ilX thread on Bittersweet World

[koganbot]

Discussion of Bittersweet World over on ilX. Features Tim Finney, Alfred Soto, Chuck Eddy, Dave Moore, me. Tim is on the fence, hears a lot in the album (and that there's a lot more to hear) but thinks it lacks what he loved about previous alb, says that her suddenly coming across as Gwen-style gonzo eccentric seems forced. Dave introduces the Vicky Valentine alter ego; Chuck doesn't hear so much Gwen, says that stuff like "Boyfriend" is precedent for the new wavey, dance-oriented rock of "Outta My Head," "Rulebreaker," "Boys," and "Ragdoll." I complain about the paleness of my own writing.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Hmmm...this is more complicated. Many people didn't really decamp bcz the board wasn't worth saving. Some did stop posting for what appears to be a variety of reasons, and the 'quality' or otherwise of the board's discussions is a part of the multitude of reasons.

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Wow. Left one comment and went for dinner only to find the thread exploding into something resembling a full fledged discussion.

Working theory: while the TeenPop thread insulated the discussion in some ways, allowing for interesting discussion without needing to constantly re-establish terms of debate, it also warned off people from posting in it (for a variety of stupid reasons, or simply due to the disparateness of topic and its "rolling" nature). Individual threads like the Bittersweet World one might be more open to occasional stupidity or a need to hash over old debates, but also focus the content on a specific piece of music to confront and thus lends itself less to broad-based trolling that lacks a solid intellectual foundation.

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

I may have to revoke the above statement, given the swirling circular argument that has little to do with the actual 'text' of the album. Or even the meta-text of the album's specific creation and our specific reactions to it.

On a different note, I finally finished reading Real Punks and am in the process of absorbing a lot of it. That said, it was a really enjoyable read, although I feel like I should listen to the Dolls and Teena Marie and Debbie Deb etc. in order to actually get a handle on a lot of what you were saying.

[koganbot]

Yeah, I wring my hands at the ingrained obtuseness of some ilxors, and I feel that the thread was hijacked by their obtuseness. But I guess if everyone were as smart as I then I wouldn't be able to think I was so smart. But I feel there's a kind of stubborn refusal to be intelligent...

Here's an interesting perspective about Debbie Deb: I discovered from reading Debbie Deb's MySpace that at least some of the time the person touring as "Debbie Deb" was an "imposter" (her words) hired by the record company because they thought Debbie had too much of a weight problem. The Debbie Deb I saw had something of a tummy roll, too, so it might have been the real Debbie Deb, but if it's the imposter that would give the performance - her sense of alienation, edginess in relation to the audience and the whole enterprise - a real interesting subtext. And it was one of the great performances I've seen in my life.

Of course, if it was the real Debbie Deb the fact that she was often not considered good-looking enough to face an audience [i]also[/i] provides a real interesting subtext for the alienation and edginess.