out_there: B-Day Present '05 (Firefly Spanking (by selluinlaer))
[personal profile] out_there
First of all, one of the funniest icons I've seen in a while is [livejournal.com profile] ladydewinter's new Angel one:



In other news, a co-worker forwarded me a British article bemoaning the state of current popmusic. Highly cynical, but in my twisted Friday morning mood, it made me snigger nastily. (Needless to say, the popslashers on my FList probably won't appreciate it... *g*)


New spectator sport: the sheer, horrible desperation of the music business. As American labels float a call for artists to put fewer songs on a CD (which, as someone pointed out to me, is an excellent way to reduce royalty payments to artists), the British business is now anointing a new Next Big Thing every single week. This week it's Razorlight, a bunch of pale insipidities who would sound like the worst Strokes song you ever heard, if the Strokes had forgotten what little they learned about making a song from their rich daddies' record collections. "Rip It Up" is an embarrassing two-minute lurch from pillar to post, four bladdered pub kids who sound like they forgot what the song was halfway through. Scrubbed clean to within an inch of its life by Steve Lillywhite, it's safe guitar music for the Pop Idol generation. Have a fucking ringtone.

Record sales continue to decline in Britain as in America, and I'm coming to believe it's got fuck all to do with KaZaA and everything to do with these hideous musical years we're living through. Over here, I can cheerfully lay it at the feet of Pop Idol, Pop Academy and whatever the other fucking things are. TV shows specifically designed to manufacture the absolute least offensive pop product through game-show structure and the application of telephone democracy. If you're dumb enough to be able to sit through those shows without the front of your head filling with tumours, you get to vote for the performer who is retarded enough to be a comfort to you. Loathesome as they were, even the Spice Girls delivered with some character. I remember novelist and critic Nik Cohn saying he never would have been so hard on Bob Dylan if he'd known Bruce Springsteen was around the corner. People railed about the Spice Girls being a manufactured band, but who knew there was a TV-powered pod-person hothouse around the corner?

And, God, look at the "alternative" choices the machine offers up. Travis and Coldplay. Stubbly weaklings who wear socks as hats and would die of fright if someone played them something as rude and vulgar as a melody. Formless, sensitive strumming, riff-free and invisible to memory, and a belief that their vaunted "songwriting" requires nought but muttering lots and lots of words without actually saying anything at all. These people would vaporise if subjected to an honest thought. When did we stop wanting our music and our bands to be vivid?

My friend the music writer/games writer/comics writer Kieron Gillen has this to say about the Vines, and it fits here too;


"Some poor kid is going to buy into the Vines and end up laying down eighth-rate memories of how good pop music can be, and thus ending up dismissing it as inconsequential. By wasting their first rush on the Vines, they're going to be the ageing house-wife who doesn't think sex is a big deal because they've only ever experienced a premature gimp trying to reach their cervix with desperate, spasming thrusts.
"If the Vines are your first favourite band, you're fucked from the start. You're the pop-equivalent of a thalidomide baby."

The American music industry, from my perception here in Britain, seems to have sunk into a bizarre obsession with paedophilia. Britney Spears has gone from schoolgirl gear to a deeply strange hentai look, little-girl head stuck above great shiny plastic boobs, singing in a Minnie Mouse voice. No wonder she was being stalked by a shifty-looking middle-aged Japanese bloke. He probably had a suitcase full of tentacles to use on her. Christina Aguilera gifts us with the vision of a twelve-year-old girl in leather chaps and a rubber bra. Justin Timberlake, who appears to travel with a group of black people whose job is to introduce him on stage and proclaim how "real" and "street" he is, looks about fifteen in a good light and has the pearly grin and vacant eyes of an old variety act. Give him ten years and he'll be playing the Dean Jones role in "Herbie The Love Bug" remakes. Maybe his voice will have broken by then. Maybe Timbaland and his miserly, thin productions will have been run out of town on a rail by then.

No, these horrors aren't the be-all and end-all of the music industry. But they're perceived to be the engines that drive it, that put the lion's share of the capital in the record company coffers and keep them in business. Mainstream pop music is almost always bad., it's a given. But, God, can you remember a time when the most popular acts were this empty? It's like that awful vacuum before punk, when people were buying Dean Friedman records just to have something to buy, and poster companies were printing off six-foot long images of Nana Mouskouri and Demis Roussos just to have something to sell. Or that space in the 80s before acid house broke (and, at the same time, there was some of the best guitar music ever), when pop music lost its bass and went horribly toppy and starved-sounding. I'm getting a little sick of living through these dead zones.

Date: 2003-12-18 03:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ladydewinter.livejournal.com
Isn't it lovely? *pets icon*

It wasn't made by me, though, it's by [livejournal.com profile] innerpoise. And it's for sharing!

Now I'll go back to watching Queer Eye. *lol*

Date: 2003-12-18 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] out-there.livejournal.com
Now I'll go back to watching Queer Eye.

*giggles* How appropriate!

Date: 2003-12-18 03:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ladydewinter.livejournal.com
*laughs* I know! And how cool would it be if Angel actually showed up?

But Angel or no Angel, I love Queer Eye :)

Date: 2003-12-18 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] erilyn.livejournal.com
As they, for the most part, are talking about peformers I'm not huge fans of, I'm not offended. I'm not really a fan of a lot of the current music, so, whatever :)

I am puzzled by "Christina Aguilera gifts us with the vision of a twelve-year-old girl in leather chaps and a rubber bra", because that just doesn't make sense. Have they seen Christina lately?

Date: 2003-12-18 05:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] out-there.livejournal.com
I am puzzled by "Christina Aguilera gifts us with the vision of a twelve-year-old girl in leather chaps and a rubber bra", because that just doesn't make sense. Have they seen Christina lately?

Heh. I'm guessing they're referring to the incredibly overdone aspect of her. I'm not throwing stones, just... a lot of her outfits are overtop. Personally, I think she's a very pretty girl, but when I see her performing or in concerts, most of the time the makeup and clothes are so overemphasized that I don't see the attraction. She seems almost laughable (like a kid dressing up in her sisters clothes)

Date: 2003-12-19 02:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] claire.livejournal.com
Herbie-the-Love-Bug!Justin. Hee!

Also, I want a six-foot image of Nana Mouskouri. I don't know what for, but I want one!

Date: 2003-12-19 04:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] out-there.livejournal.com
Herbie-the-Love-Bug!Justin. Hee!

Yeah, that made me chortle too. *g*

Date: 2003-12-19 11:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] askance.livejournal.com
Love the icon :) It does make me wonder about the others to make up an alternative Fab 5. Wes could do culture, Gunn for the grooming, Lorne for interior decorating. Unfortunately that leaves Spike for food, and I dunno about a man who like weetbix with his blood....

Date: 2003-12-20 02:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] out-there.livejournal.com
Unfortunately that leaves Spike for food, and I dunno about a man who like weetbix with his blood...

Heh. There'd be frequent references to buffaloes wings and those "onion flower things". *g*

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