Gang of Four's Entertainment! Contributor(s): Dettmar, Kevin J. H. (Author) |
|
ISBN: 1623560659 ISBN-13: 9781623560652 Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic OUR PRICE: $13.46 Product Type: Paperback Published: March 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Music | History & Criticism - General - Music | Genres & Styles - Punk - Biography & Autobiography | Music |
Dewey: 782.421 |
LCCN: 2013041816 |
Series: 33 1/3 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 4.7" W x 6.5" (0.35 lbs) 160 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats--and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life. But for an American college student from the suburbs--and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth--Jon King's and Andy Gill's mumbled lyrics were often all but unintelligible. Political rock 'n' roll is always something of an oxymoron: rock audiences by and large don't tune in to be lectured to. But what can it mean that a band that made pop songs as political theory actively resisted making that theory legible? Coming to terms with the impact of Entertainment requires us to take the mondegreen--the misunderstood lyric--seriously. The old joke has it that the title of R.E.M.'s debut album should have been not Murmur, but Mumble: true, so far as it goes. But that's the title, too, of rock 'n' roll's Greatest Hits compilation--and that strategic inarticulateness itself, which creates such an important role for the listener, has an important politics. |