From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V4 #209 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-digest Wednesday, June 22 2005 Volume 04 : Number 209 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 09:54:14 -0400 From: "Zap" Subject: Fw: BOUNCE seven-seas@smoe.org: Message too long (>7000 chars) Received: from carmela.hpnx.com (carmela.hpnx.com [65.100.84.3]) by smoe.org (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id j3QKtQ6V001463 for ; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:55:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 31966 invoked by uid 89); 26 Apr 2005 20:55:16 -0000 Message-ID: <20050426205516.31965.qmail@carmela.hpnx.com> From: "Kristin Smith" To: seven-seas@smoe.org Subject: [1 of 2] post-punk history article Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 08:55:16 +1200 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; format=flowed X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on jane.smoe.org X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=no version=2.63 X-Virus-Scanned: clamdscan / ClamAV version 0.60 X-Greylist: IP, sender and recipient auto-whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-1.5.8 (smoe.org [199.201.145.78]); Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:55:37 -0400 (EDT) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by smoe.org id j3QKtb6V001523 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1464368,00.html Vision on It is time to adjust history: the golden age of British pop lies in the late Seventies and early Eighties, not in the Sixties. From Adam Ant to ZTT, a bizarre assortment of radicals, artists, chancers and unclassifiable oddballs took over the mainstream, and for once we had the best of both worlds. Simon Reynolds, leading pop historian of the period, makes the case that we never had it so good Sunday April 24, 2005 The Observer Liverpool 1978: Gawky student Julian Cope and self-styled poet-ruffian Pete Wylie are hanging out at Kirkland's cafe, nursing half-drunk cups of coffee while 'rehearsing' their band the Nova Mob - that is, taking turns to describe in detail a song they have yet to actually write. Birmingham, 1978: A disillusioned punk called Kevin Rowland flicks morosely through a stack of second-hand singles at a market stall. A flicker of joy wipes the scowl from his face when he lights upon a seven-inch single by raspy-voiced Sixties R&B singer Geno Washington. Sheffield, 1979: Martin Fry, writer for the fanzine Modern Drugs, arrives from Stockport to interrogate the experimental electronic outfit Vice Versa. The 'zine interview turns into a job interview: by the end of their conversation, Fry has made such an impression on the Sheffield boys they offer him a position in the group. Flash forward four years: all these unlikely characters have become pop stars. That's one of the most remarkable aspects of the post-punk era. You expect the underground to be a hospitable place for eccentrics and misfits. But during that period, the weirdos and visionaries actually wormed their way into the mainstream. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, those hyper-accelerated years from 1978 to 1984 rival the equivalent, but far more fabled, period from 1963 to 1969 commonly known as the Sixties. But for all the freak imagery and wanton derangement, there was a certain plausibility to the pop stars of the Sixties. From the Beatles and Stones to Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, by and large, the biggest stars were the best musicians and the finest singers; they also tended to be the best looking, the ones most endowed with animal magnetism and charisma. All that changed after punk. Post-punk retained the principle that anyone can do it, eventually translating punk's do-it-yourself imperative into the New Pop philosophy 'anyone can be a star' and 'anyone can have a hit'. Sheer belief in this egalitarian (and, on the face of it, hopelessly unrealistic) notion gave people the confidence to go for it full tilt, and a surprising number actually pulled it off. Recently I finished writing Rip it Up and Start Again, a history of the post-punk era. The process of research, rather than demystifying everything, had the opposite effect: the more I found out about the back story to these characters' improbable trajectories towards fame (or obscurity), the more my sense of wonder increased. At the end, I was left more astonished and impressed than ever by the feats of the postpunk adventurers - these strivers and visionaries, schemers and dreamers. One primary impetus for the book was pure generational rivalry. Baby boomers need to stop hogging the retro spotlight. It's high time we mythologised the amazing sounds and stories, personalities and events, of post-punk. The 1978-1984 era matches the Sixties in terms of the sheer volume of amazing music created, the spirit of quest and risk that infused it, and the way the music seemed inextricably intertwined with the social/political/cultural turbulence of its day. There was also a similar atmosphere permeating the time, one that mingled anticipation and anxiety; a hunger for all things new and futuristic coexisting with a dread of what the future had in store. From 1978 onwards, punk actually lived up to its promise of a musical revolution. Ironically, this only happened when the bands catalysed by the commotion and calamity of 1977 started to break some of punk's own prohibitions and strictures, and instead embraced longer songs, sonic subtlety, a wider spectrum of emotion; when they explored the sound-warping possibilities of the recording studio, looked to the radical rhythms of contemporary black dance music (funk, disco, reggae), and the futuristic potential of electronics. Some of the liveliest minds to emerge during punk, such as the Slits and Siouxsie and the Banshees, didn't even put out records until 1978 or '79, by which time they'd evolved far beyond the kind of basic fare that roused the rabble at the Roxy. The Slits teamed up with UK dub producer Dennis Bovell and drummer Budgie to create the punky-reggae classic Cut, the desolate dream-drift skank of songs like 'Newtown' and 'Spend Spend Spend' light years beyond the exuberant racket of early tunes like 'Vindictive'. With The Scream and Join Hands, all serrated metal guitar and piercing ice-dagger vocals, Siouxsie and the Banshees invented (and surpassed in advance) goth. Then they too recruited the polyrhythmically perverse Budgie, resulting in Kaleidoscope, Juju and A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, and a series of singles such as 'Spellbound' and 'Fireworks' whose baleful sensuality cut a swath of dark glamour across Top of the Pops in the early Eighties. Today we tend to think of post-punk as consisting entirely of angular agit-prop (like Gang of Four) or ominous angst (like Joy Division), partly because those groups have influenced the current spate of fashionable retro-post-punk outfits, from Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand to Interpol and the Rapture. But it was also a great period for pure pop sensibility. Consider the geometric tautness and melodic concision of Wire's Chairs Missing, the sweet shambles of Postcard groups like Orange Juice and Josef K. Then came the contagious exuberance of 2-Tone outfits such as the Specials, Madness, and the Beat; synthpop bands such as the Human League and Soft Cell with their fire-and-ice combination of cold, glistening electronics and hot, heartfelt passion; the bright, rejoicing melodiousness of Liverpool bands like Echo and the Bunnymen or the Teardrop Explodes (Julian Cope finally getting round to writing songs rather just talking about them in the Kirkland cafe). All this made the late Seventies and early Eighties a golden age for the seven-inch single, for radio, and for music TV. Top of the Pops was essential viewing in those days, like Ready Steady Go! in the swinging Sixties. For a few years, top of the pops was full of people who simply wouldn't be let through the celebrity barricades nowadays, when stars are groomed and choreographed to the point where they might as well be computer-generated animations. Consider Martin Fry, with his acne scars, slightly strained vocals, and hulking frame. A year after he joined Vice Versa, the Sheffield group had changed its name to ABC and its jarring electronic sound to a slick disco-funk, while Fry had been promoted to frontman. On Top of the Pops, performing the group's debut single and first hit 'Tears are not Enough' in a gold lamC tuxedo, Fry couldn't quite play the part he'd assigned himself - the bygone panache of pre-rock showbiz meets the melodramatic splendour of 'I Will Survive'-style orchestral disco. Yet punk had endowed him and the other members of ABC with the self-belief and sheer nerve to aim for the stars. With some help from C