This week the Lollards get Popular! No really! Tom Ewing makes his way to the sprawling Resonance FM studios to preview the next entry in his mammoth project. Mark Sinker, Kat Stevens, and host Elisha Sessions join him for a wide-ranging discussion that takes in Terre Thaemlitz, childhood, pop stars’ relationships with their audiences, a logistical breakdown of the iconic video, and our own marks out of 10. Oh yeah, and “Teen Witch” (1989). Please submit your mental image of Shep Pettibone in the comments, please (no web searches allowed!).
Audio PlayerYes, Lovecraft is a strong comparison, both in convergence and divergence. Another difference between the two men: Lovecraft was a…
Glee’s amateur-hour version of Vogue is the one you’re discussing? Huh? (I type this having paused the podcast gob-smacked at 18:26… Hoping a corner is turned soon so that the joke’s on me!)
OK, the Immac Collec. version appears at the end of the podcast! Whew.
I look forward to Popular on this. [I kinda disagree with the thesis that this record was a major change for M. – Vogue’s very similar to Madonna’s first self-penned song from 1982, Everybody. And her visual presentation of that song in clubs from the beginning (and check out the front page of her own main web-site for a doozy of a lip-synch performance from 1982) wasn’t a million miles removed from Vogue’s vid.. ]
I’m puzzled by Kat S.’s idea that a b/w video for M. was a big deal at the time – the vid. for Cherish the previous year was b/w and the Express Yourself vid. (also by Vogue’s dir., the now very famous David Fincher), although nominally in color, apes Metropolis and is desaturated enough so that it registers as more silvery/sheeny than really in color.
Whoops – our cuts are showing. That shouldn’t have been the Glee version; in the studio the song was skipping so we edited in a non-skipping version – but the wrong one! Our intern shall be whipped. And by intern I mean me.
I’ll correct this shortly.
EDIT: OK, this podcast has been de-Gleed.
My mental image of Shep Pettibone has always been Quincy Jones wearing Derrick May’s clothes…
SHEP pettiBONE:
It was running at roughly seventy listens before it was reset, if anyone’s checking…
Speaking of black and white videos of people voguing, here’s the (excellent) Malcolm McLaren track, as promised:
Remixing credit goes to Mark Moore of S’Express and…. William Orbit.
Pettibone:
“this podcast has been de-Gleed” – is there a way of applying this process to LIFE ITSELF? #fuckglee
Sadly we didn’t get round to my very extremely correct theory on the cultural importance of Glee! #yayglee
Y’know, I’ve cut Glee every kind of slack, but this second season has just been unbearable. With one exception the eps have been completely charmless shambles. The exception was (2.4)’Duets’, which was all-around excellent. But that’s not enough for me, so I’m out (I may watch the odd well-reviewed ep. henceforth, but that’s it), and I have a feeling I’m not alone. The show’s still rating well, but it’s hard to see how that can last: there’s a bit of cultural bubble that has to be worked through (as all the cultural capital of new faces etc. from the first season gets burned through).
Unrelatedly, clips from all tracks of Daft Punk’s soundtrack to the Tron sequel are up on Amazon here. It doesn’t sound up to much to me, and not in the same league as Clint Mansell or Vangelis, let alone Herrmann, Williams, Morricone, Elmer Bernstein, and the like. But we’ll see/hear soon enough I guess. Do any senior FT people (e.g., Mark, Marcello) have any good (future greatness?) Clint Mansell anecdotes from his Pop Will Eat Itself days?
Nice show from Popular’s very own Peter, Paul and Mary. Even though you were discussing a track (and indeed artist) which is everything anti-Swede, it was a good listen. And I don’t think Kat sounded drunk at all. I wonder if they’d allow you back (with Marcello and Waldo in tow) to discuss the bitchfight on “Barbados”… I’ll get me coat.
Loved “Disco Clone” btw. Well done all three of you.
#12 – yes but I’d have to look them up.
#13 – I’d be happy to appear on Lollards if they wanted me (which they probably don’t) but maybe not to discuss Coconut Airways and Brixton Town In The Rain. It would be nice to have a Popular Comments All-Comers special edition though.
@12 i don’t claim senior FT status, but i do have a clint mansell anecdote.
in 1991 or so, me and my then girlfriend (we were both kind of grebos) were queuing at a cash point in Birmingham city centre. the young woman in front of us was dressed in particularly notable “sharon”* white shell suit accessorised with neon wristbands and completed with a straggly black top-knot. in our horrible teenage way we thought this was most amusing and were raising our eyebrows and sniggering a bit (while looking quite the edward and mrs simpson ourselves, naturally). said Sharon turned around and was – of course! – our idol, clint-from-the-poppies.
*then the local equivalent of the nasty ch*v concept, i suppose. (the male equivalents were “kevins”)
@15, pink champale. Thanks for that.
Back to Shep Pettibone (since, amazingly, there’s still no sign of the Popular Vogue entry and it’s felt rather like a whole pop eon has passed in the interim, with both Girl Talk and the recent Robyn finally blowing up in my world). I confess that I was utterly nonplussed by the guy’s very MOR/schlubby look when I finally tracked him down. I definitely did have the bearer of that name (whom I’d remembered as being responsible for good New Order 12″ remixes at around the same time)pegged as *either* one of those very hairy backroom guys like Rick Rubin or Arthur Baker *or* as a sleek, skinny black kid maybe a lot like M’s buddy Steve Bray. But no.
# 14 – That “Popular Comments All-Comers special edition” would, of course, be fabulous but Mr Ewing would without question run a mile from it. Freaky Trigger would be closed down within hours of the broadcast if Marcello, Waldo, Rosie, Erithian et al were let loose unchaperoned…
# 14(2) – Coconut Airways, alas, went to the wall ages ago. Bloody Laker!
Great show, guys! I would give it an 8. It would be a 9 except you stole my thunder – I was gonna mention the DJ Sprinkles record! Now I have nothing original to say about “Vogue”. *raises fists* dAMN YOU ALL TO etc.
Looking the hell forward to this entry. (“The Power” is a Curry’s advert to me)
Oh and apparently I have no imagination cause Shep Pettibone = the Warner Bros sheepdog (Sam or Ralph, I forget)
My mental image of Shep Pettibone was obviously John Noakes’ faithful border collie (which even now I still believe to be alive and happily chowing down on Blue Peter pet birthday cake in a cosy farmhouse in the Lake District…no, he’s not dead at all. No.) I mean how could you think of anything else?
RE: the question around minute 50 as to who DJ Sprinkles was playing for. Yes, at the time Vogue came out, Sprinkles was a DJ at a famous NY Latina and African American vogue/ball/transgendered club called Sally’s II – which you seem to laugh as if that couldn’t possibly be the case. He got an “Underground Grammy” there as best DJ of 1991. The liner notes in the CD Midtown 120 Blues from which the track you played came from is clear about this context as a major influence on his own house productions (also printed on the Comatonse website). Sprinkles is also not about “authenticity” – but about “responsibility” in addressing contextual specificities, and the commitments one has to protecting subculture communities. He’s spoken in interviews that it’s not a question of Madonna’s authenticity – because Sprinkles dismisses the very notion of authenticity – and is about responsibilities and relationships. So the actual analysis is not obscure or unclear at all. It’s just that you guys aren’t familiar with the larger critique of Madonna’s Vogue (which is by no means limited to or invented by Sprinkles), and therefore dismiss it as his lone and personal angry rant because you guys had no framework for understanding it. You also mentioned Paris is Burning with absolutely no reference to the criticisms of that either.. and end with a very strange comment about super-sound-thief Malcolm McClaren being more authentic. All very strange. Sorry to say, in this case you guys didn’t do your homework.