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Albums that deserve a second chance
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keith a
9564 posts

Re: Albums that deserve a second chance
Jan 25, 2013, 01:51
Moon Cat wrote:
keith a wrote:
Moon Cat wrote:
I, by the way, am not, and have not criticised J Peel for changing his tune, although the Ponk revisionists, who lest we forget are now as old (if not older), in relative terms, as the dinosaurs they wished to supplant, have had a remarkably easy ride of critical consensus over the decades.


Really? Like who?


I mean by that that it is easy to pronounce oneself a fan of a range of punk and post-punk acts without fear of brick-bats or ridicule (although the dispatching of similar to supposed less bullet-proof genres is fine) because they are things that have, by and large, achieved critical consensus. This, by the way, is by no means an critique of particular bands - rather that, up until fairly recently perhaps, you would never, in a billion cartoon years, get someone saying "Er...Joy Division*. They weren't that good!" because no one, frankly, would dare.
Plus, the main-stream music press, what's left of it, is mostly 'personned' by 50+ post-punk survivors, who have enjoyed, and are used to, a fair amount of casually accepted sway and influence and inhabit a world where certain English pop musics are, weirdly, with certain aspects of a supposed activist-spawned Americana strain of 'rock' (vulgar word I know) and its fall-out, critically unassailable.

*An example, not a critique.


Surely it depends on the company when it comes to what is ridiculed. I've been with people who like, say, rock who have happily ridiculed punk/post-punk. It's hard to believe now how punk split opinion back then. Revisonism is only part of the story - fans of the the old guard were'nt shy about slagging off punk. And saying you liked punk bands back then set you up for more than ridicule. I wasn't exactly a punk, just someone who liked the music but I do remember being scared one night just for wearing drainies!

What was that article in one of the music magazines? Was it called Sacred Cows where they'd slag off some so-called sacred band like Joy Division or the Velvets. But they are very much a minority and in any case it becomes a bit of a cycle. The Doors never seemed to get slagged off until the film came out and suddenly everyone hated them. Led Zep had a time when they were distinctly out of favour with a lot of people but they came back into 'fashion' and now no-one seems to have a bad word about them.

Going back a bit I was surprised to see Robin Hitchcock pick out the Beatles in the revisionism thing - I know the story was that Glen Matlock got sacked from the Pistols because he liked The Beatles but that always sounded like a PR joke. Everyone I knew who liked punk liked The Beatles! Most of us didn't other with the revisionism in any case. I was certainly still into Gentle Giant in '77! It was more of a gradual process with many of us, realising that we were no longer so keen on some of the records we'd liked a few years earlier.
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