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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
What we all need is...
MORE RAP MUSIC!
You know; the music that rhymes with crap.
Once again, as someone has already mentioned, this article was a REVIEW OF A BOX SET!!!
To complain that your favorite wasn't covered or that the article is not in depth enough (someone mentioned exclusion of a German band, in a box set of BritPop for god's sake!!!) completely overlooks the fact that Mr. Reynolds' didn't put the track list together and at 78 tracks, would be hard-pressed to spend more than a sentence on most of the bands represented here.
If volumes of obscure history is what you crave, I high recommend Mr. Reynolds' book "Rip it up and start again". The indie (often referred to over-broadly as "new wave") scenes that spawned/influenced the superbands of Britains late 80s - early 90s (and beyond) are gone over with a fine-toothed comb and dissected ad infinitum. An entire chapter on Genesis P. Orridge, YES!!!
As for the box set, I already own every album from every band found on it that I like (and some I don't) so it would be a waste of time and a redundancy of music for me. I try to avoid this because my music collection already fills up a room and a half and the wife, bless her heart, probably couldn't take much more...
Interesting article but if this premise is so sound then how come the Cure's biggest hits in the US were not from the kiss me kiss me album?.....there was a ton of funkiness on that album. The first song the writer mentions is How Soon is Now. It's fairly common knowledge that the opening riff to that song is based on Bo Diddley's work. The Manic Street Preachers had Public Enemy's Bomb Squad remix one of their songs on their first album and also directly addressed racism in a song on the Holy Bible album that uses the exact incendiary phrase this writer employs to stir up reaction in his article (ain't no black in the union jack). As a middle-school kid in the 80s I can remember Depeche Mode's big song at school dances. It was People are People. That is a song about tolerance. None of these artists were sued by black american musicians (like say Led Zeppelin whole lotta love) for ripping off their songs and not acknowledging or paying for it (until forced to). It's interesting too that when he mentions the "new-breed" of british singer-rappers he only lists white ones and leaves out Dizzie Rascal who is arguably as well known on this side of the pond as Mike Skinner (they're both great and just like those brit-pop bands, I don't see them having any american success either). Anyway just because Morrisey has said some dodgy things throughout the years (his defence of the BNP etc.) doesn't mean that all britpop bands should be tarred with that brush.
So the crux of this article is that a lot of British music is deliberately bound to a given period of time, and is insular, apparently. And yet the primary reason for the failure of this blinkered music in the US is that it's not American enough.
As an organizing theme, that seems reminiscent of The Devil's Dictionary definition of selfish: "devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."
I remember the period in rock criticism when Paul Simon and David Byrne were racist because they pillaged other cultures to make their music.
I also recall reading in the '80s that the reason people didn't like disco in the '70s was homophobia. Are we all still on board with that one?
So I guess I'm still scratching my head a bit:
Is Elvis Costello not racist because of his extensive references to a wide range of musical influences?
Or is he a racist because he is the only artist in my record collection who referred to someone as a nigger in the heat of an argument?
Why start off the set with a mid-career Smith's song? It would have been better to being it with Hand In Glove or This Charming Man. The same with the Bunnymen since "lips like sugar' is just a mid career wanker. Something from Crocodiles would have been better.
And although I love New Order's Regret, it's a late career tune. Why not - well you name it since there's about a dozen other singles that would have been better suited.
Also - what's left off - No Wedding Present, That Petrol Emotion, The Weather Prophets?
When all their EMO fans finally killed themselves, thank God.
didn't exist in the 80's. And it was an American invention, sounding nothing at all like what's referred to as Britpop here. So there, you big oaf.
1. A whole lot of musical genres have been moving away from the confines of 'black music' (or, what white liberals like to think of as 'black music' - most of it is, at its root, Anglo-Celtic folk music as interpreted by poor people, black and white, in the American South) since the early 1970s. You can decry it as subtle racism if you want, or you can see it for what it is, an attempt to liberate music from a limited and limiting sonic and conceptual palette (I IV V progressions through the pentatonic scale, verse-chorus structures, syncopation in four, the emphasis on rhythmic impact over melodic expansiveness, and a relentless focus on the pursuits of hedonism). Bands didn't turn away from 'black' musical styles out of racism, they turned away because what could be done in those styles has already been done: hip hop was the last frontier, as 'black' music had nowhere to go but to become pure rhythm music, not very satisfying in the end. Not surprisingly, the visionary musicians saw where all this was going, and instead took a radically different turn.
2. World music is mind-blowingly bland garbage basically dreamed up to sell shitty compilations to the kind of morons who think buying loose tea is sophisticated.
3. As great as Bad Brains were, they were hardly the 'template' for hardcore. Minor Threat, The Exploited, Crass, Discharge, The Misfits, and, yes, Black Flag were all much more important in development of the genre. Bad Brains' biggest impact was moving hardcore toward what it has become today: sawed off metal riffs in punk rock structures.
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
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
