Public Carmodism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Discussion on the tournament thread about GHOST TOWNE by the Specials - is this the biggest example of Carmodism being generally accepted and written into the executive summary of rock history?

(Definition of Carmodism for the 99% of you who won't know what I'm on about: the belief that the state of the charts reflects the state of the nation, or at least the belief that it makes for more interesting analysis to pretend it does. From Robin Carmody, cultural critic and high practitioner of the art.)

Comments

Green Day / American Idiot

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Not exactly the same thing, for a number of reasons (e.g. some people still like(d) Bush), but clearly part of the story there is that things were so bad that even these eternal teen-clowns were turned into rock-opera writing political activists. (It feels very different to me than those points when, say, Bryan Adams got on the Amnesty bandwagon and wrote a "serious" album, although - as suggested above - there's probably something to talk about around those moments as well.)