The Twelfth P&J Albums (and EPs) Poll!

I guess, though, that I don't see how all those jangly Brits like the Waterboys and U2 and Big Country and Echo + Bunnymen were all that more forward-thinking musically than some of the similarly comfort-foody, vaguely garagey guitar bar bands American critics were settling for. If that's what Brit critics were liking (which it may or may not have been - I haven't checked), maybe critics on both sides of the pond were back-peddling a little, somehow? (And if the Fall don't really fit into that equation, neither do the Minutemen, obviously.)

(Though being American, I've never been able to make much sense of the Fall's politics. I bet Mark E. Smith would have been more likely to defend Thatcher before D. Boon would have defended Reagan, though.)

"Wham!"

"Hey everybody take a look at me,
I've got street credibility,
I may not have a job,
But I have a good time,
With the boys that I meet down on the line"

LOL: Just now as I was reading of the relative throwbackwards-ness of various U.S. and British acts, the TV featured The La's "There She Goes" in a womens' lingerie advert. But we won't get to them until later in the decade...

in the states there was a critical divide between the indie rock retro bands xuxhk mentions and the new pop imports. pretty much all the critics like retro-rockers while the new pop audience was largely teenagers absorbing MTV. and I think this did stem from a conservative impulse -- the favored putdown was "haircut band" well second place after "limey fags" -- although the most xenophobic u.s. rock bands were anti-reagan and xgau regularly decried duran duran as thatcherite.

initmations up thread of an even more hotly contested and controversial critics battle raging in 1984: the great madonna VS cyndi lauper debate. incredibly ms. lauper was the intellectuals' fave, like her peers sonic youth madonna was lashed to the P&J whipping post for several years before becoming a critical fave. strange but true.

Yeah, I recall just how much most critics loathed Madonna--and how much Lauper was used as the stick with which to beat Madonna--at least until Like a Prayer. I think the only at-the-time well known critic to offer some praise early on was Dave Marsh.

though Marsh also wrote columns dismissing UK new pop--I guess he thought Madonna was ok because she was American.

The Madonna-Cyndi war began to wane when True Colors turned out to be not as good or "culturally relevant" as True Blue.

Probably, but it still took some time for the critics to come around to Madonna...I don't think many critics cared much for True Blue. Madonna in her first few years, may have inspired more bad writing, by the way, than just about anyone. It went from "she is evil wearing boy toy belt buckles" to "she is female empowerment personified." Both stances made me want to hammer nails into my eyes.

rusty nails, I mean.

I seem to remember Madonna taking heat from libs and conservatives when "Papa Don't Preach" was released.

OK, assuming that "Brits with earrings banging on bongos like chimpanzees" must be a reference to that brief but memorable period when your Granny was percussionist with The Fall, then at a stretch I can just about see how at least one if not more of the epithets "British disco synthesizer night school music"; "foofy British MTV stuff where boys dress up like girls"; "haircut band"; or if all else fails then at least "limey fags" might be applied to the purveyors of most of the albums I identified as missing from the list: but what about (Aussie) Nick Cave and (US-born( Scott Walker?

Stewart calm down, most of this stuff is quotes from bands like X or Dire Straits attempts to parse what some misguided US people were thinking, not actual real-live today-type insults.

xpost: Madonna always had some love from the critics though, mostly because *she wrote some of her own songs man* but also because Her Shit Was Unimpeachable.

Also, no one in the US cared about Nick Cave or Scott Walker until it was cool to do so in the 1990s. Many of us are still not that cool.

"Stewart calm down"

Oh I'm perfectly calm I assure you, sorry if it came across otherwise, must be my strange Limey soh.

xp: They were extremely marginal cult artitsts, at least as far as American critics (assuming the critics had ever even heard of them) were concerned (just like they are now, except way more so -- In fact, I honestly can't remember any significant number of critics caring about Scott Walker until the mid '00s, or thereabouts.)

And I say all that as somebody who liked the Birthday Party at the time, by the way. Who again, rightly or wrongly, got no real critical support in the U.S. at all.

Brits with earrings banging on bongos like chimpanzees

I always took this to be about Haircut 100, for some reason. Not sure where I got that idea, though. (The "Love Plus One" video, maybe?)

Do you think critics in the UK and critics in the US actually had (or believed themselves to have) significantly different job descriptions?

e.g. might it be fair to say that UK critics were more concerned with making themselves appear more hip by continually finding new and obscure acts to introduce to their their readerships, whereas US critics were more concerned with reflecting the taste of their readers rather than attempting to direct it?

What was coverage of New Pop like in England? I got an idea in Simon's book.

Depends on exactly what you're defining as "New Pop" - there were certainly any number of very different publications reporting on different types of popular music in very different ways for very different audiences - and taking themselves, their readerships, the acts they championed quite substantially more or less seriously in the process - all of which would probably have worked a lot better if the reality hadn't been that bands and songs regularly crossed, re-crossed, straddled and refused to fit neatly between any imaginary lines of demarcation.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Where are Ocean Rain, Treasure, Welcome To The Pleasure Dome, From Her To Eternity, A Walk Across The Rooftops, Diamond Life, It'll End In Tears, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Climate Of The Hunter, Eden, Cafe Bleu, The Wonderful & Frightening World Of The Fall, I Often Dream Of Trains, Fried, Some Great Reward...? Did none of those make it over the pond?

Most of them seem to be in NME/Melody Maker/The Face Albums Of 1984 POLL

Meat Puppets II got 0 votes :( But the top 3 are all good.

I could be wrong, but I don't get the sense that the Fall made a big impact in the American underground until "Cruiser's Creek" in '85. They spent '84 touring Europe. I didn't hear Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall until the '90s, and love it now...

Wow, did not predict Zen Arcade placing so high. I thought the Replacements would've been swapped.

The only place I remember bigging up TWaFWotF in 1984 was the New York Times, where it made the best-of list. That's how I learned about it, anyway.

100 or so xposts:

Chuck, I like Fervor too! Love it, even. It's sad, though; they peaked with that EP.

Peaking with debut EPs is surprisingly common, actually. But yeah, they're one of the poster boys.