Were Sweet better than Led Zeppelin? ... Here is an excellent and 'poptimistic' history that sticks two fingers up at 'rockism'.
Debbie Harry of Blondie pictured in 1981. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis
Who would be brave – or foolish enough – to write a history of pop music? Aren't grand narratives a thing of the past? This is the age of niches, forensic focus, obsessive miniaturism. Full-length documentaries get made about Cockney Rejects, a Garry Bushell-managed Oi! band whose best-known single was a parody of a Sham 69 7-inch. At least three books exist on Felt, a Birmingham independent band from the 1980s whose albums bore titles such as Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death. It's not unusual to see expensive editions of hulking great volumes on Swedish prog rock or American private-press oddities selling out in next to no time.
The internet has been wonderful for microgenre mythomania. Established pop lineages are challenged as fanboys and DIY scholars share their passions for Japanese soft-porn soundtracks and jingly-jangly flexi discs from the Home Counties. It becomes ever harder to imagine a synthesist who could make sense of all these wonders, and do so with style and wit rather than synoptic grind, so as to bring together pop's mutually indifferent tribes for a productive pow-wow.
One of the few people capable of undertaking this huge task is Bob Stanley. He's the co-founder of the three-piece band Saint Etienne who, since 1990, have fashioned a vast body of collage pop that joyfully absorbs elements of dub, 60s girl groups, English folk, German techno and Swedish groove, and allies them to stylish melodies and savvy lyrics. Perhaps because of his background as editor of Caff fanzine and later as a journalist for Melody Maker, he's always been attuned to the relationship between words and music: Saint Etienne have commissioned LP sleevenotes by the likes of Douglas Coupland, Jeremy Deller and Jon Savage.
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The internet has been wonderful for microgenre mythomania. Established pop lineages are challenged as fanboys and DIY scholars share their passions for Japanese soft-porn soundtracks and jingly-jangly flexi discs from the Home Counties. It becomes ever harder to imagine a synthesist who could make sense of all these wonders, and do so with style and wit rather than synoptic grind, so as to bring together pop's mutually indifferent tribes for a productive pow-wow.One of the few people capable of undertaking this huge task is Bob Stanley. He's the co-founder of the three-piece band Saint Etienne who, since 1990, have fashioned a vast body of collage pop that joyfully absorbs elements of dub, 60s girl groups, English folk, German techno and Swedish groove, and allies them to stylish melodies and savvy lyrics. Perhaps because of his background as editor of Caff fanzine and later as a journalist for Melody Maker, he's always been attuned to the relationship between words and music: Saint Etienne have commissioned LP sleevenotes by the likes of Douglas Coupland, Jeremy Deller and Jon Savage.
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