Like a Can Opener in a Worm Factory

I think it's a mistake to suggest that performing "series of dance moves set to a track constructed by someone else" is not about expressing emotion. I find dancing quite an emotional activity, myself.

Why is making money any less "real" a purpose for art? It's madness to suggest that music-making isn't inextricably part of the activity of mass capitalism. Hell, isn't it this PRECISE intersection which motivated the ultimate pop critique/capitulation in "Skank Bloc Bologna"? And that was 30+ years ago.

Oh yeah, speaking of which: sorry to recommend more Simon Reynolds but srsly, read read read 'Rip It Up And Start Again', which you can get in Fopp for about 3 quid now. You CANNOT go wrong, even though Reynolds is quite infuriating, with this as a primer for thinking about the intersection of music and politics in the morass of uncertainty after punk's swaggering Year Zero. This stuff is all in there.

Also, the work of Jon Savage is really instructional. 'England's Dreaming', his book about punk, is fucking MASSIVE. I read it when I was 17, I think, or maybe just 18, and it changed the way I thought about music. He's also written another huge tome about the construction of "the teenager" from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, which I've only read a little of but it lovely.

You definitely, definitely need to read up around rockism, because this really is one of those huge defining conversations of the last couple of decades, and especially the last few years, and this conversation is all about the analytical techniques of rockism. It's hugely instructional in many ways, even if rockism, like essentialism, is something very few people will admit to. I was very pleased when a friend told me the word about 6 years ago, because I was overjoyed to have a simple explanation for the collection of Things Which Pissed Me Off about people's attitudes to music - and believe me, the goth scenes I've known have been chock-full of rockism.

I must get you and plumsbitch talking about this at some point but, as I said, I've very happy to rant about this more over tea and cake :-)