Whatever happened to pop music?
" Hey i was thinking about that show last night [Whatever happened to the Gender benders?, Channel 4]... and ive come to the conclusion... well not a conclusion, just an new understanding of what cultural revolutions are about. They are true reactions arent they, they are born out of total despair with the social climate of the time. I think its an eye opener in terms of what'shappening today. Not a bloody thing! Just bands rehashing no wave new yorkers and electro duo's rehashing new romantics... its kinda made me really see through the bullshit we call post modernism. But then I think hey its working fine and those revolutions deserved more time to be explored and refined. It's simply easier this way. "
posted by marc kremers at 14:46
16 Comments:
i think you're trying to pingeonhole today's music with a wrong point of view: you can judge today's music as if reading a book on the sixties or the punk area or the roots of blues etc.
there are lots of fragmented cultural revolutions happening today - there're just happening faster and there's just a lot more than before, so they're smaller...i don't think the abundance of styles' names like "electroclash", "screemo", "breakcore" are just marketing coups.
well, this is my opinion, anyway ;-)
sorry: "(...)view: you CAN'T judge(...)"
i just miss the cultural revolution aspect.
But maybe thats what the micro fragmentation of music and genres has created, an atmosphere in which we dont need major revolutions, where no genre or view really dominates the other, we are all happy doing our own thing ( and these days even covering our own things via our own news feeds, ie blogs).
Either way pop has become by in large, dumb.
um, yeah you probably right...the myspace.com website names it: everybody in its own space - no "ourspace" !
by the way you might wanna check Felix Kubin's track called "Die Kulturelle Revolution" !
info:
http://www.felixkubin.com/releases/byfelixkubin/16/#
track (scroll middle page):
http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/9471
I have long thought that maybe we have come to the end of history and everything from no on is a remix of past history with the steps eventually becoming so infinitely small that "just a moment ago" will be hip "in a second".
But that's not true and I think looking back things seem bigger than when you are in the middle.
One aspect that dilutes things for sure is the fact that we know way too much. Even if something is important, our attention-span isn't big enough any more to give it any time.
So yes, maybe some things deserved more time. But you put it into a new context and it becomes a new thing, innit.
It's not copy and paste and even a Beatles tribute band today isn't just that.
Anyway, I have lost interest in this topic - what's next?
the nineties...
neo early 00's idm ?
Ahh, Intelligent Dance Music.
That was probably the most idiotic label ever created for a music-style.
Calculator and pen in shirt-pocket, rocking out to bleeps and beats. How silly.
OK, let's collect more stupid genres.
F
there's a fat load of them:
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/music/genres.html
Reminds me of Mario Milizia's 'Style Mixer' I saw in Rotterdam in Feburary :
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/film/35498.html
ever thought about the fact that there are: a. people younger than you and me, b. people not living in london and c. people that are into "good" music?
don't get me wrong, but i really think that if you stop caring about all this being upfront and oh so artsy and sophisticated and stuff there is quite a lot going on music-wise at the moment. the fact that it won't fit as the soundtrack to any exhibition doesn't make a song/album/band bad as long as it's fun to listen to, huh?
think you are missing the point.
I didnt say theres nothing happening. There is more happening now then ever.
Im missing the feeling that one, SPECIFIC niche of people can generate a change in the pop landscape and move from obscurity to something you mum knows, like the punks or the new romantics, its now a lot more diffused and influenced by marketing, even co-ordinated by marketing. And once again i dont know if thats such a bad thing anyway.
I was chatting to a friend about this yesterday and he said revolutions today arent coming from culture they are coming from the medium itself ie. mass media being splintered at by the blog phenomenon. And thats a good point. The medium is the message.
i think i get what you mean but is it really mum being scared (both punks, new romantics or whatever worked that way)what makes a revolution? do you have to spit into people's faces and be as noisy as pssible to disagree?
i think the "real revolution" going on is the fact that with all this "media splintering" people nowadays are given the possibilty to retreat completely into their own realm of habits, likes and lifestyle and don't have to start any big movement anymore.
sorry. if I got jesus beuys point right we're getting closer to a point where history and influence from history has caught up with us in time and we're in some sort of vacuum where the boundaries between old and new has disappeared - and where movements and sounds have been rearranged and revived to a point where it's just a dead space of recycled ideas left. wouldn't that be the optimal setting for something new and refreshing?
bye!
"people nowadays are given the possibilty to retreat completely into their own realm of habits, likes and lifestyle and don't have to start any big movement anymore."
This sounds pretty scary...
"we're getting closer to a point where history and influence from history has caught up with us in time and we're in some sort of vacuum where the boundaries between old and new has disappeared - and where movements and sounds have been rearranged and revived to a point where it's just a dead space of recycled ideas left."
That reminded of an interview i did in c. 1994, when i was 23. I started a "fanzine" with friends and decided to talk to Markus Popp from "Oval". He was talking about this all the time. He said, all his music was prerecorded und preproduced. "New" is just an "old" with an other face. But a dead one? I don´t think so.
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