ARE HITS LEGIT?
This has been a fascinating—if dislocating—four weeks. Hie myself off to America for two weeks of MTV and a long day hearing other critics (American and British) publicly debate U.S.-U.K. relations in pop, rock and reality; then a further weekplus in the deep South, stunned by 24-hour religious TV but fascinated by what I learned from local music fans of all races.
ARE HITS LEGIT?
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
by
This has been a fascinating—if dislocating—four weeks. Hie myself off to America for two weeks of MTV and a long day hearing other critics (American and British) publicly debate U.S.-U.K. relations in pop, rock and reality; then a further weekplus in the deep South, stunned by 24-hour religious TV but fascinated by what I learned from local music fans of all races.
Bobby Ann Mason’s brilliant Shiloh short stories are, I found, not jiving about the effects of pop culture on the American heartland. Phil Donahue, the Today show and 24-hour “music television” have brought folks from the Plasmatics to Bobby Womack right into everyone’s living room. And, just as Tom Verlaine claimed to me before I left London, the owners of said TVs and the people who read People aren’t about to be told what they should THINK about Prince or Cyndi Lauper.