Bob Stanley in The Guardian - lots of Smiths/Moz interest
- Thread starter Uncleskinny
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Worm
Taste the diffidence
As a big fan of Bob Stanley I would readily shell out the money for his book. Better yet, he should tell the story of pop music alongside a massive 20-CD box set.
Having said that, I'm scratching my head about his remark about The Smiths and The Stone Roses. If "pop's musical progression ended at some point in the early 1990s" then it must surely have occurred right around the time of The Stone Roses, or just after. And if his ripple effect thesis is sound, as I think it is, then Morrissey was more or less correct. Pop's last ripple surged along in the form of The Smiths and then gently petered out following their demise. He seems to believe everything's getting progressively less original, yet he seems to imply that Morrissey was wrong?
The correct metaphor isn't the lake and its concentric waves rippling away from a boulder, although Elvis, certainly in his last, vegetative, diapered years, would amply qualify as a gigantic meteor-like entity. No, the proper metaphor is the Xerox that only copies its own copies. The machine still hums along year after year, but each new set of copies isn't as good as the previous ones. The reason nobody cares is the genius twist in the whole thing: each generation of consumers changes with each new generation of copies so comparisons are all but impossible. Stanley's imagined book is already useless because no true summing up can be done through the eyes of a single observer. Time prevents cohesive judgment, which is why the supposed continuity in rock and roll-- "rock and roll" as a unifying spirit in music-- is a silly lie invented by greedy executives.
Having said that, I'm scratching my head about his remark about The Smiths and The Stone Roses. If "pop's musical progression ended at some point in the early 1990s" then it must surely have occurred right around the time of The Stone Roses, or just after. And if his ripple effect thesis is sound, as I think it is, then Morrissey was more or less correct. Pop's last ripple surged along in the form of The Smiths and then gently petered out following their demise. He seems to believe everything's getting progressively less original, yet he seems to imply that Morrissey was wrong?
The correct metaphor isn't the lake and its concentric waves rippling away from a boulder, although Elvis, certainly in his last, vegetative, diapered years, would amply qualify as a gigantic meteor-like entity. No, the proper metaphor is the Xerox that only copies its own copies. The machine still hums along year after year, but each new set of copies isn't as good as the previous ones. The reason nobody cares is the genius twist in the whole thing: each generation of consumers changes with each new generation of copies so comparisons are all but impossible. Stanley's imagined book is already useless because no true summing up can be done through the eyes of a single observer. Time prevents cohesive judgment, which is why the supposed continuity in rock and roll-- "rock and roll" as a unifying spirit in music-- is a silly lie invented by greedy executives.
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