Tuesday, September 24, 2024

The whole Poptimism thing  - the debate that refuses to die, yet never goes anywhere. Deadlocked, yet churning. 

It stirred up memories of the fierce arguments of the early 2000s - 12 years ago! Apparently, during these initially amiable, soon adversarial blog back-and-forths, it was me that came up with the term "poptimist".  

Now one of the things that always mystified me back then was this idea that taking pop seriously was some sort of radically new gesture, a daring step forward into Enlightenment, leaving behind the Bad Old Days when Rockism had our minds in chains.

It always felt like a myth, this idea that before the pro-pop insurgency of the 2000s, music journalists universally treated pop with disdain; that there was never any enthusiasm or respect for artists operating in the commercial mainstream, no serious discussion of chartpop. 

I don't think this was even true in America, where generalism was a fairly established mode. But I know for sure that in the U.K. it was an utterly commonplace occurrence. For certain writers, it was a shtick, a specialist territory they set themselves up in. For others, it would be part of having a well-rounded approach to being both a fan/consumer and a commentator/thinker. 

So let's take a little journey into the Not-So-Dark Ages before poptimism came along to sort everything out. 



In the Nineties, on the UK music press, you often had people writing excited pieces about R&B, or all that Eurobeat pop-dance (Snap, etc). Sometimes, admittedly, with a contrarian, look-at-me aspect, to them. But the reason that that was irritating, from my point of view, was because there was absolutely nothing audaciously against-the-grain about taking a pro-pop position - either with specific instances of pop or the entire field. That  move was already well established, had an extensive history...



In the Eighties, New Pop emerged right at the start of the decade. There were two ideas here: that A/ it was cool and valid to "go pop" (the move made by ABC, Scritti Politti, New Order, Style Council, et al), and that B/ pop already contained great stuff  (all the glorious disco-funk of the era, for starters, but also things like Dollar, the mascot group for New Pop ideologues, the Annie/Robyn of their day ... You would even get writers sticking up for Bucks Fizz). New Pop thinking was virtually hegemonic on the rock press for some years, although it's true that the readership was not as taken with it as the writers. It's worth recalling that the term  "rockism" itself was coined in 1980, by Pete Wylie of Wah!, as a sort of auto-critique from within postpunk rock culture. It was propagated energetically by Paul Morley and others, and rapidly became the mindset of perhaps a score or more critics working on the rock weeklies and the new style magazines (where anti-rockism became dogma).  (I won't bring Smash Hits into the discussion - its only innovation was that arch, taking-nothing-too-seriously mode). But in the second half of the Eighties, even when there was a backlash within the rock weeklies and the post-postpunk scene against pop gloss -  a return to indie / underground values, to harder-darker and more abrasive music - the pro-pop move remained a stock critical maneuver. I remember colleagues speaking up for Aha, or Curiosity Killed the Cat, or Mel & Kim...  Pet Shop Boys were widely lauded... Everyone liked Janet Jackson...   I'm sure I made that move a few times myself. 

As for black music, it was very much on the inkie weeklies menu  - hip hop, funk, a bit of R&B, some jazz... African music in quite a bit way. Even Sounds covered reggae regularly and surprisingly thoroughly, given its image as Oi! / heavy metal paper..


In the Seventies - the period that you'd probably imagine to be the absolute darkest age of rockism - the UK music press was actually catholic and remarkably comprehensive in its coverage. The weeklies conceived of themselves as music newspapers (Melody Maker, in the early 70s, was based in Fleet Street) with an interest (in both senses of the word) in reporting and analysing everything. It was their job. So Melody Maker - according to received wisdom the "progressive paper" - would routinely cover things like Osmondmania, David Cassidy, the Jackson Five, Isaac Hayes, early disco, etc, with depth, intelligence, and respect - alongside all the things you'd expect (Hatfield and the North, Steeleye Span,  Nucleus). One week, there'd be a centre spread on Stockhausen; the next a 4000 word investigation into the top producers of teenybop.  There were also individual writers who -  as the Richard Williams review of Gary Glitter * above shows -   would sometimes put forth the against-the-grain arguments so familiar to us from the poptimistic cafuffle of the 2000s.  The NME was just as expansive: even during the sombre height of postpunk, they'd run cover stories on Michael Jackson and Giorgio Moroder, big features on Earth Wind and Fire and Chic...  positive reports on the UK's burgeoning jazz-funk scene... passionate and informed coverage of reggae from roots 'n' dub to lover's rock ...  an appreciation of Abba... I'm not so familiar with the US rock press of the 1970s but I have seen a fair few issues of Creem, and in there you will find writers making arguments celebrating, say, The Sweet, in terms of pure pop excitement, brilliantly effective if  manufactured thrills, etc.  



In the Sixties... well, rock criticism is nascent and unformed at that point, so I'm not sure there's a rock/pop divide clearly marked such that people could dramatise themselves around it. People tended to use 'rock' and 'pop' interchangeably.  Still, there is an argument  for seeing Nik Cohn as the Original Poptimist, albeit a gloomy one in so far as he thinks Pop's energy flash and pulp heroics have been stifled by the pompous self-seriousness of Rock. It is notable that the first two major youth-music books by British writers both use the word "pop" in their titles: Cohn's Pop From the Beginning, and George Melly's Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts. Also worth noting, as regards differences between the UK and the USA: Cohn's book was retitled for the American market as Rock From the Beginning.  Perhaps the battle the poptimists keep on fighting is a America-specific problem that regenerates itself perennially;  whereas the battle never needed to be fought in the U.K. in so far as pop has historically not - most of the time -  been a dirty word, a synonym for phony and fabricated - at least for most sensible people. 

So, essentially, the pro-pop approach - in both its attention-seeking mode and conscientious fair-minded generalist mode - has a history going back forty years, at least - possibly longer.  

It's easy to see why the notion of a Dark Ages would be appealing, should you fancy seeing yourself and being seen as a light-bringer, someone on the side of Right -  boldly rectifying longstanding injustices, and breaking new intellectual ground in the process too ...  But this narrative is, to a startling degree, a myth. 



never struck me before how this is a bit like a unfeminist Delta 5
always thought of Elaine Paige as the Soul Queen of Daily Mail
“I refuse to let anyone dictate the shape of my bananas! This referendum is a way of managing our own borders and clamping down on immigration. Not asylum, mind you, we must always grant asylum to legitimate refugees. But we are a small country, and we can’t just welcome all-comers who turn up.

“A single market was once a good idea, but since then, the EU has strayed so far from that original purpose and now interefers with so many aspects of our lives that if we leave, it will take time and effort to reorganise ourselves. But it will be worth it.
“I think a lot of the Remainers are just too bloody lazy to bother with all the paperwork, which is a disgrace. Inertia isn’t a proper reason to stay in the EU.”

rain streaks the coach windows as we surge home through the dark



Jean-Gabriel Albicocco 

A film made with vaseline and railway tracks, which takes some adjusting to; but you soon forget to read the subtitles, because you can understand all you need without them. It's based on the book Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, and explores a strange adolescence in provincial France at the end of the last century. In the film, Roger Corman meets Proust, Elvira Madigan rides again, and Renoir takes acid.


 problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
HENRI ALAIN-FOURNIER'S "Le Grand Meaulnes," the author's only completed novel, was published in France in 1912. Two years later, Alain-Fournier was dead at 28, killed at Saint-Rémy in the opening days of World War I. Thus, "Le Grand Meaulnes," which was first published here in 1928, is not only a novel about the loss of innocence, but it is also a kind of enchanted legacy from one who was required to make, in effect, the ultimate acknowledgement of that loss.I'm sure this has something to do with the novel's continuing appeal both in this country and abroad. It might also explain the group of earnest young people who stood—singly and in pairs—outside the 34th Street East Theater at noontime yesterday, waiting for the first performance of Jean-Gabriel Albicocco's French movie version. There were young men in beards and fatigue pants, and girls in leather jackets and bell-bottom slacks, including two especially pretty girls with very long hair. They frowned quite a lot as they talked and carried what looked to be two cello cases, in addition to one copy of the Doubleday Anchor paperback."The Wanderer" is a movie for people who take their Alain-Fournier rather more seriously than they take their movies. It is, as Albicocco apparently intended, not an adaptation of the novel as much as it is an illustration of it, a movie that seeks to recreate a gentle sentiment so fulsomely that it becomes, instead, sentimental.Alain-Fournier's novel, in synopsis, sounds like the libretto for an opera. Augustin Meaulnes, a handsome young man of 18, loses his way late one winter afternoon and comes upon a strange, dilapidated manor house where a gala masquerade is in progress. The guests seem to be of all ages and social classes, and Meaulnes is accepted by them without question.In the course of the fete he meets and falls in love with Yvonne De Galais, the sister of the young man whose engagement is being celebrated. Suddenly, however, the engagement is canceled, the fete is stopped, and Meaulnes finds himself back home without any clear idea of where he has been.Thereafter, Le Grand Meaulnes, as his schoolmates call him, devotes his life to finding again the mysterious manor and retrieving his lost love. It is, however, a paradise that can never be regained.The movie, like the novel, is a parable about the search for happiness, but, unlike Alain-Fournier who wrote so literally about the fantastic that it always possessed a sort of commonplace magic, Albicocco indulges himself in such flamboyant photographics that the movie becomes almost too sweet and soft, like a piece of over-ripe fruit. Instead of being firm and clear in style, it is heavy with romanticized images, especially in the masquerade sequences that have been filmed through just about every kind of filter imaginable, including—from the looks of things—gauze and Vaseline.The effect is to remove the story, not only in time and place, but also in feeling, from anything that might honestly touch us.All of the performers have a decent purity about them appropriate to the tale. Brigitte Fossey, who is now 20 and whose first and only other screen appearance was 15 years ago in "Forbidden Games," plays the sad Yvonne, and brings to the role a quality blond beauty that I identify somehow with Griffith films. Jean Blaise is silent-movie handsome as Meaulnes, and Alain Libolt is dark and sad as his hero-worshiping friend, through whose eyes the story is seen.The movie, which has English subtitles, was photographed entirely in Sologne, where Alain-Fournier set his novel, and it possesses an extraordinary feeling for the countryside and the passing of the seasons. These tableaus, however, seem to exist for their own sake. "The Wanderer" is a memory movie often beautiful to look at, but so distant that I failed to recall even the pleasure I experienced when I first discovered the book many, many years ago. That is an even sadder loss of innocence

get stuffed



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Get Stuffed was a British Television series of cookery shorts (each between approximately 5 and 10 minutes) in which young members of the public demonstrated how to cook their favourite dishes in their own kitchens. The format was aimed at the student population and encouraged viewers to attempt very simple recipes made from inexpensive ingredients using unsophisticated kitchen equipment.[1]

Production[edit]

The series was produced by an independent production company, Last Ditch Television, and aired on the ITV Network from 1991 to 1994, generally in a late night slot. Many of the presenters were students, and the programme frequently used locations and individuals from the English city of Norwich, Norfolk. A tie-in book was released in 1992. [2]

Episodes[edit]

There were 284 editions, lasting between 5 and 10 minutes, and 3 special 30-minute editions. They were made and aired between 1991 and 1994 on the ITV Network (104 episodes being re-licensed and repeated, on the same network, in 2001 and 2005).

References[edit]

External links[edit]


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shite crawl