Tennant Goes Identity Mentaly

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

PSB release anti-ID cards choone

Are PSB going 'political'? Did they go political YEARS ago and I just had no idea? Do bands now LOSE credibility when they try and use their music to make political statements? How many people didn't tick D:Ream in that Now poll but quite like the song? I ticked it. I probably would have bought it way back then if it hadn't appeared on said Now compilation.

Comments

[thenipper.livejournal.com]

They were political years ago. But then everyone was, in the 1980s. The oddest sign of growing old, for me, is a weird nostalgia for that kind of - almost entirely ineffectual - politicized pop culture.

I don't know that the D:Ream song was terribly explicitly political in its intention - no more than say, Yazz was with "The only way is up"... but it was certainly used very effectively - terminally? - by Mandelson or whoever.

[thenipper.livejournal.com]

I think I mean less of a nostalgia (although I was a Red Wedge kid!), than a real sense of cultural generation gap between those who grew up in the 70s or 80s vs those who grew up in the 90s...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wonder if I would be more immune to political songs today if I'd been immersed in the Specials/Billy Bragg or even Wham! as a young 'un instead of boshing European beats?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes I get this too. The sense that people should be seen to be saying something. It was completely ineffectual but I still miss it - when did it go, though? Oasis?

The PSB were largely implicit in their politics tho, and I suppose a lot of stuff still is. That impulse to deal with British Life in pop music certainly hasn't gone, but there's no particular attempt to ally it to a political standpoint.

[darkpigeon.livejournal.com]

I probably would have bought it way back then if it hadn't appeared on said Now compilation.

Surely the tartan suit was enough to put you off music indefinitely?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

They've always been political - Actually is pretty much a Thatcherism concept album. They've even done New Labour before, in the song 'I'll Get Along'.