Entertainment! / Kevin J.H. Dettmar.

Keyword #1: Keywords -- Keyword #2: Ideology -- "Ether"/"Guns before butter" -- Keyword #3: Nature -- "Natural's not in it"/"Contract" -- Keyword #4: Theory -- "Not great men"/"Glass" -- Keyword #5: Alienation -- "At home he's a tourist"/"5.45" -- Keyword #6: Consumer -- "Return the gift"/"I found that essence rare" -- Keyword #7: Sex -- "Damaged goods"/"Anthrax" -- Conclusion: An apology; an epiphany.

"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."--Publisher's description

Online resource; title from digital title page (EBSCOhost, viewed May 21, 2021).

Includes bibliographical references.

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