I saw this briefly at work and was too busy to even think about composing a response :( And now I'm doing it because the alternative is to deal with the boxes piled up behind me
( ... )
And of course the reason for the lack of interest is because of the second point; if what's most important is what's happening now, because it's alive and I'm part of it, what's happened before can never measure up because I wasn't there, and I can only ever feel what the people who were there felt second-hand.
"it's alive and I'm part of it" = recognition that really it's NEVER just about the music (I cannot remember whether I usually argue this way or not). When I love the latest minimal techno 12 it's because I either have memories or...potential memories* of dancing to it in a club with my friends. When I love the latest teenpop diss it's because it fits into this glorious tabloid narrative I know inside out. &c &c.
*ie I can imagine it getting played out! and everyone going mad for it! this might never happen but that does not matter.
1. Actually it was teenpop c. 2005, because I felt like I'd found this awesome mostly deserted island that a few people had once populated (c. 2000-2001) and subsequently went off. Which turned out not to be true (good thing), but it was the first time in my life I felt like I was kind of feeling my way through the music on my own (and learning its own) terms and not just getting gradually closer to the center of a hip/hype machine that echoed through the internets. I thought a lot of indie rock c. 2003 was important to me at the time, but mostly I was playing catch up.
2. Eminem seemed like just about the biggest deal ever from when he came out through the end of the general media storm after his second CD (some time before the CD with "Cleaning Out My Closet" on it). But now I'm not I'd call him "important" outside the scope of the appeal of his own music.
3. I always loved Kylie, who was kind of the center of the pop universe right in the pre-pop phase. From spring to fall of '05 Fever and Discovery were pretty much all I
( ... )
(Before the 3 on the list here, I was kind of working my way through what I thought was a canon, tho it turns out that AMG's semi-randomized recommendations actually significantly skewed my perception of the canon. So that I bought, say, Camper Van Beethoven albums thinking there was something particularly "significant" about them.)
1. 1964-1968 rock soul the works (a lot of which I hated and avoided and fled from at the time), the world turned upside down, boys looking like girls, crustaceans having sex with mammals, the Martian invasion, etc. etc. etc.
2. I think No Wave of '78 exists as still-to-be-tapped potential rather than as the refashioning of the infrastructure it seemed at the time. It got absorbed and neutralized too fast as indie-avant pseudo-wildness.
Interesting that when I think of Importance I tend to overlook things like soft rock, Crosby, Stills & Nash, etc., which were important for taking what had been a convulsion and making it normal and livable. Seems to me that this stuff is important too, but it'll always be outshouted by the hubbub that precedes it.
1. '70-'76 music on Sesame Street and Electric Company; '77 Saturday Night Fever; '82-'84 MTV; '84-'85 American underground punk; '88-'89 hip hop/go-go/house; '90-'93 American underground rock/alternative crossover; '92-'98 New Orleans brass bands; '95 jungle; '98 rave; '00-'05 Duluth/Low; '98-'07 Minneapolis hip hop; '05 New Orleans and Houston (tie).
2. I think hindsight invests these moments with more importance, not less.
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2) See 1)
3) The KLF
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*ie I can imagine it getting played out! and everyone going mad for it! this might never happen but that does not matter.
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2. Eminem seemed like just about the biggest deal ever from when he came out through the end of the general media storm after his second CD (some time before the CD with "Cleaning Out My Closet" on it). But now I'm not I'd call him "important" outside the scope of the appeal of his own music.
3. I always loved Kylie, who was kind of the center of the pop universe right in the pre-pop phase. From spring to fall of '05 Fever and Discovery were pretty much all I ( ... )
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2. I think No Wave of '78 exists as still-to-be-tapped potential rather than as the refashioning of the infrastructure it seemed at the time. It got absorbed and neutralized too fast as indie-avant pseudo-wildness.
3. Elvis, Chuck, the Girl Groups.
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2. I think hindsight invests these moments with more importance, not less.
3. The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Sex Pistols.
--Pete Scholtes
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