FT's relationship with non-pop OR: Wear your GYBE! shirt with pride, Tom

The occasional baiting of indie fans and my personal dissatisfaction with most music *writing* aside (fuck you and your back-to-91 nostalgia, rock writers, you're worse than the baby boomers), FT's aesthetic has always been to try and say interesting things about interesting music. Since I think a lot of interest in music comes from its context, public and private, we've had a lot to say about pop. The creative flowering of pop in 99/00 helped, too.

The only 'change of direction' I'd like to see in FT is to see it opened up to a range of voices - this is what Ned was moving in before the current hiatus and an excellent job he was doing to. We'll always be pro-pop but that can mean actually liking pop or being interested in and engaged with the wider pop culture.

And then from a personal point of view I'm hoping to get more confident about writing on hip-hop, dance music, experimental music, reggae, and the other non-pop non-rock music that currently I don't do much on because I don't think I'm very good on them.

So being pro-pop is a stance which is most easily manifested in being anti-indie (since indie is the most anti-pop stance). Problem is much of indie musically is quite interesting, as is hip-hop, ragga and bhangra. In the end we are somewhat sabotaged by whay we are exposed to (and what we expose ourselves to). I'll write about Travis because I heard it on the radio, which is possible why you won't be seeing me in a GYBE T-Shirt at the end of the year.

And I have to agree with Fred. I like Imitation Of Life too. Though I think I partially like it because R.E.M. don't matter any more. They are not the biggest band in the world (that's U2 again) or the most important rock band (that title rightly or wrongly belongs to the 'Head). So they can write pleasant jangly shit like they used to.

I still think Play, and GURFO are much better singles though. And as for that Beatnuts track....

i think the f.t. sensibility has always been about approaching things with an open mind, though we're all only human and we each have our particular biases. just as there are folks out there who are wary of britney and destiny's child, i have my suspicions about groups like gybe! and weezer who've yet to produce something i enjoy. given r.e.m.'s batting average over their long career, i expect more often than not to dislike whatever it is they're peddling. that doesn't happen to be the case this time out and, you know what? i'm glad: i don't enjoy it when a band sucks (no, honestly!), i'd love it if all bands made great music despite the toll it'd wreak on my wallet.

as i said in the review, f.t., i think, revels in the fact that anyone -- some guy in his bedroom, millionaires in their expensive home studios -- can make a great song and that, despite our prejudices, we should always have our ears open for them. even if they are r.e.m. ;)

Tom E said:

>>> my personal dissatisfaction with most music *writing* aside (fuck you and your back-to-91 nostalgia, rock writers, you're worse than the baby boomers)

and I don't know who he means. Personally I brim with back-to-91 nostalgia. Why not? I don't like babies, though.

>>> The creative flowering of pop in 99/00 helped, too.

This is why I think Mitch is right: from my point of view it is astounding that anyone short of Geri Halliwell's agent could say that 99/00 had witnessed a 'creative flowering of pop'. Or rather, it is astounding that such a statement can be casually presented as 'just the way it is', 'something we all agree on'. I simply can see no reason to regard the period as one of pop flowering, rather than a pop wasteland.

Tom adds:

>>> And then from a personal point of view I'm hoping to get more confident about writing on hip-hop, dance music, experimental music, reggae

and will be unsurprised to hear me say: I'm hoping that you'll get *less* confident about writing about these things.

I suppose that from my point of view, Tom E is a bit like Stevie T. Any number of things he likes and says are utter anathema to me: but there is an intelligence, good sense and wit behind it all which makes it worthwhile persisting beyond the endless and eternally unresolvable differences of opinion.

This all being said, I'd like to think that a few random reviews of "indie" records (not that Radiohead or REM are actually indie, I believe both are on major labels but I don't like that definition of indie either) don't represent the whole of FT any more than a review in Rolling Stone represents all of Rolling Stone or what someone says on this message board represents the belief of the message board. I mean, I think REM are the biggest load of pisswank in the world, and Radiohead are not far behind, and I am listed as part of the FT staff, if there is such a thing as FT staff. It's sort of like that "IN / OUT" section that has been mercifully removed from NYLPM's sidebar - I disagreed with a good half of the things that were up there on either side but it's represented as group decision - that's why I'm glad it's been replaced with "Tom's Top Ten".

The whole thing I'm saying here is that reviews on that website represent no one's sensibility but the writer's. And I'm certain Tom wouldn't mind more people offering to write there - the more writers you have though the more chance of a wide opinion being "represented". If I could be bothered with the Internet besides the occasional reading of this and my email these days, I'd post a lot more on there - would the sensibility of the entire site swing back to pop and rap and dance then? I understand your point but as someone part of the "team" of writers, it bothers me a bit to think that what someone else writes is now part of my sensibility possibly to other people - it's to be expected but I hope maybe after reading this people will take it all a little more as individual opinions and not a big group thing, cos quite frankly 99% of the group has no say ;)

So, yeah, Tom, how about making those bylines bigger cos quite frankly I don't want MY good name associated with REfuckingM ;)

For example, I could read a rave up of one of Marc Anthony's singles that I totally disagree with, but since the writer praises the man's slight talents in an entertaining way I still enjoy reading it.

That said, I have a hard time swallowing anyone liking the new REM single. ;-)

and any team member who disagrees with a certain review is more than welcome to post a response, as we've done in the past. one thing that's been missing for quite a while is a sense of "debate" on nylpm (think back to the undie rap/street rap things for possibly the most recent example). i think it's very good to have that sort of thing present, just like contrasting reviews on the ol' f.t. main site, because it shows that, despite the fact that we right under the same aegis, we don't necessarily agree on everything.

i think that's one of the great parts of this being an internet site and not rolling stone or the nme. when you read those publications, the reviews can unintentionally give off the air that that is how the whole staff feels. here, we have the luxury to say when we think a particular writer is out of his mind or missing the point or just totally full of shit. which is a good thing.

Have had too little sleep to reply to Mitch's fine points yet. Sorry.

I do like this forum a lot, but the indie baiting smacks of elitism, in which the only thing more elite than an indie snob, is someone too cool to like indie.

>The general Freaky Trigger aesthetic ( ie. the musical tastes of you >neurotic pop elitists ) sometimes seems to be as hostile to non-pop >(let's just pretend we all know what that means )as most >music-related sites on the net are to pop.

have you read tom's albums of the 90s list? mercury rev, the orb, and jim o'fucking rourke in the first three places. wait. i think he amended that to include the magnetic fields. have you heard the clientele (album of the year for 2000)? i sure haven't. actually, i don't know if i've ever seen one of their records anywhere.

there is *plenty* of discussion of non-pop music here. (geez. look at the lists of c-o-d's and s&d's. where do you even find talulah gosh records?) has pitchfork ever written about charlemagne palestine? in fact, i think i saw more real avant-garde (which doesn't include tortoise or mogwai in my books) on tom's list of 90s faves than on any other such list, not counting a-g-only outlets.

this criticism is even more bizarre than the recurring, if equally irrelevant, complaint that "you guys listen to indie and pretend to like pop." yeah, in a lot of ways ft comes from a bit of an indie bent. but it attempts to challenge and question some of the assumptions of that culture and expand somewhat. (if i reacted strongly to tanya's indie-bashing, it was more to the crassness of the piece than to the general principle). and this is important not only because indie is too "highbrow" and arty. in a lot of ways, i think indie has also become a less creative and interesting scene because of its insularity.

have you ever wondered if maybe there's more than its "manufacturedness" that turns you off from what's on the radio (or other things, like the other genres tom mentioned)? if maybe you've become too conditioned to certain musical and social triggers?

but, and this relates to other threads, i'm really at a loss re what "indie" means now. no one i know offline would ever consider radiohead or post-_document_ (at the latest) r.e.m. indie, even on musical grounds.

this is all fine and dandy, but in the wrong hands could be used to argue the superficiality of ILM/FT indie baiting: lip service to pop, canonisation to indie.

I read and post to ILM because it slaps me for being lazy occasionally. Surely that's a good modus operandi* - whether because of indie insularity or snobby pop posing, or indeed anything in between.

* I am not trying to point out the modus operandi of ILM to its creators, just being airily theoretical.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but my love for Max Martin's production or Destiny's Child is not put-on as some kind of aesthetic pose. I have no pretentions to being a proper music writer so I don't really have any motive to pretend to like it. On the other hand, I also love a lot of indie and experimental stuff and listen to that as well -- I don't think that negates the pop stuff or exposes it some sort of sham. I wonder why some people having a hard time reconciling that.

Sorry. Like I said it's been annoying me for a long, long while and I've never bothered to say anything and since I have a monstrous headache I'm in a nasty enough mood to say it now.

So, anyhow, going back to the actual point of the discussion at hand, I actually DO dislike most indie rock style music. I give everything a chance and generally find things I like from time to time, but overall it just isn't my thing. So it's a bit bothersome to think that people are sitting here, thinking this is all front for debate. Honestly, OK Computer might very well perfectly express the worldview of a git with a floppy eye and loads of paranoia or whatever it was ya said Mitch (I liked it, whatever it was), but his worldview is boring, so I dislike it. It's pretty much what it comes down to. I'm having a hard time replying to other points you made though because I'm a little out of it after our marathon celebration yesterday ;)

Really, I don't have any guilty pleasures, rereading the original question. I couldn't imagine being apologetic about what you want to listen to - if I decided tomorrow I wanted to listen to OK Computer after all those godawful things I've said about it, I'd say, "Yeah, I"m listening to this. You gotta problem with that?" I know that's just me and you have a good example in that stupid GYBE quote of someone doing it, but I'd like to think most people around here aren't particularly apologetic for their tastes, and just like what they like without any pretention about it. It is what it is, that sort of philosophy.

Then again I could just be making this up because I'm friends with a few of these losers ;)

1. FT and its affiliated sites have claimed to be a lot of things. One thing they have never and will never claim to be is consistent. I change my mind all the time and am enormously affected by music as it's playing. I'm also of the opinion that writers on pop should embrace the effect of the music as it's playing rather than try to move beyond it to some kind of objective position. A lot of pop, when it's playing and when its good, makes me want to herd - say - everyone who's ever written an emo track off a cliff. So I write from that perspective.

2. Given two inconsistent pieces - an editorial, let's say, and a list of 'favourite albums' - why do you assume that it's the editorial that must be doubted and the list set in stone?

The list of favourite albums, which I'm going to delete now, was knocked up in an hour or two and was deliberately glib because people kept saying to me, oh you're writing about singles, what about the albums. The only point was to list a few albums I liked and then do a ten-words-or-less thing on them to see if I could. And it's almost two years old!

(As I've said elsewhere, my listening tastes really shifted towards pop towards the end of 99 and the start of 00 - after I set up FT but before starting NYLPM and the big explosion in readers. So some of the older FT stuff is less pop-oriented.)

3. Obviously I like indie and indie music. FT tries to treat them in the same way as everything else, though - a mixture of wonder and mockery. We take the piss out of pop and pop stars and pop records all the time, and REM etc. get much the same treatment. What I object to is the attitude that indie is the center of listening, the point from which people naturally branch out. I never get this kind of criticism about FT's (almost non-existent) coverage of reggae or country, or dance and hip-hop even, because it's not seen as so 'natural' that we should respect those.

Just a final comment about this, to answer your question as to why someone would think the list is the more accurate representation of your tastes, as opposed to your writing, well, a list of my 100 favorite albums, even from 2 years ago, would probably tell you a lot more about what I listen to regularly than my scattered opinions and snarky comments about Britney or the Beach Boys or whoever on here - but maybe that's not the case for you, and that's cool.

Pinefox: apologies if you already know this and were hiding it, but baby boomers are the generation born between 1945 or 1953, or thereabouts (the great surge of births after servicemen returned from WW2), who were the original audience for 60s music when they were growing up and who use their dominance of the media in most countries, not least the UK, to reinforce the ubiquity of the Beatles and their contemporaries.

Fred: if you're referring to the undie vs. street rap debate on NYLPM I'm thinking of, it was less than two weeks after ILM started, over a year ago. Still fantastic back-and-forth stuff, though.

dem was the good ol' days, amirite?

lol mitch