SAINT ETIENNE – “Popular”

re Ed in June @81 (tardy, moi?) – ‘put enough subjective opinions together they become objective’…..

‘The good does not exist, like that, in an atemporal sky. The good is defined by us, it is practised, it is invented. And this is a collective work.’ – Foucault (pretentious, moi?)

Apart from anything else its a lovely bit of phrasing and rhythm, even in translation (OK, only in translation, I don’t know what it is in French)

Anyone read this yet… http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/06/story-modern-pop-bob-stanley-review ?

Also, the bits where Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan get ignored in favour of Donovan and whoever.. Well, to be fair, I have not read up to the Donovan section, having only just got through the DYLAN CHAPTER! but Aretha f. gets plenty praise..

Yes, but there SS is just acknowledging that orthodox rock history allows THIS AMOUNT OF SPACE for certain people, and bob on the whole gives them a lot less, into order to discuss at considerable length people generally omitted. A History of Modern Pop that actually omitted the Beatles would be a very bold project indeed.

Re 130/131: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but my feeling has been that the orthodox rock position has always been stronger in ordinary punters than people who write about music. They have a greater stake in the notion that The Clash really, really matter and The Saturdays don’t. Apart from anything else, most sane people immersed in any subject will find themselves tinkering with unorthodox positions just to stop getting bored, even if they can’t bring themselves ideologically to swap sides (hence ‘guilty pleasures’).
Whereas if you are either a) 15 and this all new and crucial to you or b) only get to listen to your old vinyl when the wife and kids are out of the bloody house, it’s easier to maintain a hard line.

Respect to Bob for joining in in the comments.

I think poor old Rimbaud got a bad rap, though.

This is amazing, and I would never have known about it but for Patti Smith:

Vowels

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels
Someday I’ll talk about your secret birth-cries,
A, black velvet jacket of brilliant flies
That buzz around the stenches of the cruel,

Gulfs of shadow: E, candour of mists, of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of parsley:
I, purples, bloody salivas, smiles of the lonely
With lips of anger or drunk with penitence:

U, waves, divine shudders of viridian seas,
Peace of pastures, cattle-filled, peace of furrows
Formed on broad studious brows by alchemy:

O, supreme Clarion, full of strange stridencies,
Silences crossed by worlds and by Angels:
O, the Omega, violet ray of her Eyes!

Re 135: I’m not saying the bulk of ordinary punters, I’m just saying those are attitudes often ascribed to (non-specified) critics (and academics) that I’ve more often encountered among, say, the readers of Mojo or Uncut rather than the staff of those magazines. It was a stance certainly held by a lot of teenage Sounds readers back in the day.

‘I think you’re confusing music appreciation with Dungeons and Dragons.’

There’s a difference?

How about the current relative public profiles of the Saturdays, the Sundays and the Mondays?

The History Boys is set in 1983 and, at least in its movie version, makes it seem like a Smiths/Echo/New Order/Cure wonderland.

@146: one of your best pieces; I always look forward to reading them.

In general: but isn’t it part of the fun of discussing popular music to get riled up when you hear or read somebody heaping unstinting praise on something which is quite obviously garbage, or the reverse?