AshBritify

[koganbot]

I coin a new term in this comment thread on Tom's Tumblr: "I was sick and tired of the way soul ballads had been dismissed as romantic escapist drivel."*

*Warning: some might find my comment unintelligible.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

I don't follow why you think Toop was intending to PBS-ify the ballad discourse -- based on what he said in the interview years later

I haven't read the original sleevenotes -- Tom has them, I hope he brings them to France! -- but surely the reason Toop makes clear his deep intentions in the interview is that he DIDN'T reveal them in the sleevenotes?

Anyway, the suggestion I wanted to raise -- which may not apply to Toop since neither of us have read these sleevenotes, though I do actually know his writing from that era pretty well -- is that there's a difference between "intending to PBS-ify" and "ending up PBS-ifying"; and that a key part of that difference is that "intending to AshBritify the ____ discourse" may end up PBS-ifying it. Indeed, this uh-oh dynamic seems pretty key: I think it's exactly what happened with the original (c.1982) idea of anti-rockism, for example -- the long-term effect was the opposite of the immediate intention.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Sorry, just got up, and my brane hasn't yet I don't think -- my point about Toop's intentions versus his deep intentions is pretty unclear. What I'm getting at is that there's a distinction to be made between the intended effect of the compilation and what Toop deeply wanted, as later confessed. The minimal desired effect of a compilation is to bring songs to the attention; to get them circulating -- it's of course true that sleevenotes are often PBS-effectors whatever their content, because they're about justification, even if it's only justification by dint of suddenly being in the [named compiler's] personal canon; so the songs circulate, with with stamp-of-approval attached...

(It always vaguely irritated me that a particular bunch of ferocious UK avant-rock ideologues, gathered round Recommended Records, gave the Beach Boys -- of all 60s rock -- a total free pass towards approval, merely because Faust had written "We like the Beach Boys" on their first LP sleeve...): this was the line)