Teach Yourself History of Pop

I have only browsed through it in bookstores, will get it one day.

(it's the future of music, you know.)

92% of the book is abt linkin park jess, i'm not a complete fool

Is it true that pop = commerce vs art?

first pop record in modern sense = tiger rag by the original dixyland jass band, 1917?

i. a group
ii. white kids playing black music
iii. record sold a million copies in v.short space of time
iv. v.bitter pre-fame split in ref "musical and personal differences" ended them up in court over royalties
v. judge throws out case on grounds that it's not music but a hideous racket hurrah!!
vi. use of word "original" in bandname = premature attempt at rockism

use of word "original" in bandname = premature attempt at rockism

So is Ice-T a rockist then?

why is this geezer bad after 1970 / and who is good after 1970?

is there any kind of "history of rockism" - a general a/c of 'the genealogy of Rock discourse post-Dylan' (in Rolling Stone / NME etc)?

might have to reread N Cohn, yes, though I always found him a very bad WRITER.

James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin is similar in some ways: a great rock-music history that declares rock dead long before the present day.

When it comes to art vs. commerce, it's hard to beat Frederick Dannen's Hit Men.

And he's even better on the pre-Beatles period? How?

And now that I think about it, Clarke contends that pop music was pretty much all downhill after Glenn Miller.

i picked tiger rag for the gag value really (haha rockism zzzz): though i do think it's a REALLY important record in a lot of the senses we might want to talk about => there's gospel quartet recordings going back to the 1890s and weird minstrel sound fx stuff (which i've never heard) which also have elements, but in the sense of NEW KIDS (BLACK => WHITE) BUZZ WHICH YR PARENTS HATE etc etc

Tim H: I looked at that link you mentioned: he goes on about how Norwich has better record shops than several US states put together! Hooray!

Maybe I agree that it's been downhill since the Beatles: but that's a big hill, there's been a lot of distance to fall, and some interesting outcrops to grab hold of on the way down.

Agree with that & also mark's comment that he should have stopped at the point he lost interest. "It's all gone downhill" has to be the most tedious and predictable argument ever, even if true. I just thought it ironic that his alleged crapness should be illustrated by an example of good judgement.

I also like Peter Guralnick's bks for info, although I know he's a bit 'safe' for some tastes.

And if you can still find it anywhere, the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, edited by the afore-mentioned James Miller, has lots of interesting and informative essays abt early American popular musics (as well as Lester Bangs on bubblegum, Nik Cohn on Spector, and too many pages on bleedin' Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane)

Cohn sez that rock went downhill BECAUSE of the Beatles, which is quite different from the standard boomer line, which is that the Beatles are the center of all human existence. He basically quit paying attention after 1966, so he missed a lot, but every rockwriter has his limits. Take what's useful to you and leave the rest. (He's excellent on Spector, in particular - see his article in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History book)

Awopbopaloobop was the first rock crit book I read, and still possibly my favorite: I always liked writers who could evoke the sound of the records they were writing about, and Cohn does that better than almost anyone. One great throwaway line: he describes Chuck Berry's singing voice and persona as that of "the eternal sixteen-year-old hustler."

(i don't think he mentions that they're called mongrels, though: i found that somewhere else)

(let's start calling them mongrels again!!)

To think there is anything in this rather bonkers (but not so uncommon) 'dialectic' theory you have to believe that commerce and art are in opposition, which is far from having ever been convincingly argued let alone proven, and for every example you want to quote of these things pulling in different directions I will point at another where they are beautifully in tune with one another. These are the great pop moments, and the great pop stars. Pinefox, you seem to be a fan of the most successful pop group ever, who are also the perennial best ever band, according to every poll.

If you think Beatles-Band = best ever band and great pop stars, then how are they the sound of music going downhill? And if you don't, then doesn't that show commercial success and 'art' coming unstuck from each other?

Actually, my favourite group is Pulp, and their most successful period/records is also the stuff I like best, so I'm right again! Hurrah!

I was trying to remember today the terms that the Nipper actually used, before he was a Nipper. It may not have been 'art' and 'commerce' at all. (Industry vs Individualism?) Certainly the argument was not (and I hope I've not suggested it was) about these two principles just slugging it out - but rather, I think, about pop being made of a productive tension between them. 'Constant dialectic' seems to me a reasonable shorthand way of putting this.

Of course, if that dang book had ever appeared, we would have a lot more to go on. (It would have the virtue, too, of showing us how this looked c.5 years ago, which might now be History.) I wonder whether any notes survive.

Do you think this dialectic theory is a goer or not? I repeat that I think country is a much better example of a dialectic relationship between commerce and art than out-and-out pop. Indie is a better example, too, as your notes on Pulp suggest.

I'm having much more trouble applying your thesis / antithesis part to (say) Atomic Kitten.

I didn't think this idea would be contentious at all! Basically I think the two issues in a pop person's head most of the time are

a) Can I make enough money to get all the ass/dope/pies I want?

and

b) Will I still be cool?

ie Capital vs cultural capital - a precarious balance.

I don't think Atomic Kitten have very much cultural capital at all, but that's just my own grouchiness. I'm sure country and indie are perfectly good examples too: as is any commercial genre where standardisation vs innovation are issues.

It also occurs to me that (say) Jay-Z or Michael Jackson wouldn't recognise the precarious balance. I imagine them thinking "if I make the coolest record I possibly can I will make enormous amounts of pie-money".

I'm certainly not saying your dialectic idea has no merit, I'm just saying that it works least well when applied to things other than pop.

There's not enough money in the world to pay for all the pies I want, by the way.

I'm no great fan of the Kits but this seems an odd thing to say about a band which have been at No.1 for three weeks in a popworld where 1 is the norm, with the second single off an album too.

As my inclusion of the word "pies" in my example would suggest, I was caricaturing a more complicated argument. Everyone knows pop people (and I'm using that to mean anyone who has ever made a record, not any special def. of pop) get to eat fondant fancies.

Jerry, if 'cool' = "prolonging the pie feast" I don't see how its balance with "can I make enough money to get big piles of pie" is very precarious.

Precariousness only arises, surely, if what is 'cool' is in more of an opposition to 'what is most likely to make money'?

if you strip out the third, you're building a machine to project cynicism but calling it a microscope to discover cynicism

Hopkins has got something, in his argument about the non-precariousness of the pie / risk relationship. It's a pie-risk strategy. Doesn't the Madonna example support the Hopkins' argument? I wonder - could much of this come down, as so often to one's actual response to the records? - some people think Atomic Kitten are taking risks, some can't see the distinction think they're making the same old pie?

I think the Nipper should be *more* aggressive, and build a machine for projecting popists; though if faced with FT weapons inspectors, he could call it a machine for examining them.

I wanted to revive it recently when it turned out that Atomic Kitten had finished their pie.