Rise

Format

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  9781623560652Magazines + Books  £7.00

Label

Bloomsbury

33 1/3

Gang Of Four - Entertainment

Books Magazines â##Following hard on the explosion of British punk in 1979 Gang of Four produced postpunk's smartest record Entertainment For the first time a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beatsand used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday lifenbspBut for an American college student from the suburbsand one expects for many many others including British youthJon 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 legiblenbspComing to terms with the impact of Entertainment requires us to take the mondegreenthe misunderstood lyricseriously The old joke has it that the title of REM'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 compilationand that strategic inarticulateness itself which creates such an important role for the listener has an important politics