Why bother, when this community has been dormant for so long? Well, I think there's a lot of excellent writing (both in posts and comments) in the archives that should be preserved. I have many fond memories of orgafun and good natured arguing about the Sugababes and I don't want to see it disappear because of bigoted ideologies.
What this means in practice: - All posts and comments have been transferred across to https://poptimists.dreamwidth.org/. - The original posts will stay here on LJ for the foreseeable future, however I'm going to restrict new posts to mods-only (the backup-to-DW takes days and I don't want to have to do it again in the near future!). - Polls have a link back to the original LJ post, which is a bit confusing. However most of these have long failed to work properly on LJ anyway. - If you want to post or comment on the new community, feel free! You need to be a community member to post (membership is moderated as before) but any registered account can comment - this includes OpenID accounts, if you don't want to sign up with Dreamwidth.
Thanks to everyone who made this community so great over the years.
To celebrate 60 years of the UK Charts, DJ Chlorine and The Barnet Ape will be playing all #1s all night – all the boshingest chart-toppers from Aqua to Zager & Evans.
Superstar Guest DJS: Tome Wing and Bob Stanley.
WHERE: Downstairs @ Ryan’s Bar, 181 Stoke Newington Church St WHEN: Friday 30th November 2012, 8pm-1am FREE ENTRY (Facebook event link)
01:50 pm - ABBAnings forty years ago Tom asked this question at One Week?/One Band: "Did people actually dislike ABBA in the 70s? The Brian Eno quote I posted yesterday paints a familiar picture - nobody could say they liked them, then gradually people could. But how were they really received in the music press at the time?"
Here's my initial reply (writing as someone who began reading the UK rock press extremely intensely from 1977):
NME Book of Rock (1976 edn, key para, author unknown): "[ABBA] first came to international attention through winning the grisly Eurovision song contest in 1974, but have since acieved world-wide success with their albums, compilations of slick pop material tailored to the singles market, and all delivered in a kind of jarring Eurospeak. ABBA have compensations, however; the superb quality of the production (attained with aid of Stig Anderson, long-serving producer in the Swedish record industry), the strong melodies, and the vocals--sometimes plaintive, sometimes strident--delivered by the girl singers who are as decorative as Swedish girls are proverbially supposed to be."
The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1980 edn, author is Ken Tucker): "This Swedish quartet (two women, two men) is an international phenomenon; their sound--a compendium of white American pop hooks welded to memserizing synthesizers and the permanently anxious lead singing of the women--is pleasant and forgettable. In their conscious conquest of Everywhere, they are determined not to offend: as fixed cheeriness pervades, and thus ABBA is best taken in small doses--i.e. Their singles. Given this every-song-a-smiley-smash approach, the Greatest Hits is of the highest quality, even if it is prone to induce both sleep and cavities."
[All LPs given 2/5 except Hits which as 3/5: by comparison David Gates's Bread's two Bests get 4/5 and a fair bit more leeway and enthusiasm -- albeit from a different entry-writer...]
The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, by Phil Hardy and Dave Laing (1990 edn): Entry WAY too boring to write out, except for this weird claim: "Surprisingly (and in marked contrast to Fleetdood Mac), the strained personal relationships within the group -- both couoples parted -- were never reflected in Ulvaeus's anmd Andersson's songs."
Eno is of course highly parti pris within the context of the Brit discussion of rock and pop (as was glam generally): so when he skewers an orthodoxy, it's basically a summary of the foolish opinions of everyone he wants to dismiss as stupid, and sidesteps all those who'd already come over to his side of the argument. The "3-inch-singles are better than albums" was a well formed and boisterous faction already -- Greg Shaw was one of its cheerleaders -- and plenty of people were already wrestling with the issues of quasi-manufactured pop-for-younger-teens (cf anyone writing about the Monkees or Marc Bolan).
Of course the issue here is that ABBA weren't so evidently writing for younger teens: quite the opposite. And much of the pop/rock discourse in the 70s was often trying to argue that, well, TEENAGERS ARE THE NEW GROWN-UPS GRANDAD: to be young means you're exciting and sexy and CORRECT (politically), and you need to be taken seriously, unlike adults who are all boring squares. Which is is a whole raft of contradictory assumptions, especially as time passes.
Finally, despite Ken Tucker's review, ABBA were more or less unknown in the US: and for British rock writers, validation in the end still came from across the Atlantic. The British rock press was young, anxious, unformed and inexperienced in the mid-70s: the US rock press was its admired older brother, at least for a while. It wasn't really till the 80s that critics came along who wanted to break with this -- who treated the American imprimatur as, if not worthless, then not really something to bother chasing.
Inspired by Christophe calling Big Bang's "Blue" the greatest boyband song since Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," I compiled a list of fifteen boyband tracks. Not a best-of, not a survey, but some stuff I think highly of, and enough gaps to call forth lists of your own:
The Jewels "Hearts Of Stone" Dion And The Belmonts "I Wonder Why" The Marcels "Blue Moon" The Miracles "You Really Got A Hold On Me" The Beatles "She Loves You" The Temptations "(I Know) I'm Losing You" The Monkees "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" The Jackson 5 "I Want You Back" The Moments "Love On A Two-Way Street" New Kids On The Block "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" Bell Biv DeVoe "Poison" *NSync "I Want You Back" Backstreet Boys "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" Big Bang "Tonight" MBLAQ "I Don't Know"
I was extrapolating forward and back from early '90s usage; so, the male r&b vocal group taken to by kids and teens, with dancing. Orioles and Drifters not eligible, Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers are. "I Want To Hold Your Hand" eligible, "I Am The Walrus" not. "ABC" eligible, "Shake Your Body" not (among other things, vocals too much a Michael-only showcase). I count the Coasters, but I'd have chosen the Robins/Coasters' "Riot In Cell Block Number 9," which is a bit early and the content is probably insufficiently pre-teen (though I myself would've loved it as a tyke). I count the early Wailers, but my choice, "Jailhouse," is too late, and it reaches older than teen. I disqualified duos even though in my heart I'm sure the Everly Brothers belong for "Cathy's Clown" and "All I Have To Do Is Dream," and maybe even Simon & Garfunkel for the electric version of "Sounds Of Silence."
05:18 pm - Ashlee fans of the world Hello poptimists! I'm doing an informal survey of people who listen and/or listened at some point in time to Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography, in preparation for a manuscript I'm putting together on the album. It is brief and anonymous.
Please feel free to share this link with any pop communities that you think might be useful. Thanks!
