British Popular Music and 20th Century British Popular Culture - an undergraduate module

Electronic Music
History and Aesthetics of Popular Music Since the 1960s
http://www.courses.dce.harvard.edu/~musie145/

also, no charles shaar murray's 'crosstown traffic', no credibility.

Not a very British record, when all is said and done

imo these are the wrong who and stones LPs, cos those stones especially are more 'american' than early hendrix. with the yardbirds, i'd just go with a 'best of' -- probably with the who, too.

Mr Geir Hongro's music history essay

A HISTORY OF POP By Geir Hongro
http://www.oli.tudelft.nl/jc84/

how can the screening for this *not* be 'this is spinal tap'? i guess the students should have seen it already.

Energy Flash: Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
Simon Reynolds
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0330350560/

Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock
by Simon Reynolds
published by Serpent's Tail, London, 1990
http://members.aol.com/blissout/bo.htm

include in listening:

Comus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comus_%28band%29

Week 12 Post-Rock

a.r.kane
Talk Talk
Bark Psychosis
Insides
Mogwai
Disco Inferno
Seefeel
Scorn
Techno Animal

Essential reading:

Simon Reynolds Post Rock Article in The Wire
http://tinyurl.com/ecrxt

But did anyone buy Comus records when they came out?

No.

re this week, it should be split up into further sub modules

Post-Punk: Pil/ Gang of Four/ Joy Division etc

Synth Pop/ New Romantic/ Futurists/ New Pop

Goth and Industrial

Week 13 The Rise of Drum N Bass/ Jungle

Prehaps the most important / creative / original British music scene of the 1990s

John Peel archive on Radio 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/

Possibly also, as it does show one route these things went, Music Has The Right To Children.

Plus how many ads/trailers have they been in. TOTP isn't the only way to become part of popular culture you know...

The British Progressive House Music Scene - started in the Summer of 1992

Progressive house has its origins in Britain in the early 1990s, with the output of the Guerrilla record label and Leftfield's first singles (particularly "Song of Life") inspiring, according to various accounts, either Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame or then Mixmag editor Dom Phillips to coin the term. In 1992, what was to be the first superclub, Renaissance threw open its doors in the small mining town of Mansfield, and its DJs - particularly Sasha and the then-unknown John Digweed - were instrumental in pushing the sound in its early days. The music itself consisted of the 4-to-floor beat of house music allied to deeper, dub-influenced basslines and a more melancholic, emotional edge. Often, the ethereal "swirly" textures of early trance could be heard in the mix, and various other elements from across the electronic spectrum. [From Wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_house

...

1992 and 1993 were important times, however by 1994 Superclubs scene arrived big time and then it became default dance club mainstream.

yeah, definitely a MAJOR phase in british pop music.

Matthew Collins' "Altered State" is very good on the ahem 'social' aspects of dance music culture - any reason why Generation Ecstasy isn't on the list?

xpost Dom OTM about SAW - and where are the Spice Girls come to think of it? Tack Spice (1996) onto the end of the Britpop module, or better yet do a Bubblegum module taking in the Rollers, Wham!, SAW, Take That, Spice Girls...sorry to play the predictable 'poppist' here but this is a really important part of UK pop history/culture, even if you just want to present it as what the other stuff was 'opposed' to.

(If it was up to me there'd be a whole module on novelty records! But here we're moving into Martian territory I fear.)

i was there...September 2002 Cultural Vibes in Plymouth was one of the most important British clubs of the time. The underground vibe, superb music,...this music scene was very important...indie/rock clubs at that time in Britain were ghastly drab and dull in comparison.

xpost GLAM ROCK!! Blimey. More important even - dare I say it - than Cultural Vibes in Plymouth.

yeahbut a) you're wrong, b) the course isn't based on artistic merit but socio-cultural impact, c) don't be patronizing, it wasn't just the nme that made ppl like britpop d) it WAS just the music press that convinced people to shell out on ar kane (me included chiz).

Madness _and_ UB40 seems like overkill, one novelty reggae act is more than enough. UB40 don't really fit into that whole two-tone/rudeboy scene anyway do they, or nomoreso than, say, Aswad. I'd put The English Beat in there, because they strike me as a band who are about to come to the boil in terms of critical appraisal.

Aspergers and the Internet; "Britpop" in the Myspace age.

Guest Speaker; DJ Martian

Required Reading
rateyourmusic.com

Required listening
Leathel Bizzle - Cor!
MIA - Oi!
Kano - Meh!
Arctic Monkeys - Duh!
Milbun - Oi! Oi!
Less Than Jake - Ska punka rumble rama for fatties vol 4.

This course will critique the socio-cultural impact of British popular music between 1963 and 1999.

i. Critique is not a verb. ii. This assumes the music impacts on the culture and not vice versa. Where does the 'music' start and stop? How is popular defined (i.e. perhaps classical music was more popular for much of that period)?

Songs and LPs will be read as texts which can offer unique insights into British views of class, sex and sexuality, race and politics.

i. Are the insights going to be 'unique' or are they going to be the same insights every other 'text' of those periods also 'offer' i.e. cultural artifacts are turned into history and sociology. ii. Why treat music as 'text' rather than music?

We will consider the influence of American culture (Black American culture in particular) on British popular music, the impact of immigration on concepts of Britishness, changing concepts of youth, the impact of changing technologies on music production and consumption, popular music scenes and the importance of location.

i. Why concepts not practices? Only sociologists have concepts, people have practices. ii. What is 'influence'?

i mean, o rly? are you being any more accurate than the guy who wrote the course outline? because i think i have concepts. and probably sociologists have practices specific to sociology.

(Mark S and I were planning "POPPIST by Richard Allen" in the pub last week)

I've suggested that he should maybe look to move away from genres and chronologies (every pop music module I've ever seen has had basically the same structure), and perhaps put in a week on the business side of the music industry, finance, royalties, publishing, record label structures etcetera, and maybe a week or two on the recording and technological side - pop music being vastly more affected by changes in technological methods of production than almost any other cultural area.

Ending with How Mark Sutherland ruined the Melody Maker

No, no it wouldn't. The only times the media need to be mentioned on this course are a) Blur vs Oasis, and possibly b) NME hip-hop wars of the late 80s, as part of a wider look at race and British music.

True, but the sad fact is that you probably have to stick something like Adorno in early in order to get the module accepted by the department.

Look Dom "man of the people" Passantino it is people like you with your coke and glasses and scarves who are tempting the youth of our nation from the artistic merit of drill and bass, darkwave, nimbo core, da da flange, furry muff and other genres of cultural importance. The internet represents a backlash, the kids on rateyourmusic are the foot soldiers for an offensive on the citadel of xfm approved indie rock!

TS: Hyperbole vs accuracy.

I don't have a concept of Britishness. If someone asks me 'are you British' I will say yes. If they ask me what that means, I will say 'Um, dunno' and probably offer some explanation. If they write that down as 'my concept of Britishness' I will have been misrepresented. Point here is that the course is either about people's changing experiences (is that any better) of e.g. race, class, sex or it's about changing 'concepts' of the same (which for better or worse I'm taking as a second-order concept). So perhaps this just falls into your category of 'quibbling about words', and clearly words aren't important in education!

-- alext (alext.il...), April 25th, 2006.

i don't think, and i'm falling into an obvious trap, that words are *that* important -- in this case especially, it's just an outline, you can't get into whether music 'impacts' on things, or if there is a thing called culture that can be impacted on etc etc etc.

with concepts and practices, well as the good lord says, they're probably going to be 'mutually constitutive', and my ideas about britishness are going to be informed by my lived experience of it, but that how i live that experience is already partly determined by the concepts of, i don't know, class, that i walk about with.

Point of order: it was actually ME who suggested this crucial idea.

Correct, apart from Alt.Music.Alternative

I have absolutely no desire for any student anywhere to study late-90s alt.music.alternative. And nor do they, believe me.

Easy listening from Val Doonican/Englebert Humperdinck-Chris De Burgh-G4/James Blunt.

Various local scenes and styles which survive and thrive without the blessing of the metropolitan taste makers e.g Country and Irish, banghra, Welsh language pop, brass bands, trad folk etc

http://www.satiche.org.uk/vinbbp/phot2318.jpg

"THIS IS HAPPENING WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION"

I would love to read this... "Geezer said he didn't like Girls Aloud so the boots went in. Hard."

(Punk Rock is my favourite Allen book.)

(Also the 60s din't begin until 1973.)

Sorry, that wasn't very constructive. Suggestions: 1) Toss out Revolver or Sgt in favour of A Hard Day's Night. 2) Add several other hits 1962/3 - 1965 (albums bah). 3) Start it all off with Frank Ifield to emphasize change brought by merseybeat etc etc.

Media, Communications & Society 1
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/modules/scnm101.htm

I still reckon the media needs to be studied, the media had a massive influence on music culture in the late 20th century.

Drum n bass/ jungle was the finest new music form of the 90s, and it was British !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass

in the summer of 1995 it wasn't the crappy Oasis Vs Blur race to number 1 that was relevant, the real buzz was Radio 1 9pm -10pm each Thursday evening

Prepare for NEXT week's Breezeblock show. Mary Ann Hobbs presents a drum n bass / jungle classics 2 hour special.

BRING IT ON !

The Adorno piece would be a good foil to begin the critical studies, in that Adorno is so thoroughly condescencing toward "popular" music and that the aesthetic to strive for is found only in the context of great classics that today the essay reads completely laughable. But it would be a place to begin to critique (v.t., to interrogate, to evaluate something, often a text or other cultural artifact)notions of popular culture and its ties to post-war changes in British daily life.

I question the arbitrary starting place of 1963 and the end at 1999; this seems to me to be completely artificial and perhaps based on the instructor's comfort zone and not on any social markers, other than perhaps the fin de siecle party like it's 1999.

I would instead use a text such as Simon During's Cultural Studies or Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods by John Storey to frame the inquiry into the practices and supplement with critical pieces on popular music, the music industry, cultural production, and issues of identity and representation. As I review the other textual selections, I find that the instructor has selected about half history and about half critical inquiry--the Stuart Hall edited collection is a well-respected reader, but the MacKinnon is historicity disguised as critique (used here as a noun).

Of course, the instructor could retain the use of song lyrics as texts, and the Tony Bennett (not that Tony Bennett!) selection is probably a good one, just basing my opinion on other critical work written by Bennett. Viewing films is always a good way to blow off some time so that one doesn't have to lecture, but it is predominantly a one way exchange (as of course a lecture also is).

What writing and or critical discussion is planned for the course? Are the little darlings expected to produce knowledge or just memorize all of the brilliant and "unique" insights that the instructor will bestow upon them?

The rest of the discussion in the thread about whether the instructor has picked the right musical selections is just rearranging the deck chairs. Get your own damn course and you can pick the music, ya bunch of rotters!

Sorry to be such a playa-hater, but if this is what passes for education in the British Isles, the sun has set and we're looking at about quarter past three in a long, long, dark night.

as for 1963 and social markers, go read some larkin.

Substitute "expectations of learning" for and by students. Why should they take this course. What will their contribution toward epistemology be?

As far as 1963 and social markers, no doubt they exist--but I question how they can be separated from the fact that the 18 year olds in 1963 were born in 1945. What were the social conditions that produced 1963? What were the musical antecedants that led to 1963.

As far as Larkin, I prefer to read his poetry--his cultural criticism is as mired in his class origins as mine are in mine. We simply don't agree, and since he's dead, I have the last word.

i think they probably signed on for a course on pop music, rather than philosophy -- their money innit.

but even at the time it was noticed that the beatles had changed the game, surely? that's not to say that it's all about individual artists, just that it sometimes is.

*it's the history Mojo and Uncut, and most of the rock press, work from.

Thank God for the media.

ha Tom, disowns his British Alternative Music History overview.

Literally ;-) [Even though Google Groups Usenet search exists and The Internet Archive Wayback Machine brings back content long thought dead and buried!]

In the Simon Frith 'On Record' anthology also mentioned above, there's a good essay by Gary Clarke called 'Defending Ski-Jumpers: A Critique of theories of musical subcultures' which goes some way to overturning the (over) emphasis on oppositional, spectacular subcultures within academic pop music discourse - ie more spice girls less sex pistols PLEASE - this list wld certainly quality you to be an Uncut journo, but it does seem very very canonical and careful

fair argument--but I swear I don't know. I teach rhetoric & writing. This sort of cultural inquiry provides prompts for students to, i dunno, leave the world better than they found it, to quote Wayne Booth.

If the purpose of the class is to just listen to music and debate who had a greater effect on the youth of Brittain, isn't that what pubs are for? If the purpose is to inquire about the conditions that exist, how they got that way, to resist oppression and work toward change, then that might be worth the student's money. Otherwise, I think they'll be better off spending their tuition on lagers & jukeboxes. Or don't cultural studies classes do that any more in England? I heard that the Birmingham school dissolved; has it become completely irrelevant?

Strange parallel universe (link filched from ILC)

J Arthur Rank - remember it's just one semester undergrad module not a rigorous PHD were are debating here.

(nb i am not british)

I honestly don't know how "important" the charts ever were really! I have long since lost any distance on this topic :(

re: what are the reasons british people can't make their own hip-hop? BUT THEY DID

Remember Ruthless Rap Assassins and MC Buzz B.

John Peel played them both.

[just forget Rebel MC though]

I'm only asking that the students not just be passive bystanders to this course--and perhaps they are not; it is not evident in the syllabus. With the reading/viewing/listening load set out, I would have them write approx. three 5 page papers and one longer (7-8 pp) research paper as uni undergrads. I would ask that they use the critical/historical readings and the lyrics (or other available media) to construct their position and they could substitute other forms of media rather than A4 paper to submit their research (iMovie/webpages other digital representation).

Or do they not expect to learn how to "do" school while they are in British uni? Nothing I suggested is out of line for our undergrads at a public uni in the US.

[just forget Rebel MC though]

except that Rebel MC ended up making a better contribution than either of the others (Kermit from RRA and Buzz B going to be vocalists for what were essentially the mid 90s equiv. of 'indie-dance' bands in Black Grape and Lionhead respectively - bands with one or two cracking tracks but not much else behind that) by releasing 'The Wickedest Sound', 'Tribal Base' and then 'Junglist' under the Tribe Of Isscachar/Conquering Lion banner.

(1) 1963 (or 1962) is a smart starting point, since the Beatles did change the game, and recognizing this doesn't mean that you subscribe to a "Great Man" theory of history.

(2) But if you're going to start at 1963, start at 1963, not 1966.

(3) And you have to account for all of the game; the fact that the Beatles changed it didn't mean that they turned it into only their own game. So you need show music, you need what people over 25 listened to, you need Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Jim Reeves (you know, white North Americans had an impact on Britain too), "Georgy Girl," Hermans Hermits, Lulu, etc. etc.

(4) If he says pop music, he shouldn't restrict his story to rock music (not that rock music isn't part of pop music). What little nonrock there is all falls pretty clearly into "the sort of music that academically inclined middle-class kids who primarily listen to rock would listen to when they're not listening to rock." Even if the course did better with rave and techno, this would still be the case.

(5) Slade, Def Leppard. Oi.

(6) Bay City Rollers. "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep."

(6) Kylie Minogue. Hazell Dean. Hi-NRG. Eurodisco (Pete Bellotte was British, wasn't he?). Stock Aitken Waterman. Boney M. Europop. Etc.

(7) Celine Dion. LeAnn Rimes. (Talk about the North American influence!)

(8) Spice Girls and whatever American r&b female teens (Brandy? Monica? Aaliyah?) were hitting in the '90s in Britain. (This is a major story in pop music, when the teenybopper girls started listening more to girls than to boys.)

--Obviously, your friend can't cover everything, but he's clearly excluding things on the basis of the class of people who listen to them. And by the way, excluding things on the basis of what there's good academic writing about will have a very similar effect, but even there, you wonder if he's actually spent time reading Frith et al., who'd probably have the very same objections that a lot of us on this thread do. Why doesn't he show his outline to Frith, and ask for advice?

british pop (as distinct from popular, that is to say, as a genre) may have started in 1963, but british popular culture and popular music, certainly didnt.

the fact that 60+ years of history is being ignored in favour of listening to leftfield albums, kind of invalidates this course rightaway

though i guess the answer might be in this thread;)

Music for the Drawing Room

Here are some numbers I have at hand: worldwide sales of over 100 million, ca. 50 UK hit singles. Number 1 with a sport song, "Come On You Reds."

Top 10 material in the Eighties: "Dear John," "Marquerita Time," "In the Army Now," "Burning Bridges."

UK Top Ten in '73 -- "Paper Plane," which I think put Piledriver in at 5 on the album charts. Hello, the next one, was a number 1.

Other stuff that I think charted from the 70's but don't have precision on, "Down the Dustpipe," "Caroline," "Down Down," "Whatever You Want," "Living On An Island." I've probably skipped quite a bit.

From The Beatles to Brit Pop:

Keep 'em coming.

And Henry Cow did? Not that Henry Cow should be denied.

was this the the conceptual blueprint that mirrored the explosion of independent labels in the late 70s - the DIY approach

Rock In Opposition
http://www.squidco.com/rer/rio.facts.html

From the pamphlet given all attendees at the "Rock In Opposition" Concert, Sunday March 12, 1978, New London Theater, written by Chris Cutler:

We would like to say 5 things:

(1) The music industry can CREATE nothing - it can only exploit the real abilities of its victims.

(2) The music industry wants to keep its hosts' desires at the lowest level possible because formulas are easy to reproduce while musicians with integrity can be difficult to control.

(3) The music industry makes all its decisions on the basis of Profit & Prestiege... they have ears only for the rustling of money, hearts which only pump with the blood of murdered.

(4) Kafka wrote only what is true. Paranoia is simply a recognition of human values under capitalism... "the point is to change it!"

(5) Independence is only a valid first step if Revolution is the second.

I suppose the argument is "At least Henry Cow were part of a movement", but then again I don't see Belly and Northern Uproar in the "Indie and Brit Pop" module, so maybe that isn't a very winning argument.

To be honest... 11 modules? Going from 60 through to 2004, and get them to study the five biggest selling albums of the year at four year intervals. I think you'd learn a lot more about Britain that way than by genrefying it.

Brian Eno is on the Tom Robinson show tomorrow evening
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/tom_robinson/

you can hear the first part of an incredible interview with the legend that is Brian Eno.

Strange parallel universe (link filched from ILC)

Comics Rockism! (Although I swore never to use that word. But's about comics so it's OK)

Do you really want these poor students to sit through three Black and White Minstrels albums?

Marcello--what/when were those Black and White Minstrels records? I'm genuinely interested.

Note the "get the Xmas market in time" annual release dates.

Here's a blurb from the 6CD! box set available: One of the most charted groups of all time in the UK pop charts, The Black And White Minstrels' first album topped the chart and remained on the charts for a staggering 142 weeks. Their next two album releases also took No. 1 positions in sales as well. Few groups have ever had three number one albums!

(Nick--I know really, I'm just being a dick bcz I'm bored at work. That's how trolls are born I guess.)

1) THE MUSIC BIZ
2) PRODUCTION (PRE-DIGITAL)
3) REGGAE
4) MEDIA (RADIO, TV, PRINT, [INTERWEB])
5) SUBCULTURES
6) FOLK/THE 'VARIETY'/MUSIC HALL TRADITION
7) TOM EWING POP
8) BRITISH INVASIONS 1964 - 97
9) ART FAGS
10)PRODUCTION (POST-DIGITAL)
11)MOVIES

case studies: dave clark five and girls aloud
case studies: sex pistols and arctic monkeys

2) PRODUCTION (PRE-DIGITAL)

case study: the rolling stones (ie they went to LA)
case study: brian eno and joe meek

3) REGGAE

just kind of the history of reggae (and dub obv) in england from 1948 - present

4) MEDIA (RADIO, TV, PRINT, [INTERWEB])

history thereof

5) SUBCULTURES

case studies: ukg/grime, goth, northern soul

6) FOLK/THE 'VARIETY'/MUSIC HALL TRADITION

history of decline (?) thereof

7) TOM EWING POP

not my field

8) BRITISH INVASIONS 1964 - 97

case studies: beatles, duran, fatboy slim

9) ART FAGS

ferry-bowie etc

10)PRODUCTION (POST-DIGITAL)

case studies: kate bush, tricky

11)MOVIES

movies

this might really need an 'independent' act, but i can't think of any! basically DC5 was wardour st's very successful attempt to manufacture a british invasion group, and GA are GA -- that bit is about how the industry make decisions about image and sound. why are those bands the way they are?

the second bit is about, i guess, people from outside the loop trying to break in, and the question is the same but more complex, i suppose the outside-the-industry guys there had to sell their band both to the industry *and* to the public.

3) REGGAE

just kind of the history of reggae (and dub obv) in england from 1948 - present

this covers 'the impact of immigration on concepts of Britishness' -- not exhaustively, but it's a good case study because reggae's crossed over to white audiences more than any other music form brought over by immigrants, and those white audiences haven't always been politically very sympathetic toward immigrants etc.

i was gonna bring in blues and r&b in this bit so you could compare like, the yardbirds with public image ltd. both [scare quotes] "playing black musics" and both canon uncut/mojo bands, but musics with very different relations to black british people.

9) ART FAGS

ferry-bowie etc

this is the frith-horne bit about the 'ideology' of musicians about what they do, self-consciousness, that sort of thing. the art school tradition from lennon to green.

I'm also really interested in instant 'flash audiences' - the massive crowds of people who will buy eg a novelty record: where do they come from and where do they go (where do they come from Cotton Eye Joe). I maybe would have a hard time constituting this as central to a course on pop in UK culture, but on the other hand you could argue that it's on these despised fringes where the pop mainstream and other mainstreams (TV, films, adverts, humour) really intersect.

9.9

Scrap genre-chronology – a fake construct of the masculine conservative music press

More on modes of production – industry and recording; publishing, marketing, labels (independents vs majors) / impact of technology on recording and creativity. Marxist cultural theory – how does money drive music? What do songs mean and embody? Three Lions, Back For Good, Bittersweet Symphony, Barbie Girl, Crazy Frog

Semiotics – how do you “read” a song beyond cod-lit.theory lyrical dismemberment and away from strict academic musicology? Can songs be “read” musically and culturally without recourse to these techniques?

More on media – TOTP, Smash Hits, NME/Melody Maker; the influence of radio on music, the “loudness war”, history of pirate radio, music on television and music television

More POP – Wham!, Take That, Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, Kylie, Will Young, SAW, reality pop

Marketing – dave Clarke five, sex pistols, girls aloud, arctic monkeys

History repeats – revivals, a history of retro and comebacks and reformations

The image of pop – debord, baudrillard, stylists for “unstyled” rock bands

More dance – Prodigy / DJ culture, imported dance from Northern Soul through Chicago house and Detroit techno

More women – dusty Springfield, kylie, sinead o connor,

Reggae – immigration, British identity; Linton Kwesi Johnson vs UB40

The UK charts – the singles chart, a history of number ones, relations between singles and albums charts

The medium is the message – vinyl, CDs, MP3s; how does how and where and when and through what people listen affect pop music? Hi-fi vs sony walkman vs iPod

Adult pop – eurythmics, kate bush

The dawn of pop – 1956, cliff Richard, shadows

Subcultures – from punk to grime; the mining of subcultures by mainstream culture

Drugs and popular music – ecstasy, cocaine, mythology

Sex and popular music – identity, paedophilia (teen lolitas, industry indulgence [jonathan king], Queen, Will Young, George Michael

Simon Napier-Bell – black vinyl, white powder

The KLF – the manual

Brian Eno – bowie, fripp, sylvian, walker; art music, ambient music, talk talk

Black British music – AR Kane, long fin killie, roachford, lemar, massive attack, soul 2 soul, m people, dizzee rascal, ms dynamite, M/A/R/R/S – sampling, tricky, Bristol, ska and two-tone, the black drummer phenomenon (magic negro) in Britpop,

A history of dance music – backbeat, disco, Acid house / trance / drum n bass / gabba

The Mythology of Pop – what lies are told and why? Who benefits, who tells lies?

Crazy Frog – novelty hits; who buys them why? What is their audience? Mr blobby, bob the builder, edelweiss, cotton eye joe

Authenticity

xpost

oic

Kind of, aye. It was a tune written over a year ago (I first heard it in March last year) so the structure isn't to order. I'd wager that in Danny's head that 99% of the lyric to it aren't "about" football either.

It's all about the publishing company.

X-post - I work with loads of film academics aND TEAHCING THE SAME THING EVERY YEAR DRIVES THEM POTTY. Ooops caps.

'vertigo', 'peeping tom', 'the searchers', 'citizen kane', and 'battleship potemkin'.

Un Chien Andalou ARGH. My Beautiful Launderette ARGH.

ISTR Cotton-Eyed Joe was a Manual record too.

I saw Drummond's ex yesterday (she'd doing a PhD at the uni where I work) and she didn't think it was. It certainly seems to fit the forumula too.

I should ask her to ask him how many people asked for refunds, actually.

How about back to the topic now?

Semiotics – how do you “read” a song beyond cod-lit.theory lyrical dismemberment and away from strict academic musicology? Can songs be “read” musically and culturally without recourse to these techniques?

i think this is something very key: whenever pop music has made an incursion into academia, it has always been read and deconstructed as something else (lyrics-as-poetry, analysing the music according to traditional classical 'rules', or really basic and often erroneous sociological artefact). this goes back to something alex t said near the start - in what ways does pop music work as a 'thing'? as opposed to a text etc. and by what standards should it be judged? how do people listen to and consume it, and in what ways have these modes of listening/consumption affected it itself? and how does this make the study of pop music DIFFERENT to the study of poetry and so on?

because in intellectualising pop music there is always the danger of falling into dylan-as-keats territory.

I think part of this is that academic film books seem to be written a lot more often by people who actually are interested in the films in themselves and know them inside out. Academic popular music books often seem to be written by people who don't know the music they are writing about and are often riddled with the most stupid elementary factual errors.

Absolute Beginners (book vers.) very much should go on that syllabus--it's way ahead of any critical writing on pop at that point, and it's really funny.

(xposts)

I'm actually working on a big piece for Stylus at the moment about mastering/mixing/compression etcetera, and radio vs hi-fi vs live is a big consideration.

aren't they, following this, also made up from bits of the world, though, bits of tendentiously constructed social histories?

Why has film (say) developed it's own strong academic/critical language but popular music not really?

key question, basis of life's work etc.

There are surprisingly few good academic books about popular music and the average quality level of the bulk is way lower than in film writing.

well, yeah, but music writing in general has hit higher levels than filmwrite. imo academic film studs have apoor hit-rate. one of the best film writers, el penman, is also one of the best music writers.

a couple of weeks ago, i was talking with people about how impressively cinema (initially 'low culture') has separated itself from its 'high culture' equivalent/predecessor (theatre), whereas pop music - all pop music, from rock'n'roll to hip hop to techno - is still in the shadow of classical music in terms of academic respectability, and therefore needs to justify itself on those terms, or by appealing to other strands of 'respected' genres like folk or jazz.

i was talking with people about how impressively cinema (initially 'low culture') has separated itself from its 'high culture' equivalent/predecessor (theatre)

but no, cinema didn't come out of theatre, it came out of fairground attractions and shit!

aren't they, following this, also made up from bits of the world, though, bits of tendentiously constructed social histories?

Yes, bits of the world, but does history give you access to bits of the world? Yes, obviously, and no, possibly equally obviously: the story 'I get angry about life so I invent a new form of rock and roll' misses out so much: like, 'what my new form of rock and roll is made from'. The 'made from' question interests me more than the 'why', but generally people are much happier to think in terms of 'why' stories (they have heroes and villains, for a start). If the 'why' stories interfere with the other stories, it seems fair to rule them out of court for a bit, in order to allow the others to surface.

And because the words / notes are bits of the world, and so are the stories we tell about them, there seems no reason to privilege the 'why' stories as giving us some handle on these particular combinations of words / notes. Especially since the particular bundle we happen to be looking at ALSO brings with it certain kinds of 'why' story. And what NO ONE has adequately done yet is examine how the stories rock / pop surrounds itself with are linked (either in terms of intellectual history OR in terms of affect / desire etc.) to the forms used to understand / interpret rock/pop in the academy. i.e. if modern historicism develops out of the same mutation that gives us modern popular music, how can one have an interpretive authority over the other. It would make us much sense to teach a course on the development of cultural studies in Britain using works by the musicians listed as the secondary reading.

how can we guarantee that yr anti-historicism isn't equally a development from this mutation? take yr point, but i like 'why' stories for more than heroes-and-villians bidniz.

...all pop music, from rock'n'roll to hip hop to techno - is still in the shadow of classical music in terms of academic respectability, and therefore needs to justify itself on those terms, or by appealing to other strands of 'respected' genres like folk or jazz.

And even then it's amazing how hard it is to get good academic overviews of 20th C folk for example. Some of them are retardedly bad.

You can get Colin Macinnes' three London novels in a handy and cheap package now. Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749083689/qid=1146136722/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-3981360-6049226

Can't. That's the problem :-0 Actually the term historicism is a bit misleading because my position could be extremist historicism (each historical event so unique no narrative can do it justice). Historicising THIS problem might actually be obstructive, so perhaps my solution above is a further symptom, not a cure.

If we were doing Tom’s decentred course I’d maybe tackle it through the evolution of radio where the segmentation of audiences is quite straightforward. And my starting texts would avoid music writing altogether. Looking at the interplays of aesthetics and demographics I’d start with be Guy Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ and ‘Photography: A Middle-Brow Art’, Richard Hoggart’s ‘Uses of Literacy’ Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ and probably Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ just to make myself angry.

Bump.

This is right on, Scik Mouthy. It's telling, I think, that your friend had a cohesive theme (Brit music), and a cohesive thesis (that there is some relationship between these kinds of music) instead of trying to tackle the entire history of pop music. Also, there isn't a section called: OASIS: MOST IMPORTANT BAND EVA, BIATCHES.

Very, very important, that last thing.

Week 14
Aspergers and the Internet; "Britpop" in the Myspace age.

Guest Speaker; DJ Martian

Required Reading
rateyourmusic.com

Required listening
Leathel Bizzle - Cor!
MIA - Oi!
Kano - Meh!
Arctic Monkeys - Duh!
Milbun - Oi! Oi!
Less Than Jake - Ska punka rumble rama for fatties vol 4.

-- j harris, Tuesday, 25 April 2006 11:13 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ lolled at this hardcore

I'm guessing it was an Esteban pearler?

Reads more like former-Stylus chucklehead pscott.

I posted actual paragraphs on this thread wtf?

Still think this thread could 'go' 'somewhere' if someone takes it by the neck.