T/S: Busted vs Debord (explained)

G: For instance, one of the groups I'm really into at the moment are called Busted. They're completely open about being manufactured, and yet they play the instruments associated with "authentic" rock music and claim to hate manufactured bands. And their very (manufactured, selected) name openly points to, revels in the contradiction.

D: But why is that exciting? It seems like all that's going on there is pop disappearing up itself, and that entirely at the instigation of the market...

G: I think what I find so exciting is the collapse of the expectation of coherence in the song-as-work-of-art (this is what I always take the term rockist to mean, completely wrongly). Like, when you read, say, Chaucer, you're not sure if he added certain bits because they were important to the furtherance of an ultimate effect, or because, "hey, a song is better than no song, so what are you complaining about?". Whereas when you read, y'know, Henry James, you are. And when I listen to the tATu album, which starts out as this awesome incestuous-underaged-lesbians-on-the-run-from-the-law-RAWKMUSICAL, and then completely sabotages itself with ballads and needless Eurodisco remixes that seem to serve /no/ purpose, what's powering that, via the market or not, is an aesthetic that to a rockist like me is strange and alien and new.

D: But why do you want that? Isn't that totally negative?

G: No! It seems like it could be utterly the opposite, it could create a generation of listeners who are free to pick and choose from whatever is beautiful wherever they find it, who could just listen and appreciate sincerely the quality of one chord change from one White Stripes song, then one vocal from a reggae track etc etc, all without having to buy into the whole product, the artist-as-brand or genre-as-brand or any of that rubbish....

D: I think what I hadn't realised is just how utterly, comprehensively pessimistic your generation really is - you've completely lost hope in creating something that can be communicated without capitalism having vichified it to its very marrow, so all that's left is to be a kind of pirate, sifting through the rubble... everything Debord predicted in 'La société du spectacle' has come true. No wonder he killed himself.

So! Wise and Erudite ILE! Is he right? Should I read Debord? Should he read Heat and I Love Pop? Are we both missing a much wider point about pomo suspicion of all metanarratives, whether in politics or the novel or the song? How wanky was this? Answer me!

Debord killed himself because he had terminal cancer.

To answer your questions: Yes, no, no, no, not so.

jesus god let me outta here

your dad's (and debord's?) represents the comprehensive, crushing pessimism

Oh my. Last conversation I had with MY dad:

Me: Yeah, so I'm going to do my MA, that's good isn't it?!
Dad: Uh huh.
[pause]
Me: Any news there?
Dad: No. Same old same old. Oh, [name of random step-aunt's sprog] has been taken away by social services.
Me: Oh.
Dad: And [name of random step-cousin] is pregnant and has been charged with being an accessory to car theft.
Me: Oh dear.
Dad: Well... I'll let you get on.

Mine:

Dad: Want me to hold that for you?
Me: Oh. Yeah, thanks.

Nick: "Dad, this issue of Rail Magazine was in the scanner. It's from November 200, so it must've been there a good six months."

Nick's Dad: "Oh. Yes. It wouldn't scan."

PS; Debord. If only cos Charlie Busted has revived the Noel Gallagher-monobrow.

Oh right the question. Busted, clearly.

November 2002, itf anyone cares.

I am gratified to find that Busted's version of "Where Is The Love?" is very close to my own karaoke reading of it.

Is it as psuedo-rubbish as the live version? because that was utterly classic.

My god, this thread is the greatest thread ever! How did I miss it the first time around?

Oh yeah, that whole "Getting sacked and not having internet access for several months" thing.

Busted are right and Debord and your dad are wrong, of course. The aesthetic tension between the "manufactured" and the "authentic" is part of what makes the whole package work as art, even moreso than the skillful songwriter. It is a new, post-Warholian artform which Debord never dreamed of.

Oh yeah, plus, James is hott.

Thanks but considering the raw, nasty, awful, inhumane side of life that most revolutions entail, I'd rather not be live.

When the revolution comes, it'll be televised, but it's ratings will be negligible cause we'll all be watching Pop Idol.