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Originally Posted by Glice
Herr Rail: are you talking about people being explicitly political or what? Because I think a lot of Brits found that a bit hokey around the time of Red Wedge.
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Yeah, I should clarify my original post.
I do believe that every action is a political one in so far as it either reinforces or critiques a given 'system'. Whether anyone living in that system can ever properly attack it is a difficult one. Personally I think it can but a flood of theory says I'm wrong.
Whatever I'm saying, it isn't that we need to return to the tub-thumping of red wedge, but rather the way in which culture can be used as a questioner of consensual values. In this sense It's my belief that a group like Public Enemy were more politically useful in their attitude to the language of music than they were lyrically. Any innovation in musical structure or attempt to redefine how music can be produced or distributed is (for me) far more politically useful than seeing a singer on stage with an acoustic guitar bemoaning the war. In this sense, whether he wants to acknowledge it or not, I'd say that someone like Dr Evil is potentially far more political than someone like Chris Martin. Spouting reactionary ideas via a radicalised language is far more useful than spouting supposedly radical ones via a dead one. The Dixie Chicks call into question a particular issue but ultimately uphold the system that allows for it. Dr Evil calls into question that very system simply by existing, it seems to me. Seeing him sing 'More Punnany' on daytime TV would be one of the most radical things in music I can think of right now.