Comments on: Pop Will Drink Itself

By: steve

steve — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:59:49 +0000

Southern Tier

By: Bailey

Bailey — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:27:31 +0000

It is/was very ‘craft’.

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:26:29 +0000

Isn’t Summer Lightning essentially “craft”?

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:14:51 +0000

occasionally up through the same mass-marketing system will come something brilliant

Landlord? Summer Lightning?

By: Bailey

Bailey — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:08:29 +0000

I think our idea was that sweeter, ‘flavoured’, coloured beers might appeal to the same market that currently buys sickly sweet root beers (Jeremiah Weed?) and all those pear ciders, if marketed correctly.

Who made that Creme Brulee beer they were selling at the Craft Beer Company? That.

By: Zos93

Zos93 — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:17:18 +0000

Damn Martyn’s just written my post for me!

One thing I would say is Pop can’t be too extreme. A campaign to get RATM to No. 1 was successful because for all their rebelliousness RATM write good tunes, a similar campaign using 4’33″ failled, Cage being far too outré to be ‘Pop’

I expect that no matter how good the marketing campaign is you will never make the more extreme flavoured beers ‘Pop’ either.

At least the title of the post made me dig out some PWEI to listern to while commenting.

By: Bailey

Bailey — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:55:52 +0000

No need to apologise — can’t take our flaky analogies to seriously!

I like the Monkees, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson so… maybe that’s it? Maybe pop gets respectable with age? And perhaps that also explains our worrying obsession with Watney’s Red Barrel.

By: Martyn Cornell

Martyn Cornell — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:35:35 +0000

Hmmm – I’m sorry, but I don’t think this analogy stands up at all. The point about pop is that while much of it might be bland mass-appeal product designed only to shift units, occasionally up through the same mass-marketing system will come something brilliant, which simultaneously appeals both to the mass market and those who consider themselves true music aficionadoes, eg Frank Sinatra (hugely popular in his time), Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles, Bob Marley (add some more yourself – I recognise I’m showing my age there with my own selection.) Fruli wasn’t designed to shift mass units, it was designed to fit a niche (and not one I find myself in, I have to add). It’s certainly not the beer equivalent of the Monkees. And I can’t think of any beer that is simultaneously mass-appeal product AND appeals to self-styled beer aficionados.

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:18:40 +0000

I have analogized that all beer is like all music each falling under the more general “pop culture” heading. You have to include folk, jazz and American standards to get the full scope. Craft triple IPA” or bourbon barrel stouts are not punk. Whatever the punks drank is punk. Appropriation of punk by the hyper-precious is one of the funniest things in good beer.

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:05:17 +0000

Indie brewing is almost exactly like indie music - the dedicated fans, the bands that made a living packing out Students' Unions but never had hits, the moans about how all John Peel ever played was "boring bands from Peterborough", the isolated critics raving about Disco Inferno or MB Hi-Power or Sudden Sway to general indifference... I could go on. (Just realised that's Zac up there, not Zak. No offence to Zac, but somebody ought to get Zak in on this. He'd nail it.) BrewDog’s ‘no way commercial’ schtick Ha. BD are the kind of music that's marketed as indie, which is a very different thing. And as I've said before, their approach to brewing is about as un-punk as you can get, whether you look at the supermarket end of the range or the Abstrakts - they're making radio-friendly unit-shifters and limited-edition concept albums, neither of which is remotely punk. maybe the one-off ‘craft beer’ novelties that so offend some conservative (small c) beer geeks — the Chili Black Belgian IPAs and the like — are also a nod in this direction? Some of them are certainly releasing novelty singles on multi-coloured vinyl. Others are more like novelty acts, or bands so left-field that they can only get a hearing as novelty acts - while their fans maintain staunchly that Wild Man Fischer or And the Native Hipsters or Captain Beefheart are not a novelty act, they've got real talent. And some of the time they're right.