Gentrification, "Coffee Table", the 90s, Broadsheets, False Consensus and "The New Punk Rock"

If it's good, does it matter?

the answer is yes

i don't think it 'matters', in terms of the music's quality, though

Is it good? That's up to you.

xp

Beatles haircuts, dudes. Elvis' hips. Edginess has ALWAYS been pop currency.

It might not matter as such but a lot of the energy expended on ILM seems to be in bashing away at this kind of consensus. Tom E mentioned on another thread how ILM was formed by people who missed the back and forth of the old school music press, so whilst from a sort of "popist" view might say "it's only the music which matters" it could be argued that the mainstream slip towards the centre has in fact robbed pop of some of it's former, perhaps inflated with rosey spex, importance.

There does seem to be a LOT more agreement on "what's good" than there used to be - 15 years ago the NME, the Broadsheets, Radio 1 would have been 3 different centres. Radio 1 has had probably the biggest shift in role I think.

ILM was founded by people who grew up reading and loving the music press - but oddly I was just now saying elsewhere how the old press models (different groups, tastes and takes warring for attention) just don't seem as relevant online.

Yes but I think I am getting at a "meaningless edginess". Beatles haircuts and Elvis' hips were or commonly are remembered as genuinely a little unnerving to some people. Are there still limits today? I guess sonically maybe, The Drift can get sneers from The Word but as a cultural force? I'm not sure. Lily Allen or The Kooks or Arctic Monkeys are marketed as edgy or indie or whatever why has this happened? Did it happen in quite the same way in the past?

woops xp

there is a big sense of "ready made canon" now - you can tell which records are being set up to be this period's canon picks pretty much as they're released

what do you mean by "edginess" paul? music that the grown-ups find unnerving?

There's a lot more consensus at the moment. If they were displayed as venn diagrams the 80's version of NME/Radio One/Radio Two/Kerrang/Insert medium would only partially intersect with each other, now there's a massive overlap.

In some respects I wonder if this overlap makes it more difficult for the cutting edge/outsider to transfer into the mainstream, though it's probably easier for them to survive on the fringes.

What's interesting to note is the difference between this Radio1/NME/broadsheet axis, and the views of the major webzines. Qf the Metacritic scores for The Horrors' album.

I am conflating two things really on one hand there is that big pop myth of generation gap music i.e. kid playing the rolling stones / the reynolds girls / so solid crew etc etc and their parents saying "what is this rubbish". this seems less likely now, parents have lived through punk rock, acid house etc. then there is the marketing sense of edginess the small differences that means amy winehouse is more "credible" than lily allen who is then more "credible" than rachel stevens. Actually Arctic Monkeys >> Kooks >> Mcfly works better.

xp

Change The Horrors to Kaiser Chiefs: http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/kaiserchiefs/yourstrulyangrymob

there is a big sense of "ready made canon" now - you can tell which records are being set up to be this period's canon picks pretty much as they're released

yeah. but in the US the set-up or hype doesn't work as well as before.

LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY!

Eh?

CHEEKY GIRLS

I think that's sort of what I am getting at. The slip to the centre has enginered a situation where every critical section can agree on a large number of acts, this clearly works in the favour of the industry no?

Tying in with the edginess is something Mike Powell coined on stylus: "cartoon violence" that blast of noise and colour aesthetic common to MIA, Lightning Bolt and lots of other "underground" stuff. That sort of seems to be coming mainstream with Nu Rave and er the olympics logo. One of the striking things is that it's like Vice or Family Guy, "violence" without "meaning". One can project back onto punk or rave whatever a fight AGAINST. will future generations be able to do this with anything in pop culture now?

woops that was to kaiser meta critic NOT cheeky girls!

Thou celebrating teh cheeky girls or crazy frog is kind of a good example of a GENTRIFY THIS fight back.

and the lighthouse family?

Folks!

Dig out "Aint You" by Kleenex, and tell me that's not the Cheeky Girls.

15 years ago the NME, the Broadsheets, Radio 1 would have been 3 different centres. Radio 1 has had probably the biggest shift in role I think.

-- Groke, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 7:28 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

what's peculiar about the nme's higher-than-ever mainstream prominence is that it has a smaller readership than before -- and i don't think radio one has yet won back its 'one nation' listenership either.

on tv it's all really homodge -- t4, later with jools holland, the culture show, it's all the same stuff more or less.

NME's more powerful than a brand than it is as an actual publication. Like Punch.

Thou celebrating teh cheeky girls or crazy frog is kind of a good example of a GENTRIFY THIS fight back.

Nope. Shit is shit.

Cheeky Girls have one very good record - "Have A Cheeky Christmas", which gets the forced (but still jolly) crass (but kind of harmless) vibe of the office Xmo party absolutely bang on, and is catchy as hell too. Everything else they've done is pretty rotten.

Most Crazy Frog cover versions are too slow.

I don't think the ungentrifiability of either has much bearing on their quality.

1990 / Time For The Souffle

I think at lot has happened since 2002. Must read though obv.

Groke, I seem to pretty clearly remember that the Crazy Frog / Coldplay chart battle of 2005 was played out in very similar terms on ilx and freaky trig. There was a post on Trig i think that seemed to play it as some kind of culture war. I may have made that up thou.

Oh yes no doubt!! Mark S loves the Frog. And if "non-gentrification" means "keeping Coldplay off the top of the charts" then I'm all for it but mostly because these kind of 'chart battles' are always really funny. But that's the charts, and I thought we were talking about criticism.

All these bands though, that get plaudits across Radio 1 / NME / broadsheets, they're all of a certain size, aren't they? There couldn't be a new Velvet Underground that only the press love, could there? Or is there?

wonder what actual sales figures for the VU were. probably not bad by modern standards.

I think they managed to get in the Billboard Top 200 once - album charts I mean

Well, it probably wasn't the Dance chart.

I think it was "White Light/White Heat" too!

The Velvet Underground & Nico - # 171
White Light/White Heat - #199
The Velvet Underground - didn't chart
Loaded - didn't chart

implies some airplay?

No.

Implies sold fuck all basically

Groke, in this conversation criticism and the charts seem almost inseperablew. There seems to be a whole swathe of, as Nick points out, similar size acts who have a certain level of fame and critical acclaim. The question is who is leading who? The industry seems to have throughly learnt the language of the last 30 years of pop culture.

Nick think about bands / artists like The Hold Steady or TV on the Radio or MIA. Who are there most passionate advocates?

billboard is not just sales. plus, it may have sold more here than in the states.

I think they were even less well known here

Nick think about bands / artists like The Hold Steady or TV on the Radio or MIA. Who are there most passionate advocates?

A: The Pitchfork mafia

"Venus In Furs" was a top 60 single in the UK on first release.

Except it was never a single in the UK!

i've seen the VU referred to in popular film mags of the late sixties. they had some kind of audience.

warhol was sunday times magazine material by then, so it wouldn't surprise me.

But much less than somebody like Captain Beefheart. Or an album like "Trout Mask Replica"

"When did "edginess" become marketable?"

http://popsike.com/pix/20050601/4734786385.jpg

otm

Um, "Venus In Furs" did get released as a single in Britain, albeit after the Dunlop ad in 199-whenever.

The Velvets and Beefheart were music for the heads, the real cool cats weren't they. The nearest modern equivalents I imagine wouldn't be anything to do with rock music. Though I guess Bob Harris / Bowie gentrified both in the early 70s. Dom, Venus in Furs went top 70 when re-released in the 90s.

MIDDLE BROW is the word missing from the title. Coffee Table will have to suffice.

I flicked through Grimey Simey’s new book in Borders and was suprised to see him come out in favour of an "upper middle brow cannon". He described this as encompassing Radiohead, Kate Bush, The Velvets etc. He posits that the only other options to this are:
A: Collecting noize cassettes and having a front room like Thurston Moores'
OR
B: Inverted snobbery. Which he described as saying "Girls Aloud are better than Arctic Monkeys".

Odd.

Not so odd when you consider he's been fighting the same battle in his agenda-suffocated head for the best part of 20 years.

From everyhit:

Top Hits of 1967
1 Engelbert Humperdinck Release Me
2 Engelbert Humperdinck There Goes My Everything
3 Engelbert Humperdinck Last Waltz
4 Anita Harris Just Loving You
5 Scott McKenzie San Francisco (Flowers In Your Hair)
6 Sandie Shaw Puppet On A String
7 Procol Harum A Whiter Shade Of Pale
8 The Monkees I'm A Believer
9 Tom Jones I'll Never Fall In Love Again
10 Frankie Vaughan There Must Be A Way

When did "edginess" become marketable?

Blame Byron

JESUS.

Who stole it from Robert Mitchum. The look on his face when he got busted for grass.

Ok, then not marketable as such but almost necessary for any act who want critical and commercial marriage of convenience. Did Mark Knopfler need to be edgy? Did Sting? Did M People??

When Dire Straits first appeared Charlie Gillett considered them edgy.
Early Police were a convincing impression of edgy.
M People won the Mercury Music Prize thanks to Simon Frith's misguided if edgy proto-poptimism.

convincing impression of edgy

DING DING DING

When did "£50 man" need to start giving this impression and why?

9/11

Oh balls to that. It was before then.

Increasing demographic desirability of middle-aged man who doesn't grow up and still wants his gadgets and to look up-to-date but basically still craves for the same stuff, or imaginable impersonations of the same stuff, that he liked when he was nineteen ergo double-sided Carmel/Any Winehouse coin e.g.

Oh wait, that was a joke right? (xp)

9/11 is no joke

Then again, Slapp Happy/Fulborn Teversham so you can't win really.

What does "50-pound man" generally connote in the British Isles?

Who? Peregrine Worsthorne? (xp)

"50-pound man"

By reading Word magazine
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/

and then buying 50 quids worth of rock / singer-songwriter music on CDs in one go at HMV / Virgin/ Fopp etc

... in their lunch break

Rob Brydon, Martin Freeman, that sort of amiable conservative.

A young professional / middle aged man who will shell out £50 a pop on a selection of CDs. Possibly more these days. Maybe he goes on itunes now. Anyway it's a stereotype of the ideal Q/Word/Mojo/Uncut reader. Is there not an American equivilant?

There's certainly an equivalent character, but I can't think of a term for it.

further notes:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1159112,00.html

For the first time fortysomethings are buying more albums than teenagers and it's all down to the '50-quid man' - the middle-aged bloke (or even woman) who is happy to splash out on a fistful of CDs. Tim de Lisle investigates the cultural phenomenon that is really shaping the music charts

9/11 is no joke

-- That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 15:40 (9 minutes ago)

do you not see how late i am reacting (to this post)

For US: reads paste magazine or rolling stone

paste
http://www.pastemagazine.com/

re: There's certainly an equivalent character, but I can't think of a term for it.

B-b-but teenagers don't even know what albums are!!

Well, I'd think that "edginess" is probably just taken for granted by people who grew up on rock and roll and even punk - the 50-quid men of whom you speak.

also ha ha "50 pound man". It's "50 quid man" or nothing.

b..b..b..but I thought the little symbol thingy I couldn't find on my keyboard meant "pound"

"100 dollars man"

CDs are still cheaper in the US, no?

Well 50 pounds/100 dollars in the US could buy you as many as eight CDs - at the cheapest indie label prices or as few as five at the full major label "retail" prices that I can't believe anyone actually pays.

The surfeit of mainstream "edginess" though clearly poses a threat for the aforementioned Grimey Simey (well a strawman version of him). Where does the man surfing the hottest most radical stuff go? Well underground obviously. But at the same time our hero needs to be able to make claims for this stuff above and beyond micro genre confines, otherwise how can he ground it to anything beyond that his public can relate to? He is in trouble.

"your hero," pal.

His agenda put him in trouble, viz. backing the grime white elephant has led him to live in the land of the dead (hauntology, Focus Group, Ghostbox et bleeding cetera) which conveniently excuses him from having to deal with living art and also reminds him of life when he was nineteen.

That doesn't even sound like a reasonable straw man - the middle aged guy that's going to be concerned with getting "the hottest most radical stuff" is going to be a rarer figure that probably doesn't care as much about what "his public can relate to" - or is this just a cultural difference I'm missing?

It's probably worth noting that this particular strawman's last two books - one of which is I'd guess his biggest-selling - have been a history of stuff that happened 25 years ago and a collection of pieces from the last 20 years. Commercially speaking, he's not relied on being at the radical hott edge for quite a while now and is in no trouble at all!

xpost

I didn't actually mean SR specifically just someone with that kind of "must always be on the cutting edge" impulse.

Do you have the equivalent of a AAA (Adult Album Alternative) radio format? Because that's what I think of as the typical music for the middle aged city lawyer who stays "hip" and still buys a lot of CDs. It's not exactly "edgy," but you might hear Bright Eyes, Wilco and even the most up-to-date (less noisy) Pitchfork fare alongside Lucinda Williams and Bob Dylan.

xpost - sorry, I didn't get the "Grimey Simey" reference at first.

6 Music would be the closest to AAA.

Do you have the equivalent of a AAA (Adult Album Alternative) radio format?

6music, some Radio 1, most of Radio 2, fair bit of non genre commercial radio, nearly all music on terrestrial television, nearly all mainstream critics. This is what I mean by consensus. I am wondering when it became so. Early to mid 90s is my best answer flux during the CD:UK era then massive strike back around 2005.

Radio 2 is more like it. Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Mark Lamarr, tits like that.

Different bits fell into line at different times. Radio 1 under Bannister (early 90s), Q during Britpop I guess, NME under Conor M, and dunno about the broadsheets.

Ha ha I am hearing that in the voice of serious mode David Tennant Dr Who.

re: dunno about the broadsheets.

getting rid of tom cox's boring whiskey-soaked Americana agenda and the arrival of Alexis Petridis at The Guardian

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/

6 music: how it turned out so bad: mix these elements together

one third Xfm
one third Virgin radio
one third duplication of existing BBC stations Radio 1 and Radio 2

the problem with 6 music is that practically none of the DJs had to fight to get on it.

the usual (backfill cover) of radio 2 djs or people a bit edgy ( brand / merchant) just seemed to turn up on the day and go straight into a programme.

6 music needs to fill its schedule with more unknown voices who are passionate about the music. im thinking of people like cherrystones etc.

maconie / riley etc are good but they seem to make up 80% of all output thats not a graveyard shift and any new djs are people like Neone (??) who are not cool enough for R1, 2 cool for 2.

in summary, "the world doesn't need another dad station. k thx bai"

some dude had a pithy word for this. i think he called it the "mediostocracy". actuallly that might be more "stupid" than "pithy".

anyway i've remembered why i put "The New Punk Rock" in the title. it seems that because punk has been so romaticized; everything from the libertines to grime is still portrayed as "The New Punk Rock". but if you say;
"ahh ha if a real new punk rock happened you'd be caught off guard and be made to look like the hip and trendy representation of THE MAN you so clearly are" well, your falling for the myth yourself and part of the problem. it's like everything is sewn up and cannonized so quickly that the mainstream can not be thrown into the kind of flux that has previously thrown up some great music. though again perhaps THAT statement is just buying into ANOTHER MYTH. argh.

im thinking of people like cherrystones etc.

totally OTFM.

i cant believe no-one has given this man a slot on radio 6, or even radio 2 to be honest.

Yeah, Gareth should totally have a Radio 2 prog. As should Bob Stanley.

But I suspect Sean Rowley will probably get there first with his rota of half-dozen 1976 MoR hits.

Sean Rowley will eventually be elected as Speaker of the House, you realise. David Cameron doing a cover of the "Rivers of Blood" speech. "Yeah, it's so corny, so cheesey, but when I hear Enoch's voice come through the speakers I just want to get up and dance. I mean, we all love good pop racism, and this is a chance to pay tribute to him... with a hint of irony in my eye ;)"