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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
That undercuts the thesis of the article a bit, but it would have been worth a mention.
Morrissey is the perfect metaphor to what happened to Britpop and his racially charged outburst pretty much proves this. Dude got old, fat and hairy and like a real POHMer who couldn't go with the flow so he cocked off like some viceroy sipping tea in India in the 1920s.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see the old, fat, hairy Morrissey out and about again. He's a great reality check and reminder that at a certain point you should just shut up and stop whining...and that the good ol' days are gone.
As for the rest of the review, not bad but 2 pages too long and probably an exercise of a gentle, tortured, American, upper-class anglo-wannabe looking for some kind of exclusive angle to existence since there's nothing else to grasp on to. Like Morrissey today, that's a little sad really...but if it brings joy, go for it.
What a stupid analysis. "Britpop" is really a racist segregationalist movement, and American rock isn't. Jesus. That's just inane, cheap, inaccurate...and, well, who really cares. I love British bands, American bands...If it's good, it doesn't matter where it comes from, and the Brits have been turning out brilliant music since the 60s. Still are. As to influences? I could give a crap. I don't recall there being any mandate to include "black" influences for musical legitimacy. Black music is much more rooted in the American experience that it is in Britain's. Boy, there's a revelation.
I think this is the first substantive article in Salon about music since the Audiofile feature went belly up. What took so long?
The lack of music coverage has me reconsidering my decision to subscribe.
as Prong would say. I liked the perspective offered by Simon Reynolds here, and it's very articulate and well written (I remember his reviews being some of the highlights of the Spin's Guide to Alternative way back in 1995--its sounds dumb to say, but that book really was pretty great).
But for me personally, what made shoegaze interesting was that very air of abstract, inhuman ghostly gauze that Reynolds' equates with political apathy and ersatz fakery here. Chapterhouse (and Ride and all the rest) was interesting because they were a pop band that deliberately numbed what normally would be the sonic foreground into the blurry backdrop--My Bloody Valentine was wilder and more innovative, and Swervedriver definitely rocked harder, but Chapterhouse had their own take on the fuzzed out inert drone that was pretty damn compelling.
And Slowdive is pretty much recognized as a canonical band at this point--one of the highlights of Eno's production work in the 90's. Souvlaki sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of the ocean, mysterious as a giant squid gliding around in a deep chasm.
If you want dance music, you can simply listen to the greats of the era--but to castigate some of these bands for what they simply weren't trying to do seems a little off the mark to me. To disagree with Reynolds, I've listened to a lot of the shoegazer bands recently, and felt that they were underrated at the time, mostly because the bias was weighted towards the more "streetwise" and abrasive American indies like Big Black and Husker Du.
I found this review highly insulting coming from the position of an anglophile myself. This paragraph in particular.
“In America, this shtick appeals to the same sort of Anglophiles who fasten on the British accents in Masterpiece Theatre and PBS's other imported programming (the dowdy costume dramas, lame sitcoms, and sleuth shows about crime-solving antique dealers and spinsters) as a seal of quality. Rock Anglophilia's constituency is a younger subset of the exact same demographic (college-educated upper middle class), and it's based around an identical syndrome: the equating of England with a superior level of refinement and literacy.”
What as a opposed to fat Americans, who gorge themselves on Kentucky Fried chicken leftovers and who feed there hormonally challenged brains with episodes of brain dead shit like the “Survivors,” and reruns of Beavis and Butthead? Country Music trailer trash constituency is a younger subset of the same exact demogrpahic (uneducated middle class Americans), and is based on an identical syndrome: whom think Republican Candidates like Mike Huckabee, or Giuliani are profound intellects. A country where the majority of the population thinks the world is no more then 6000 years. A country where more people believe in the devil then believe in the theory of evolution? A country that could care less for civil rights! Where the average person’s idea of literacy is reading “The Secret” by Rhonda Bryne.
So, ripping off black American music is a prerequisite for good British pop music? Is it still legit if they're ripping off indigenous, British black people, or does it have to be Americans ('The World's Only Legitimate, Soulful Musicians and the earnest British Americanophiles who love them')?
The Jesus and Mary Chain, a band you cited as one of the primary early defining bands of this genre had an obvious and self-referenced Bo Diddley (who last I checked was black and American, not to mention awesome) influence; but why let facts get in the way of a good, convoluted thesis.
Not to mention that I don't hear much reflection of contemporary black music in Hüsker Dü, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Butthole Surfers or the Pixies (interesting as I made find those bands myself, they're all white as white can be; Big Black's cover of "The Big Payback" notwithstanding.) Or are American themselves exempt from this requirement?
It's okay if you haven't been digging British pop music lately, but please come up with a less absurd justification, or better yet just save it.
I'd be interested to see where they fit into this analysis (which I think has a lot going for it but could also be accused of cherry picking). They're a lot newer than most of what's being reviewed here, but with a black lead singer, socially progressive lyrics, and extremely rhythmic songs, I'd love to read someone smarter than me try to piece together their role in this drama. Of course, whether it has a notable connection to trends in American black music is beyond me, but I'd be curious what they make our author here think about.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
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