Still Too Soon To Know

Apr 16, 2007 15:12

Three questions, which I will try and phrase right - all related though ( Read more... )

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freakytigger April 16 2007, 14:41:02 UTC
My answers:

1. I'm tempted to say dance music and club culture, even though my notions of its importance only fully cohered when they were already being written up by eg Matthew Collins. For one thing I had quite a strong "DO NOT WANT" reaction to the first house music I heard, so I accepted it as 'significantly different'. And for another when I started reading the NME the people who cared about dance obviously seemed to be having a better and more committed time than the 'main' writers.

"Dance music" in that sense now seems a lot less important than it did then, though.

2. I predicted an eighties revival that never came for years and years and I thought it might 'matter' when it did arrive. It hasn't really though I like a load of the music.

Also in 2002/3 ish I thought the post-Garage diaspora, with loads of DIY experience and hungry from their fleeting taste of commercial massiveness, would make urban British music a massive force domestically and internationally. This didn't really happen either.

3. I first got interested in 'pop history' in about 1987 or so - so punk obviously. Hip-hop felt like something happening NOW even though it had its roots in "then". I would probably have partisan-ly said The Smiths, in fact I think I probably did, repeatedly, to anyone who would listen.

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 14:50:11 UTC
something always stops me seeing the Smiths as 'important' even though i (eventually) loved them to bits and could see plainly how much they were distorting the space-pop continuum.

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dubdobdee April 16 2007, 14:58:09 UTC
ooh i like the idea that history is what distorts the (uniformity of the) continuum

you can extend the metaphor to include "stars" and "gravity"!

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freakytigger April 16 2007, 15:01:02 UTC
Wasn't this the message of that Alan Moore futur shock that we linked to on the Life on M/A/R/R/S* thread.

*someone use this somewhere pls

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 15:07:56 UTC
(OMGZ)

am i mad (BROTHERS AND SISTERS)
in a coma (WE'RE GONNA GET YOU)
or back in time (DANCE! DANCE!)

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chezghost April 16 2007, 16:21:20 UTC
Anniecartwright (the first time i ever she see dance)

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 15:05:35 UTC
I keep meaning to ask you Mark - have you read Latour?

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dubdobdee April 16 2007, 15:17:35 UTC
bruno? none (tho if you do mean him i HAVE read some michel serres, who wz i believe his mentor) (haha on wikipedia BL is doing the dr evil face!)

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 15:35:03 UTC
yes bruno. he was just bangin on about Serres in the bit i was reading on the bus. i'm considering doing 1 of his books for the 'top 5 science' on FT. actually considering doing 2 books as 1 (as they go together too well) but tho book 1 is v straight forward, 2 wobbles around with more theory than i can keep straight before landing on safer shores at the end of each section.

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byebyepride April 16 2007, 16:07:05 UTC
I really like Serres, but I feel ambivalent about Latour! I find it interesting that Serres gets Englished via the history / sociology of science people because they are clearly (rightly!) discomforted by some of what he says. I can't remember where, but there's a particular apology for Serres comparison of the Challenger explosion to some ancient practice of burning men alive in a representation of a God, that sticks in the mind!

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 16:11:25 UTC
i MUST finish "We have never been modern" and then read it through again after asking yous two for some help!

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jauntyalan April 16 2007, 15:09:03 UTC
"influence at a distance" :-)

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