I like ABBA! If Bjorn and Bennie make more money I am happy for them, I won't see their musical though!

I remember an old clip of Dick Clark talking to ABBA and he's going on about music from europe, and he actually mentions Krautrock! Agnetha and Anni-Frid are kind of smiling and blinking, and Dick's like, "um and the Germans really call it Krautrock, it's not offensive." Sarah Michelle Gellar looks so much like Agnetha, she should play her in the ABBA movie! I seem to be the obly person who notices this.

I can't stomach this new song
Whenever I hear it accidentally, I just try
to hone in on the Gimme Gimme sample and
superimpose Abba voices

"she's no more of an apporpriator than David Bowie"

Please do not compare David Bowie with Madonna.

"is if she is an artist that should be promoted on a tribe that is about Discopunk?"

That's a good point. My first thought as moderator was to delete the post as spam. But then I noticed that the guy who started the thread had interesting musical taste, and hadn't yet spammed other tribes I belong to, so I thought instead I would ask him what he was doing starting this thread here.

So, perhaps I should have deleted the thread--as I do for non-discopunk spam-- but what ensued was what I think has been an interesting discussion--and not one promoting Madonna per se.

except for one thing, McLaren was (to some degree rightly) slammed in some parts in the press for "Deep in Vogue" - apart from plagarizing part of the lyrics, he was called out (maybe it was James St James in FAD) for "doing what he [MMcL] always does" that is, appropriating and commercializing everything he's come across in his entire career:

1. Punk rock
2. World music
3. Hip hop
4. Opera ("Fans" has its moments) and then waltz, which was kind of a stretch

...synthpop, house, etc... I'm not exactly sure where Bow Wow Wow fits in, or Adam & the Ants (forget if he did them)... New Wave, New Romantics? Actually, Gwen & No Doubt succeeded where Malcolm failed with his mission for Bow Wow Wow, in making quasi-punk-rock (in image, not sound) for tweeners. Last I heard Malcolm McLaren was into "chip music", which annoys me; doesn't he know that chipmusic is for the grownup kids who are nostalgic for their C-64 or 8-bit NES, not for those who were too old to use one (or even an Atari 2600) in the first place!

I remember Madonna kind of getting a pass for "Vogue" - maybe at that time she'd gotten a lot of gay fans, I dunno, maybe it was her roots in the NY club scene, maybe it was because she worked with Willy Ninja. It was a forgettable hit really - actually I prefer MMcL's take - and the vogueing scene got its proper media exposure with "Paris is Burning", then it went back out of the spotlight.

And if you don't think words like "underground" or "street cred" are relevant to this discussion, then don't use them in the first place! I am not the one who introduced them into this conversation, you, Mr. M is! "Ironic Quotes" or not. Ironically, you;ve proved your own point by using them. I tend to avoid these words, simply because "underground" is so subjective... ick, I particularly hate "street cred", it's a "reach for my revolver" word.

You and others are complaining about Madonna's "originality" - in the end, besides it being what she's always done, I don't really care about it, it's part of a larger trend in society and people like you are wasting your time on a losing battle. In the end, I just enjoy music - if it's good music, I like it, if it sucks, I don't listen to it.

Part of the issue is the confluence of popular music and fashion - this is found in most musical genres to some degree, even just by giving a musical scene a name, that's fashion. McLaren was a fashionista - he was after all partners with Vivienne Westwood! - who saw this, in some way helped create it and exploited it. I like fashion but even for the fashionable, fashion should really be secondary to good music.