The Problem of Leisure

Yesterday I saw a Microsoft Kinect advert and knew i recognised that tune that was playing, seconds later I realise it’s post-punk Marxists Gang Of Four, little later still and I have the song - it’s “Natural’s not in it”

No need to rehash any selling out arguments - the most disappointing thing is that when you google “Gang of Four” and “Kinect” you find such a desert of outrage - pretty much no criticism, just forum posts asking what the song is, others claiming it’s the best thing about the Kinect. The only actual analysis from the point of view of selling out is from, slightly bizarrely, the blog of a self-professed Family Law Attorney & Certified Family Court Mediator. Selling out is now the norm, it no longer needs explaining, justifying, defending - it just is. Not-selling out is now the thing that needs explaining away - “what? you’re not taking the money? Are you insane?!”
It should also be considered that giving it to Microsoft to use is meant as some sort of subversive gesture, “haha, look at the idiots using our anti-consumerist tune to sell their product, do they not know what it’s about...” And yet it is a misplaced gesture, a gesture that Microsoft themselves presumably want to be associated with, adding a certain “kudos” to their brand among a certain type of person who the adverts could well be aimed at - emphasising the family fun to be had from the thing, appealing to a father say, a father who maybe grew up listening to Gang of Four and is now a family man and perhaps even Family Law Attorney...

If it had been “Return The Gift” it might have made more sense...

We are Water

Really cool video for HEALTH tune "We are Water" -

HEALTH "We are Water" from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Alice

A few thoughts on the new Avril lavigne song "Alice" - I like it, first off, absolutely loving the screechy vocal, sounding raw, "literally", like sandpaper has rubbed her vocal chords raw. All the classic Avril Lavigne themes are there in the lyrics, "crying", "hitting the ground," all the stuff I generally go on about, and this feels like the welcome return of an old friend, rather than it becoming tired, like a painter using the same motifs throughout her career, returning, enlarging upon, questioning, not a simple rehashing of old terrain. This bodes well for the new album.
The one aspect of the song I'd like to highlight is the chorus's "I'll get by/I'll survive," which seems at odds with the intensity of the vocal - all this for simply getting by? Why not rising above, going beyond? One explanation - that from the previous albums search for an identity, where limits (of the self) are tested, here we have no more problems establishing an identity of one's own - going beyond the ordinary - here instead we have an Avril who views herself as fully grown, fully established in her own skin, and as such she is now happy "getting by" or "surviving," living with herself, with no need to go beyond herself. Whether we should view this as a triumph of the personal - she is finally happy as she is - or a failure of the political - there is no longer the utopian potential of the first two albums - or indeed whether they need to be entwined in Avril's music as they were in those first 2 albums , it's probably too early to say. Ignoring the subject, as the third album arguably did, would appear not to be an option this time round though...