{"product_id":"9781623562861","title":"Gang of Four's Entertainment!","description":"Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, \u003ci\u003eEntertainment!\u003c\/i\u003e For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats-and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  But for an American college student from the suburbs-and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth-Jon King's and Andy Gill's mumbled lyrics were often all but unintelligible. Political rock 'n' roll is always something of an oxymoron: rock audiences by and large don't tune in to be lectured to. But what can it mean that a band that made pop songs as political theory actively resisted making that theory legible?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Coming to terms with the impact of \u003ci\u003eEntertainment!\u003c\/i\u003e requires us to take the mondegreen-the misunderstood lyric-seriously. The old joke has it that the title of R.E.M.'s debut album should have been not \u003ci\u003eMurmur\u003c\/i\u003e, but \u003ci\u003eMumble\u003c\/i\u003e: true, so far as it goes. But that's the title, too, of rock 'n' roll's Greatest Hits compilation-and that strategic inarticulateness itself, which creates such an important role for the listener, has an important politics.","brand":"Bloomsbury USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47136045859056,"sku":"9781623562861","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781623562861_p0.jpg?v=1763865583","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781623562861","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}