From 1984, I Punman's own reflotation move. An attempt to imagine a form of oppositionality to "the state of pop"....
But where Mick Farren envisaged all of rock (once suitably reformed / reformulated) marshalled into unified opposition to Showbiz ... here Penman imagines a far more subtle, to the point of being somewhat elusive, idea of "against"
For starters, "showbiz" is not the enemy, not at all.... he loves that Vegas / Broadway / Hollywood pre-rock nexus.... pines for the days when crooners crooned tunes crafted by dedicated professionals who didn't feel the need to sing their own creations... loves the contemporary ersatz echoes of the bygone (August Darnell / ZE).... even such pale reflections as Blue Rondo A La Turk.... The riffs about the Song with a capital S are being wheeled out for the first (but not last) time.
So it's quite an elusive, flickering, evanescent sort of disruption.... least likely, in fact, to be found amid the overtly disruptive... likelier to nestle rather within the softest songs (another life-lasting riff auditioned thenabouts)
The idea is not to station oneself on the Outside of Pop, in a reborn rock (or other) underground.... to abandon the terrain of pop music with all its melodic appeal and glamour .... but to stage the battle on that terrain itself.
Astute NME reader Martin Nevell notices that the Penman piece is in the Titanic tradition. From next week's readers letters column aka Gasbag
Something I never noticed before - a precocious appearance of the word "Britpop" - spelled Brit Pop - in War Against Pop.
No comments:
Post a Comment