Here's one from two of my favorite social commentators, Paul Krugman and Talking Heads: Same Old Party. It's some kind of index of some kind of generational change when T. Heads can be referenced in an NYT op-ed piece without the need for citation. Or something. In any event, there is, in fact, water at the bottom of the ocean . . . .
No, not Madame Mao and her cohorts -- a much more culturally revolutionary and insightfully (neo-)Marxist (not to mention danceable) foursome, the rock band from Leeds, England (vocalist Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugh Burnham -- here for the band's history).
I don't expect to have too much to say about music in this venue, but Gang of Four is in a special category -- my candidate for the Rock Band Most Likely to Change Theodor Adorno's Mind About the Culture Industry award. Most of their lyrics are simple excursuses into typical pop territory -- love, sex, pop culture, work, TV -- but processed through an (entirely unforced, believe it or not) Frankfurt-School-ean reflection on the commodification of everyday life and the false consciousness that results from it. As Greil Marcus put it, "What was on their mind was the notion that everyday life-wage labor, official propaganda, the commodity system, but also the way you bought a shirt, how you made love, the feeling you had as you watched the nightly news or turned away from it-was not 'natural', but the product of an invisible hand." Just the titles of their songs are enough to make a left political philosopher smile, from the programmatic ("Why Theory?", "It's Not Made by Great Men," "To Hell With Poverty," "Capital (It Fails Us Now)") to the ironic ("I Love a Man in a Uniform"). And then there are the lines that burn themselves into your brain: "Watch new blood on the 18 inch screen/The corpse is the new personality" (about watching war coverage); "Love will get you like a case of anthrax/And that's something I don't want to catch"; "Guerilla war struggle is the new entertainment."
Of course these are all just words without the music. And oh boy, the music. (See this appreciation by Juan Marquez for a pretty good description of the music that accompanies the foregoing lines.) It has become conventional to describe Go4 as a post-punk-funk band that influenced bands from Fugazi, Rage Against the Machine, Sonic Youth, REM, U2 to The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. True enough, but what this fails to capture is how the music -- a jagged combination of funk and noise -- manages simultaneously to seduce and disturb, and thus become the perfect accompaniment to the songs' tales of commodification. It's like compulsively danceable fingernails-on-a-blackboard; it draws you in and forces you to think as much as enjoy, somatically and intellectually -- they're the Bertolt Brechts of the post-punk crowd. But listen for yourself; mere words (at least mine) can't possibly do justice to it.
I just got their new album, "Return the Gift," and it's both satisfying and a bit infuriating, which is no doubt part of the intention. Just what gift is being returned isn't entirely clear (although mine did come with what appears to be a genuine U.S. dollar bill tucked into the CD case). I was somewhat frustrated to find that it was composed entirelyof new versions of old songs, in arrangements that were virtually indistinguishable from the old ones (except for the more up-to-date digital production values). Various replica art, art-in-its-mechanical-reproducibility and similar 1980s art-world performance-of-the-commodification-process rationales occurred but I confess did not impress me. Then again, they are great songs, and my only G04 until now has been on all-but unplayable (and entirely untransferrable to my Ipod) vinyl . . . . And Simon Reynolds has a review in Slate that mollified me a bit as well (something to do with screwing their old record companies who had previously screwed them . . . maybe that's the gift being returned). In any event, if you get only one of their albums, make it "Entertainment!" -- one of the best and most influential albums of the past 30 years (the original 1979 record has been re-issued in a remastered version). It's not just entertainment, it's art. And if they happen to play in your area, go see them -- 26 years ago they were one of the greatest live bands playing, and I'd be willing to bet they can still do it if they try.
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