Have Tracer, Mark, and Alan not heard Margaret Berger?

[koganbot]

In relation to Episode Three of the Resonance FM series A Bite Of Stars, A Slug Of Time, And Thou:

(1) Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940 for "margaret berger" "robot song". (0.04 seconds)(2) How would you compare Mark's and Alan's accents as to class, geography, and personality

Comments

[jauntyalan]

i played Robot Song on my first stint on Lollards!

[jauntyalan]

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/lollards-podcast/2007/03/freaky-trigger-and-the-lollards-of-pop-week-12/

admittedly there is no ref to the songs played on the site! also see

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/pop/2007/02/margaret-berger-pretty-scary-silver-fairy-roundup/

:-)

thanks for the just in case-ness of it though!

[koganbot]

When the conventional "noes, my family disapproves of the one i love" narrative hits the heartfelt anguish in the lyric "I'm in love with a robot", even though the song's title is a bit of a spoiler, and even though this is such a worn cliché in electro, you are wormed inside such patent ridiculousness. You are ready to believe her. It's in the step-up in the bridge, "You’re the only one who makes me feel a thing", a warm wash of melody that gives me goosebumps.

Excellent. OTM. It's amazing how well this song works; well, it's amazing that in a pop world full of catchy melodies that this one manages to be more catchy and aching and poignant. This would have been in my top ten singles of the year or the decade even if only it had been a single. It is the first two songs on her MySpace (albeit in inferior remixes), so perhaps it is a personal favorite.

The lyrics are based on experiences and feelings that she had in the beginning of her teenage years. It's a combination of being unsure and naive. I am fascinated and inspired by the

[koganbot]

Skyecaptain's analysis, if you haven't seen it.

[freakytigger]

I'd say that at least some elements of rock and pop fandom and criticdom have now safely located "the real" in specific acts from the 1960s and early 1970s. But of course this realness is problematic because part of what made it real is its nonrealness at the time.

[dubdobdee]

yes literary "realness" is no more existentially secure than popmusicky "realness" -- though obviously the relevant institutions of self-prodction are different organised, and set against each other

i somewhat cavil with frank's argt that classical and/or jazz have been simply dropped as a measure of quality -- i think a powerful ghost of the threat of them still functions very strongly indeed (for example as firepower in the "stands the test of time" argument); what's been droped was never that much there, which was a widespread grasp in the "critical classes" of the actual modes of judgment that old-skool musicians make... someone like adorno is REALLY UNUSUAL in being deeply literate in the rules of classical harmony, and how these rules were breaking down within the composer community between the 1890s and the 1940s... but most cultural commentary which paid mind to this history of music as marking a measure of quality was no more competent to analyse the actual rules of its judgment than ppl totoally outside the game of it

[koganbot]

Don't know what you mean by "existentially" secure but the question I'm asking is about how "socially" secure literary "realness" is, and the point is that when SF wants to improve, it thinks that at least it has some idea of what it would take to be more "literary"*; obviously literature is part of a larger culture that has made hierarchies of taste less secure in a lot of endeavors, and the intelligentsia has consciously (and admirably) made itself less secure but

[koganbot]

*And I'd say that even if English depts. are questioning themselves as to what constitutes the "literary," the fans of science fiction would still have a fairly conventional idea of what counts as literary (i.e., what was on the high-school and college reading lists), whereas I don't think fans of popular music - some of whom presumably are also fans of SF - have in mind a section of the musicocultural landscape that constitutes "the good music that self-improvement would take us to." Try this: "Wait, some science fiction is great art, and [science fiction writer] does well what [acknowledged literary titan] did well." As opposed to "wait, some popular music is great art, and James Brown does well what [acknowledged classical musical titan] did well." I don't know what acknowledged classical musical titan would be relevant, could fit into that spot

[dubdobdee]

ok well i have to go catch 1xplane in an hour to fly to STRASBOURG to WATCH OPERA (wagner no less) so 0xtime at all to pick up on the many many strands of this: i think it's a giant huge massive question

when i spoke on the prog and then wrote that post this morning (abt classical music and/or jazz; abt "modes of judgment") i actually had in my head more the anxieties of musicians-as-musicians (and sfwriters-as-writers) than of fans or critics -- a craftsperson's map of "what will work" and "what will last" and "what is teh aweseom" bein sharply different from the (non-craft-capable) fan's...

(disclaimer: the relationship of craftsperson to fan in each of these different areas is almost certainly very different) (music allows for a lot more self-taughtness than eg fine or applied arts -- outside comics anyway -- which, i think, probably embeds a lot more defensive anxiety)

[martinskidmore]

SF has often taken to absorbing lessons or ideas from 'serious' literary writing - most obviously at the end of the period the radio show is covering, when the new wave of writers took a great deal from contemporary literary figures, especially the more outre ones - lots of Burroughs, for instance. There's also always been the problem of having to leave the genre for your genre works to get attention - Dick was just managing this at the end of his life, after he finally got one of his mainstream literary novels published; and after Ballard wrote Empire of the Sun, there were loads of top critics saying they had always loved his work, but he certainly didn't get a fraction of the hype for his SF novels. These days there are writers whose literary qualities far exceed the levels of praise they get outside SF circles - I don't think there are many living writers of prose as beautiful as that of M. John Harrison, for example. Then again, plenty of SF fans have no interest in someone whose writing is aspiring more to poetry than adventure

[koganbot]

I'm going to jump off-topic in this post and get obsessive and trivial to say that yes, The Big Sleep was in some ways a cut-and-paste and Chandler definitely had his flaws but - SPOILERS - the chauffeur confusion is not a good example, in that who killed the chauffeur does not remotely matter to the plot and only slightly to the theme of the book, and actually the book gives us two solid choices: (1) Brody swiped the photos and then killed the chauffeur, or (2) Brody swiped the photos and then the chauffeur committed suicide out of remorse for not being able to protect his beloved Carmen, or out of his realization of what Carmen was, or... who knows, and he's a minor character we never meet, and his tiny role in the novel is to reinforce that Carmen is used to people falling for her and taking care of her, which Chandler communicates very well no matter who killed the guy. The book hints at suicide as an explanation, the movie leans towards Brody, and again since Brody is shortly killed himself there's no loose end to tie up. Of

[koganbot]

Marlowe compares Mars' fear at the end to little Harry's stalwartness in the face of death

Compares unfavorably, that is.

[koganbot]

(Where I'd point at the book's flaws would be that Carmen just isn't very interesting. She's infantile and oversexed and so what? Also, though this isn't as important, but as a character, Silver Wig as Eddie Mars' deluded but noble wife never makes sense. First her role in the plot: Mars' spreading the story that she'd run off with Sean Regan is really dumb! Yes, it makes people think that Regan is still alive, but it also unnecessarily makes his wife a point of vulnerability, since if she ever resurfaces it would make the authorities wonder, Hey, if she didn't run off with Regan then maybe someone killed Regan; let's look into this! This is an awful lot of effort and risk just to keep a tiny part of Eddie's operations (the blackmail of a rich man) going. And also, Silver Wig putting her husband at risk by helping Marlowe escape just doesn't make sense. Well, it does to the extent that it keeps her delusion alive, that Eddie isn't behind all this killing, which maybe would be interesting if she were a character we got to know. But she

[dubdobdee]

burroughs is a fascinating borderline figure -- never quite embraced by SF or the "official" literary canon, but never comfortably dismissed either: always there as a presence nervously adverted to

meanwhile the communities that embrace him wholeheartedly seem by this act to set themselves apart from both mainstreams