Which, my assertion that they're a mass-marketed product taking on a carefully crafted pose intended to appeal to (and thus get money from) teenagers who aren't smart enough to notice the massive disconnect between their rhetoric and their actions?
(And OF COURSE they're a fucking boy-band. They've adopted a carefully crafted persona intended to make dumb people wish they were JUST LIKE the band. With the concomitant implication that they can take the first step along the road by giving money to the band's record company. There are two kinds of boy-bands: The ones you're supposed to want to be, and the ones you're supposed to want to sleep with. Both ways, it's fake, and it's pretty much the defining characteristic of pop music.)
If you want a band that take their politics seriously, look at U2. If you want a band that takes RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE'S politics seriously, go look up Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Notice what they do that Rage didn't? Oh, that's right, they practiced what they preached, they didn't just sell the preaching.
To call RatM "sellouts" implies that there was anything there *except* a carefully crafted product to be sold, which there wasn't, so I don't like the word sellout. I prefer "televangelist" - they're a band who people pay lots of money to hear "do as I say, not as I do" from.
Also, their music sucks. But that's a more subjective thing.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-12-19 12:35 am (UTC)(And OF COURSE they're a fucking boy-band. They've adopted a carefully crafted persona intended to make dumb people wish they were JUST LIKE the band. With the concomitant implication that they can take the first step along the road by giving money to the band's record company. There are two kinds of boy-bands: The ones you're supposed to want to be, and the ones you're supposed to want to sleep with. Both ways, it's fake, and it's pretty much the defining characteristic of pop music.)
If you want a band that take their politics seriously, look at U2. If you want a band that takes RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE'S politics seriously, go look up Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Notice what they do that Rage didn't? Oh, that's right, they practiced what they preached, they didn't just sell the preaching.
To call RatM "sellouts" implies that there was anything there *except* a carefully crafted product to be sold, which there wasn't, so I don't like the word sellout. I prefer "televangelist" - they're a band who people pay lots of money to hear "do as I say, not as I do" from.
Also, their music sucks. But that's a more subjective thing.