the best film writers, el penman, is also one of the best music writers.

a couple of weeks ago, i was talking with people about how impressively cinema (initially 'low culture') has separated itself from its 'high culture' equivalent/predecessor (theatre), whereas pop music - all pop music, from rock'n'roll to hip hop to techno - is still in the shadow of classical music in terms of academic respectability, and therefore needs to justify itself on those terms, or by appealing to other strands of 'respected' genres like folk or jazz.

i was talking with people about how impressively cinema (initially 'low culture') has separated itself from its 'high culture' equivalent/predecessor (theatre)

but no, cinema didn't come out of theatre, it came out of fairground attractions and shit!

aren't they, following this, also made up from bits of the world, though, bits of tendentiously constructed social histories?

Yes, bits of the world, but does history give you access to bits of the world? Yes, obviously, and no, possibly equally obviously: the story 'I get angry about life so I invent a new form of rock and roll' misses out so much: like, 'what my new form of rock and roll is made from'. The 'made from' question interests me more than the 'why', but generally people are much happier to think in terms of 'why' stories (they have heroes and villains, for a start). If the 'why' stories interfere with the other stories, it seems fair to rule them out of court for a bit, in order to allow the others to surface.

And because the words / notes are bits of the world, and so are the stories we tell about them, there seems no reason to privilege the 'why' stories as giving us some handle on these particular combinations of words / notes. Especially since the particular bundle we happen to be looking at ALSO brings with it certain kinds of 'why' story. And what NO ONE has adequately done yet is examine how the stories rock / pop surrounds itself with are linked (either in terms of intellectual history OR in terms of affect / desire etc.) to the forms used to understand / interpret rock/pop in the academy. i.e. if modern historicism develops out of the same mutation that gives us modern popular music, how can one have an interpretive authority over the other. It would make us much sense to teach a course on the development of cultural studies in Britain using works by the musicians listed as the secondary reading.

how can we guarantee that yr anti-historicism isn't equally a development from this mutation? take yr point, but i like 'why' stories for more than heroes-and-villians bidniz.

...all pop music, from rock'n'roll to hip hop to techno - is still in the shadow of classical music in terms of academic respectability, and therefore needs to justify itself on those terms, or by appealing to other strands of 'respected' genres like folk or jazz.

And even then it's amazing how hard it is to get good academic overviews of 20th C folk for example. Some of them are retardedly bad.

You can get Colin Macinnes' three London novels in a handy and cheap package now. Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749083689/qid=1146136722/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-3981360-6049226

Can't. That's the problem :-0 Actually the term historicism is a bit misleading because my position could be extremist historicism (each historical event so unique no narrative can do it justice). Historicising THIS problem might actually be obstructive, so perhaps my solution above is a further symptom, not a cure.

If we were doing Tom’s decentred course I’d maybe tackle it through the evolution of radio where the segmentation of audiences is quite straightforward. And my starting texts would avoid music writing altogether. Looking at the interplays of aesthetics and demographics I’d start with be Guy Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ and ‘Photography: A Middle-Brow Art’, Richard Hoggart’s ‘Uses of Literacy’ Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ and probably Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ just to make myself angry.

Bump.

This is right on, Scik Mouthy. It's telling, I think, that your friend had a cohesive theme (Brit music), and a cohesive thesis (that there is some relationship between these kinds of music) instead of trying to tackle the entire history of pop music. Also, there isn't a section called: OASIS: MOST IMPORTANT BAND EVA, BIATCHES.

Very, very important, that last thing.

Week 14
Aspergers and the Internet; "Britpop" in the Myspace age.

Guest Speaker; DJ Martian

Required Reading
rateyourmusic.com

Required listening
Leathel Bizzle - Cor!
MIA - Oi!
Kano - Meh!
Arctic Monkeys - Duh!
Milbun - Oi! Oi!
Less Than Jake - Ska punka rumble rama for fatties vol 4.

-- j harris, Tuesday, 25 April 2006 11:13 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ lolled at this hardcore

I'm guessing it was an Esteban pearler?

Reads more like former-Stylus chucklehead pscott.

I posted actual paragraphs on this thread wtf?

Still think this thread could 'go' 'somewhere' if someone takes it by the neck.