Biography
Jon King, born 8 June 1955, London, is a singer, musician and founding member of the Leeds based UK rock band Gang of Four. The band's main lyricist and co-songwriter, he sings in the group as well as playing melodica and percussion such as a microwave oven or wooden block (using a baseball bat or a stick), the latter notably on the song "He'd Send In the Army." Jon Pareles in The New York Times described King's lyrics as "bitterly analytical, infused with theories from Marx, Adorno, Baudrillard and Godard, and the band was determined to puncture pop romance with the consciousness that people are manipulated by power economics, media and marketing.Why not write about ideas? Mr. King said. " - Source Jon Pareles, New York Times , Jan 24th 2005. Jon King co-wrote and co-produced the groundbreaking Entertainment!, Gang of Four's debut album, regularly listed as among the top 100 albums of all time and described by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best debut album by a British band – punk or otherwise – since the original English release of The Clash in 1977 " quote: David Fricke, Rolling Stone,Aug 7th, 1980
Referring to the influence of Situationist ideas on Gang of Four's work, Jon King remarked, in a 1980 letter to Greil Marcus, that "where I think that Situationism was good was in the development of its revolutionary tactic: 'reinvesting' the cultural past. Situationism conspicuously used popular imagery in order to subvert it – to make the familiar strange, rather than rejecting the familiar out of hand. The tactic was good, worth ripping off, as in the Entertainment! cover, or the original 'Damaged Goods' sleeve." Source, 1980 letter by King to Greil Marcus quoted in "Pop Music and the Limits of Cultural Critique: Gang of Four Shrinkwraps Entertainment." Author/s: Michael Hoover fall 1998
King said of his lyrics, quoted by Michael Hoover (ibid): "If you, say, look at the published agenda of music which limits itself to a very small set of subjects and the way it approaches these subjects (which in its most extreme identity is a sort of Bryan Adams-style song), about missing or making up with your girl, driving the car, in some sort of all-white, midwestern high school, which is an incredibly common motif … I don't know anything about that. That is something which is a very specific American topic, but it seems to be exhaustively gone around. I had a chance to describe it the other night, like a dog returning to its own vomit. In other words, pop songs as false emotional advertising and ideology as everydayness are themselves grounds for inquiry", as King told Greil Marcus, because "unless you have an awareness of your views as political manifestations, you won't believe you can change them"
He has written music for TV & film, notably title music for "Pandora's Box" (BBCTV), and co-wrote Gang of Four songs featured on the soundtracks of major movies such as The Karate Kid (1984), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and Marie Antoinette (2006). Won in 2005 (with Gang of Four) Mojo Magazine's "Inspiration to Music" and the Diesel U Music "Outstanding Contribution / Lifetime Achievement" award
Taken from Wikipedia
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
