Simon Reynolds - C or D

Still only heard it all the way through once myself. Diplo was better than her at the live show I saw, frankly.

Fair enough, it's been done to death, it just struck me that Tim's popist defense of the fans was slightly skewed - but there were seemingly some quite heated debates over personal politics over at dissensus from memory. A few that Tim joined in.

But finally bugged, I think Reynolds is interested in the cultural politics of MIA - or what those would involve for Prince Harry to start making grime, for instance. This is not question anyone's ability to do so, it is examining the effects of those exchanges and the ethics involved.

uh uh. read the piece! he never once mentions the industry or the promotion of MIA, unless you count the "face of hype," which is very vague and more sensibly read as referring to critics

Reynolds is more cluey w/r/t M.I.A. than most people on ILX give him credit for being, but that doesn't mean the anti-M.I.A./anti-pop position staked out on Dissensus wasn't absolutely riddled with holes (the biggest being the idea that M.I.A. = pop).

basically:
fortysomething journalist who's just put out a book about music made a quarter of a century ago. hears the clock ticking. feeling on the verge of slipping out of the loop. sees mia video. decides to start an argument so that people will take notice of him again. it all seems pretty sad and pointless to me, and yet another indication of how reynolds seems to revel in painting himself into an aesthetic corner.

of course it doesn't help that dissensus is the de facto reynolds fan club message board, run by someone who is essentially reynolds' errand boy/lickarse, which thereby shuts off all potentially useful outside lines of debate. try and question any of reynolds' opinions on dissensus and see how long you last there (i speak from personal experience, lol). although it's apparently ok for ingram to insert snide comments about "let's hope mia wins the mercury 'cos that will kill her career stone dead," and have all the other smug 35-year-old wire hacks nodding their plump and ample heads in agreement.

i mean, is it just me, or was the simon reynolds who used to write lovely, lurid and lyrical prose about ar kane and the young gods and throwing muses about a million times better than the one who came out of the rave on the road to damascus/beltram? in a lot of ways i've stayed with that '87-'88 melody maker/monitor mindset but i still feel i've done more in the way of "moving on" than reynolds has.

usually if you decide to shut yourself off from all other options, you end up suffocating.

Tim, I think M.I.A. is pop, or "Galang" is at least, it's being played on daytime Radio 1, it's out as a single called "Galang 05" (!!) next week, it fits the pop context at least.

Mind you I'm as arch a 'poppist' as they come and I can't stand most of her stuff.

Also Marcello I think it's pretty much inescapable for message boards to defer a bit to 'celebrity' members - sure Chuck gets challenged on ILM sometimes but there's a lot of respect for his viewpoints too, ditto Mark and Frank K. And in fact if you look upthread you see J Sutcliffe complaining cos I'd threatened to delete something he wrote about Simon R! (I have no recollection of this). I didn't look at Dissensus for long but there was definitely a spectrum of opinion there.

Is it utopian to hope that maybe one day the whole "who is the crankiest crank in Ye Olde Cranky Rock Critic town?" sweepstakes will give way to . . . . something else?

Irony-alert ahoy! I'm pretty sure "J. Sutcliffe" posted as "Majooba" elsewhere (both mention teaching philosophy in Texas, have conniption fits over snooty British dudes). Remember that buttmagazine.com photo of you and Martin piggybacking nude? L4nya 4nderson: ""Based on the picture above, I may have to become a Matmos fan." Majooba: "If you're into Aryan gay sex. Whatever floats your cute fascist boat, aesthetes."

Aside: I have absolutely no idea how I'm supposed to be "helplessly stuck in the joke-trap set for him with that 'all of western philosophy' stuff" No idea what that means, none. Help me out here, people, I'm only a BA.

this is because only white artists can do art school projects and have cred, when 'the ethnics' do it it just means theyre no longer authentic, duh

Ha ha true (and ouch).

My point was simply that I think not all reasons for liking M.I.A. are pro-pop ones, although certainly some are.

Uh yeah. Are you people saying it wasn't there on crack or something?

See, I don't understand this statement at all. The kids go crazy for many other fun tracks on Arular - I have witnessed this myself! How is "10 Dollar" or "Bucky Done Gone" not pop????