Off at a Tangent ...

cf Tim's recent skykicking post which speaks of the dub explosion -- "if this is what grunge was against, I find it incredibly sad" he says, or something to that effect. The article I find thought provoking, but the skykicking post is actually moving.

This whole issue was brought home to me recently by an 80s party I went to which had a different 80s than mine. I was looking for the new wave, and the the meat puppets and butthole surfers and the soft cell and so forth. Everyone else was with the Flashdance soundtrack and Bonnie Rait's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and so forth. It was.. weird. This wasn't even the wedding singer soundtrack's 80s -- this was alien territory. Point is charts are quantifiable, but individual musical history is unique. It reflects an intersection of particular cultural trends and particular personal development, as well as significant post hoc re-evaluation.

I'm sure the phenomenon Sterling identifies happens everywhere - a cosy myth of a shared past one step - though it's more pervasive and potent in Britain because, until about 1989 / 90, it was possible to convey the illusion that we were all together with Radio 1 and Top of the Pops. That was never the case anyway, but it is at least possible to pretend that it was, which couldn't happen in a vast country like the US, which has always had a great proliferation of media.

Nonetheless we've all experienced it. Tim's post in Skykicking was one of his best ever - I often think that that time as the 80s swung into the 90s is one of the great lost periods of British chartpop (though the US singles charts were mostly very poor at that point), a time when a massively above-average proportion of records (I can also think of DNA's mix of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner", the MC Tunes / 808 State collaborations, even Snap's "The Power" in its way) sounded simultaneously deeply strange and utterly pop, taking production techniques from the underground and pushing them alongside wonderful pop songs which were refreshingly time*full*, which had no greater ambition than to capture the elusive, elastic spirit of their moment, and which easily outstrip pretty much all mid-90s British chartpop, which was divided mostly between irritating novelties and slow, plodding dirges aiming to be time*less* (the one quality that can never create truly great pop). There was actually a similar decline between about 1970 and 1975, as the airy, evocative productions on some staggeringly, incredibly unfashionable records which I genuinely like (The Moody Blues' "Question", Jethro Tull's "Living In The Past") gave way to the hideous blandness of ELO / Queen / Supertramp.

Does anyone else cherish "lost golden ages" which had slipped into tedium and repetition, say, 5 years later?

I think one of the things I wanted my post to do was highlight the fact that when you're very young, you don't notice how weird pop music can be. Right now I bet my little sister doesn't understand how technologically marvelous Timbaland, Max Martin et. al. actually are, because to her that's just pop music.

Likewise, being about 8 at the turn of the decade, I had no idea at all that stuff like "Pump Up The Jam" or "Justified And Ancient" were part of some huge new cultural movement. So arguably we'll be looking back at current pop with the same sort of fond nostalgia once it's been and gone (debates as to what form the cultural cleansing will take start here... A return to rock led by At The Drive In? I hope not), realising just how weird pop was around 2000.

In relation to the specific phenomenon of multiracial British musical movements, it's somewhat reassuring that you can trace a succession of "lost golden ages" in an unbroken line right through the nineties - dub-house, 'ardkore, jungle, speed garage, 2-step... Where next? It's been a hell of a ride so far.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Always great to know my castaway thoughts come to some use.

Tim, our experiences and evolution are uncannily similar!

As a kid obsessed with the KLF (and oh yes I was) they didn't sound particularly weird or strange to me, though what convulsed me was the image, the workings, the way they bypassed everything you're expected to do to get a hit - how *could* anyone hook up with Tammy Wynette and drive an ice-cream van on TOTP, how *could* anyone go up to the wilds of Scotland, camouflage themselves, and record a two-line message to accompany the video for "America: What Time Is Love"? (IIRC that's how it went). You're right - when you're a young kid you don't realise how out-there pop can sound, but when you get older you realise the effect it had on you.

Of course the last decade of multiracial British musical movements has been an unstoppable sequence of golden ages of *something*, though I was thinking of further back. Pre-90s, the most potent "lost golden age" in my mind, in terms of British chartpop, would be 1981-82, with 1968-72ish following close up. I would have to stake a claim for the astonishing diversity of records in the UK Top 40 around 1979 / 80, as well.

Robin, I agree that (from my incredibly limited awareness) the very early eighties were indeed a bit of a lost age - though my knowledge of the time does not extend to what was on the charts, bar some exceptions like The Associates, OMD, The Specials and Soft Cell. Who are you referring to exactly?

That period though always makes me think of the painful fall-from-grace of bands like Simple Minds and The Comsat Angels from bizarre arty post punk to chestbeating grandstand-rock tedium. But at least New Order hung around.

As for the late sixties/early seventies, my knowledge is so painfully limited that I have no idea what you're talking about. Enlighten me, please.

Tim, you've read my mind again!

I was referring to all the people you mention! (especially "Party Fears Two", "Bedsitter" and "Ghost Town").

You are right that Simple Minds went downhill so rapidly and so tragically, and indeed their transition (which coincided with their breakthrough to the charts) was a sign that the decade's mainstream was being slowly taken over by empty bombast.

Anyone else heard Dominatrix's awesome 1984 single "Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" which sounds (unlikely as such a concept might be) rather like an underground "Axel F"?

As for the late 60s / early 70s, I was mainly referring to the new freedoms that seemed to hang around in Britain for a few years before AOR and "rootsy" Americanisms came to dominate. Locomotive's "Mr Armageddon" is an incredibly atmospheric single of this period, though I suspect many will dislike it (even I can only just take the quasi-apocalyptic stuff).

Ah, but what do you think of "It Ain't What You Do, It's The Way That You Do It"?

Luckily, just as that golden age was ending, another one was beginning: Scritti Politti unleashed their first album (and new look) at the end of '82 and then Orange Juice and The Smiths exploded; New Order started getting really good, with A Certain Ratio on their tale; The Go-Betweens released "Cattle And Cane"... they're all golden years, really.

On the other hand, the slightly sad aspet of all that early alternative synthpop (and we can extend back into the late seventies to include early Human League and bits of Ultravox I guess) is how misrepresented it now is due to the subsequent rise of A-Ha, Wang Chung etc, and in some cases the commercialisation of the original bands themselves. Not that the crass commerciality was always a bad thing, but it has severely inhibited any critical restoration of the early work. "Sulk" was only reissued this year, and "Crush" is still the only OMD album I ever see anywhere.

On the Simple Minds tip, who agrees that "Reel To Reel Cacophony" and "Sons And Fascination" are absolute masterpieces?

There have been worse versions of pre-pop standards!

You're right, every age is golden to an extent and I actually very much disapprove of the whole idea of "lost golden ages"; it propagates the idea that pop *as a whole* inherently gets better or worse, which I have always refused.

But you're also right that the blanding-out of the early 80s synth sound to result in the worst of mid-80s corporate pop (though I still love "Take On Me", at least the original) has had the rather unfortunate effect of detracting in some eyes from the reputation of the original (discredit-by-association in action again). In Britain, however, the mid-90s' rockism also worked against it, though thankfully we seem to be pretty much over that now.

I've long wanted obsessively to hear more of early Simple Minds than I have - unfortunately, my experience of their work is pretty much confined to the dreadful bombastic singles of their later years, once inescapable radio presences. Tim, did you read Alistair Fitchett's superb evocation of their early work on Tangents?

Wang Chung? "Dance Hall Days" always had a strange dark creep factor which I admired. Maybe not groundbreaking, but the jazzy, loose, and edge of paranoia feeling coupled with what one would expect to be light thematic matter -- well, I dunno. This is worth mourning too.

I agree that commercial synth pop in and of itself - "Take On Me" is in its original form quite brilliant, and there's countless other classics from the period as well - it's just the way that dialogue around it has excluded acts like The Associates that I find unfortunate.

As for Simple Minds, I did read Alistair Fitchett's article, and really enjoyed it. However in its focus on "Sons And Fascination" (overall their best album) I think he passed over the inspired weirdness of '78's "Reel To Real Cacophony", which ties together and perfectly exemplifies a lot of the divergent trends of the period. There's a bit of Wire's artpunk, The Fall's cacophonous blare, early Ultravox's glam inspired synth-rock, Joy Division's morbid severity and a smattering of Cabaret Voltaire's sound-for-sound's-sake approach. It's a bizarre and wonderful album, and totally unlike their later, well-known material. Jim Kerr's singing is wonderfully awful.

1980's "Empire And Dance" is their full-fledged dark synthpop album, reminiscent of early Human League and OMD, as well as slightly prescient of mid-eighties Depeche Mode (only socio-political rather than psycho-sexual). However I've always found the songs to be a bit weaker than on the albums on either side. Might go and listen to it after this to see if my opinion's changed.

1981's "Sons And Fascination" is the definitive album, featuring both better pop songs, and a more expansive, schizophrenic approach harking back to "Reel To Real..." all coupled with airy, elegant arrangements and spangly production that looked ahead to what followed.

1982's "New Gold Dream" is dismissed by Alistair Fitchett, I think unfairly, as being a pale commercialised shadow of the former album. What it does have is some great pop songs (especially "Someone Somewhere In The Summertime") and great production and arrangements, making it stand up as one of the most interesting early commercial synthpop albums. I think of it as Simple Minds' "Dare" -certainly a more commercial and successful album than that which came before, but still a very good work made before the rot set in.

"Sparkle In The Rain" marks the transition from synthpoppers to post-"War" U2-acolytes. It's still a good album (one of the best of its type really), though more anthemic and guitar-rock oriented than anything they'd done previously. It's also their last good album - "(Don't You) Forget About Me" followed next and from there everything went rapidly downhill.

As I don't have their first album I can't comment on it, though I've heard it's a bit like The Cure's first album with hints of Wire. Might be wrong...

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend "Reel To Real Cacophony" and "Sons And Fascination", and all the other albums I discussed are fun as well.

Sterling, I rustled up an MP3 of "Dance Hall Days" earlier, and am surprised how much I like it. It has quite an atmospheric, regretful, emotional feel redolent of Talk Talk's "It's My Life" (which I also love incidentally).

Tim, when you say that the rhetoric surrounding 80s synth pop has excluded acts like The Associates, do you mean that the rhetoric has essentially been commercial mainstream-nostalgic, and therefore tending to remove extraordinary rogue presences like theirs from the story? That would certainly be the case in Britain.

I think I'll probably buy your two most recommended Simple Minds albums next time I raid the archive ...

Robin, that's exactly what I meant. Even more damaging to the memory of artists like The Associates than a flat dismissal of eighties synthpop is a valorisation based upon nostalgia, the weird fashions and "pure pop fun" rather than musical experimentation. Of course a lot of it was about fashion and pure pop fun, but if that becomes the limit of the discourse, then stuff that falls outside of that is forgotten.

Actually I really dislike the way people attempt to dismiss or defend music based upon tangential aspects like associated fashions, from the eighties to hardcore techno to UK garage (all the complaints about champagne swilling girls in tight dresses as if that's prima facie evidence that the music is inferior).

And speaking of Talk Talk, they hold a special place in my collection, not only for changing their style more radically than any other band I can think of in the course of four or five years, but also because each one of their incarnations is somehow special.

I'm pretty sure the whole world has simplified nostalgia-based rhetoric of the kind you mention, Tim; it'd be stupid of me to think it's a uniquely British disease.

Another music that I dismissed at one point based on associated fashions was street rap, as though it could automatically be written off based around the high-living exterior and boasting of your posessions (I held a somewhat over-earnest "voice of the oppressed" student attitude back then, clearly). I think that's essentially the hip-hop equivalent of the dance scene's tendencies to write off UK garage for the reasons you mention ... the belief in "authenticity" and the denial that there is such a thing as "rebellion-through- conformity" (which is the most accurate description of Berry Gordy's oft-mocked entryism).

Nothing Talk Talk did can be compared directly to anything else they did, which is one of their greatest virtues.

The thing about the "voice of the oppressed" angle is that on the whole socialism in music is pretty boring (I can think of only a handful of mavericks who can pull off socialist manifestos in music convincingly eg. The Coup; and heaps who can't eg. RATM), or at least I'd hate to limit myself to acts who had that sort of earnest-yet-smug "undaground" authenticity. Of course street hip hop is also obsessed with authenticity, albeit of a different kind.

When I am drawn to that sort of music it's the type that is musically, not vocally resistant - music that is "working class" not because it proclaims itself to be so but because the musical aristocracy turn their noses up at it. Once that "oppressed" ethic becomes self-conscious it's generally the beginning of the end for me.

The thing with hip hop though is that it very much still is the "voice of the oppressed", albeit in a distorted way. The reason why not many street rappers talk about white oppression is IMHO because the world of the "white aristocracy" is so far removed from theirs as to be almost irrelevant.

I agree that socialism in pop often sounds incredibly unexciting and uninspiring *however much you may ideologically comment it* - on NYLPM in April I likened Dead Prez to Billy Bragg, not as unlikely a comparison as it may initially sound, since the latter is the only person to have me feeling that he had expressed exactly what I felt at a live show, and then had me leaving early because I couldn't stand the self-parodic ranting of his songs. I fear that Dead Prez might make me feel pretty much the same way if I ever saw them live ...

I guess street rap is obsessed with the authenticity of weaponry, the code of the street, etc.

Tim, I have a suspicion you're referring to the first wave of UK hardcore / jungle when you refer to working-class music that is utterly, thankfully free of self-conscious outsiderdom, and becomes what it is only because the musical aristocracy simply has no opinions *either way*, it doesn't want to know.

Street rap is much the same, its "voice of the oppressed" element now more to do with being utterly ignored by all others, than being discriminated against. That is the main reason why I've become obsessed with it recently, developed a very passionate attitude towards it, however crass it can get; the world of the white establishment quite simply means *absolutely nothing*. It's the polarisation and pluralism of this era, and I wouldn't be without it.

Social consciousness and utter consumerist nihilism can exist alongside each other in the same place and time of course, and the fact that they do is one of the things that makes me love music today so much.

That should read "ideologically commend it", not "comment it".

You're right, Robin, I was referring to hardcore and jungle, but also house, acid house, Belgian techno, gabba, ghetto tech/booty, psytrance etc. I'm limiting it to dance music because in rock, with the exceptions of metal, hardcore punk and the various hybrids of the two, there's very few scenes or collectives that don't have a self-consciously artistic or fashionable ethic, either self-imposed or imposed upon them by critics.

Even the whole Hellacopters/Turbonegro etc. stoner rock angle is in the process of being canonised. I think that's because a lot of rock discourse is all about being as "working class" as possible (the Joe Carducci line, basically).

Anyway, in dance music, I reckon the equivalent of underground/indie hip hop would be IDM, minimalist techno and downtempo: styles that rarely hit the charts but are embraced by discerning dilletantes who sniff at actual dancefloors - similarly hip hop acts like Jurassic 5 are embraced by indie fanboys who would turn up their noses at The Source or Blaze.

Interestingly, IDM, downtempo etc. are hardly what I would call "socialist" or even "left-wing" styles of music. My (somewhat cynical) explanation for that is that indie hip hop's left-wing/afro-futurist/black resistance rhetoric is more of a result of stylistic fetishism than genuine political activism. Like all those latter-day techno artists who scrutinise every single Jeff Mills or Model 500 12", these MCs kneel at the alters of Rakim, KRS-One and Chuck D, and their own rapping is merely a loving tribute to those old masters.

Ultimately the attraction of the black resistance angle is that in many ways it's closer to the expression of white culture through *indie* rock/pop etc. (occasionally angry and defiant, but also articulate and introspective) than the tunnel-vision nihilism and violence of street rap. It almost strikes me as though many bemoaners of street rap demand that MCs have degrees in astrophysics and political science in order to compensate for their *blackness*.

It's like Pat Buchanan saying he'd admire African Americans if they were all like the black woman he knows who's a millionaire business entrepeneur in a wheelchair - the implication being that blacks have to prove themselves worthy before they can win the sort of respect that would be granted to a white person automatically. Similarly "black" music usually has to approve itself as sufficiently intelligent or "musical" before it can be considered respectable by the white cognoscenti (see here indie hip hop, trip hop and intelligent drum & bass), while white musicans are often most respected for the exact opposite: making music as stupid/basic as possible.

This argument is of course absolutely gaping with holes, but never mind.

I couldn't attempt to improve on Tim's post, except for ...

"... Jurassic 5 are embraced by indie fanboys ..."

That was me, two years.

Oh, how I have seen the light!

Oh and Tim, I noticed some fascinating responses in the Skykicking archive to my stuff on The Auteurs (Elidor) and DMX (NYLPM) which I somehow missed at the time. Much in agreement with what you say, especially about the ultimate emotional weakness of Black Box Recorder.

Which reminds me that I actually used to know what "writing" means. I should rediscover it some day ... :).

For which read two years *ago*.

To clarify, I don't think that Jurassic 5 et. al make bad music. It's just that it's kinda unnecessary right now - I already have De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, and just the fact that I *know* it's older makes it more interesting to me than 2000-era-carbon-copies. Which is unfair on the music itself, but I think totally fair on the musicians involved.

To look at it from a different angle, as much as the golden era of pop we discussed earlier deserves to be revived in some senses, the last thing I'd want would be Soft Cell tribute bands storming the charts. There needs to be a significant development and (what should I call it?) *contextual neccessity* to the music to justify celebrating it.

Agreed that the ultimate *unnecessaryness* of Jurassic 5 is down to their music being so unsurprising and similar to what came before (as a fellow lover of De La Soul / ATCQ, there's also a sense of "heard it previously"). I was also deeply suspicious of the very idea of calling an album "Quality Control", a denial of the loose, unregulated, charity-shop aesthetic that, for me, runs through all the best pop music, as though they were trying to filter out any influences that didn't live up to their idea of "quality". I got a hidden criticism of this idea into my NYLPM review of The Infesticons' "Gun Hill Road" (it's listed in the index which will tell you which week it was).

Though on similar ground I've been surprised how much I like the Reflection Eternal album on repeated listens - having been put off when I first heard it because of my tendency to lurch from one extreme to the other (I was then going through a very street-oriented phase). "This Means You" and "Down For The Count" are particularly good.

Of course pop that basically just pastiches Soft Cell or early Human League is totally spiritually opposed to it; I've been thinking about which recent British chartpop best lives up to that spirit. I still think White Town's one-off "Your Woman" came closer than anything else from the mid-late 90s, though I'd welcome any other suggestions ...

I should add that the idea of "quality control" in itself totally contradicts the original hip-hop aesthetic that Jurassic 5 allegedly love ...

Exactly. It's that "keepers of the eternal flame" arrogance that probably prevents me from liking more underground hip hop than I already do (basically I like Company Flow and... um...). Even musically though there's a sort of different attitude between the music now and the music then. Like, "3 Feet High and Rising" and "It Takes A Nation Of Millions..." both sound really maximalist for their times - as if they're trying to cramp in every possible sound and are being hampered only by the limited technology of the time. Musically minimalist maybe, but when you could sample whatever you wanted without having to pay royalty cheques, who needed tunes?

With current underground hip hop though there's this whole "keep it real" minimalist attitude that I reckon is in direct opposition of the overt musicality of all street hip hop since g-funk. Of course said musicality only came about because of the expensiveness of sampling during the nineties, so really that musicality was a pragmatic necessity rather than an aesthetic shift. Because of that I reckon that the minimalism used in underground hip hop is a result of misinterpreting the contextual environment of old skool hip hop for the intentions of the artist - an exaggerated analogy would be a Beatles fan saying that since The Beatles never made a techno 12", obviously they would have hated techno.

There's been some underground hip hop tracks that I really liked the sound of precisely because they weren't adverse to adding elements of hi-tech musicality - there's a Dilated People's track I heard that had this wonderful psychedelic kaleidoscope sound to it, but I never followed it up because I was turned off by the critical adulation... perhaps I should.

From the sampling perspective, I think there's still some room for development here - I like some DJ Shadow and Australia's own The Avalanches, who seem to be trying to build a bridge between sampladelic hip hop and Disco Inferno's later work. And of course Disco Inferno's brilliance goes without saying.

And I think that the ideas of sampling, once producers move beyond obvious basslines and choruses etc. could still do great things for pop. I was listening to Madonna's "Erotica" (the song) yesterday and was marvelling at how Shep Pettibone creates a (difficult, to be sure) pop song out of a dense, shifting tapestry of weird samples like Middle-Eastern madrigals. In many ways I consider the failure of either the Public Enemy or the Disco Inferno sound to properly cross over into the rest of the music world to be a double-header tragedy that cast a long shadow over the nineties.

As far as Soft Cell-inspired synth pop goes, I liked "Your Woman" too, because it sounded eighties but in a nineties way, and because the ambiguity of the vocalist made it stand out in a very simple but clever way that most pop stars would be afraid to imitate these days. But even if White Town had been successful, they would only have been to the eighties what Suede were to the seventies, and I doubt a real movement would have formed around Jyoti no matter how many hits he might have had. And ultimately, while the baby boomer generation still controls cultural capital we're not going to see eighties culture become acceptable in a 'serious' way like the seventies are now slowly becoming, at least not for a while.

Generally I think the successors to Soft Cell/Human League et. al. would not be synthpop bands but would get their ideas from urban music forms - R&B, hip hop, garage etc. Scritti Politti were pretty much on the right track with "Tinseltown To The Boogiedown" I reckon, although that was more of a hip hop track with Scritti influences than the other way around. I'm still waiting for a rock group to come along that use Timbaland/garage style beats, and I'm quite appalled that so far only The Beta Band have done so, and only for one single. And they can be dismissed by the general public/media for such a move because they've always been "a bit weird".

The seeming incomprehensibility of European rock digesting American urban-pop seems silly to me when it's so patently obvious how thoroughly disco (along with punk, it's true) provided so much musical impetus for UK bands in the late seventies and early eighties.