204 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
204 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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_ _ _ _
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((___)) ((___))
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[ x x ] cDc communications [ x x ]
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\ / presents... \ /
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(' ') (' ')
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(U) (U)
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Impresario: Malcom McLaren and the British New Wave
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by The Pusher
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>>> A CULT Publication......1988 <<<
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-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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Introduction: The New Museum in New York City had an exhibit on Malcom McLaren
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(manager of Sex Pistols, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow) that I recently
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saw. They gave out a pamphlet about him which I typed up in this file.
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Thanks to my sister Leslie for taking me, and paying the cover charge at CBGB's
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later that night.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"He is best known for his role as manager of the infamous punk band, the
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Sex Pistols. Yet from his early art school days in the 1960's to his role as
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fashion designer, band manager and ultimately as a recording artist in his own
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right, Malcom McLaren has had a remarkably varied career as an orchestrator of
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public entertainments and spectacles, entrepreneur, style-maker and rabble
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rouser.
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The exhibition is about McLaren's participation in fifteen years of music,
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fashion, and graphic design, shown through record albums, t-shirts, magazines,
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music videos, memorabilia and other objects-many mass produced; and many the
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result of McLaren's collaborations with others- in other words, not the sort of
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thing usually found in art museums. The intention of this exhibition is not to
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push these objects into the rarified atmosphere of "fine art," but to explore
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their functions within popular culture, to see how ideas are spoken through
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fashion, style, and large-scale cultural phenomena.
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McLaren's arena is popular culture, but his concerns are linked to a
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series of movements in 20th-century art that runs from the Dadaists and
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Surrealists of the 1920's and 30's, to the Lettrists and Situationists of the
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50's and 60's, through Pop Art, Happenings, and into the media-orientated art
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of our own time. These movements confounded traditional definitions of art by
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challenging the academic separation of "art" from "life." Politically engaged
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to greater or lesser degrees, they were concerned with the content of modern
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life and the ability of art to affect social experience.
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From his study of art history and his training as an art student, McLaren
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became interested in the way social dramas are played out in public spaces. He
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and his collaborators learned how to subvert authority through the manipulation
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of its symbols, especially its symbols of power. Consider, for instance, Jamie
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Reid's famous image of Queen Elizabeth with a safety pin through her nose.
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McLaren discovered that creating situations can be more effective than creating
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objects alone. In the 1970's and 80's this meant media manipulation, as well
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as live performance and the announcement of attitudes through dress and
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behavior.
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Malcom McLaren was born in London in 1946. He was raised by his grand-
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mother and educated at home until the age of nine. From 1963 to 1971 he
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studied art at various schools including Croydon College of Art where he met
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fellow students, Jamie Reid and Helen Wellington-Lloyd, who were later to
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design most of the Sex Pistols' graphics. In 1972, McLaren left art school to
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open a boutique at 430 King's Road with Vivienne Westwood. The boutique first
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sold retro clothes that revived the Teddy Boy look of the 50's. But McLaren
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and Westwood soon felt that another look was needed for the 70's. Throughout
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the decade McLaren would redesign the shop five times, change the inventory and
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devise a new name- LET IT ROCK (1972), TOO FAST TO LIVE TOO YOUNG TO DIE
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(1973), SEX (1974), SEDITIONARIES (1977), and World's End (1980). In each
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carnation the shop carried clothes that had more than style. The clothes
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embodied attitude.
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Of all the shops, SEX stands out in strongest profile because of its links
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with punk music and culture. (It is there that Johnny Rotten is purported to
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have auditioned for the role of the lead singer of the Sex Pistols.) SEX sold
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the look of punk-poverty wear, such as ripped t-shirts with slogans scrawled
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across them, boots, studded jackets, and bondage clothing made of leather,
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chains, and rubber. SEX became a gathering place for punk's growing ranks.
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The clothes, along with accessories like safety pins through the ear, lip, or
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cheek suggested self-mutilation and instilled fear by evoking violence and
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destruction. Danger and criminality were also suggested by the ransom-note
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graphics used on punk concert posters and record jackets.
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It was the mid-70's, a period of racial tension, economic instability and
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England's highest unemployment rate since the 1930's (33% among recent high
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school graduates in 1976). British youths gave up their futile demand for the
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right to work. Instead, they demanded the right not to work and to collect
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government support anyway. In 1977, absurdly conflicting images clashed in the
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newspapers- the dejection of unemployment and the pomp of the Queen's Silver
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Jubilee.
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In this atmosphere, punk and its most notorious band, the Sex Pistols,
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flourished. The band didn't play well, but it didn't matter. In fact,
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virtuosity was the anathema to the punk sensibility. An article in the punk
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fanzine "Sniffin' Glue" showed a diagram of the three finger positions on a
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guitar and advised: "Here's one chord, here's two more; now form your own
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band." Punk not only subverted traditional British values, ethics, and codes
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of respectability; it threw into confusion standards of quality across the
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board. Its messages were contradictory and deliberately confusing.
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"All 'God Save the Queen' means is that we hate the Queen 'cause everyone
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is lookin' up to her."
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- Sid Vicious, Sex Pistols bassist
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"We hate President Carter, too. Where'd he get them teeth?"
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- Paul Cook, Sex Pistols drummer
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In managing the Sex Pistols, McLaren rejected the decorum of conventional
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entrepreneurs. The Sex Pistols were good theater and McLaren knew how to make,
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as he said, "Cash from Chaos." Beating the capitalist system at its own game,
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McLaren collected hundreds of thousands of dollars by signing various recording
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contracts which were subsequently broken when reports of the band's unsavory
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behavior appeared in the press. For this, in 1977, the Sex Pistols were named
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"Young Businessmen of the Year" by England's "Investors Review".
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"The greatest technique involved in managing the Sex Pistols was always to
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create the right explosion and then know that it was going to happen, and as
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manager, run into the toilet and come out after the explosion and say, 'God,
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what's happened?"
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- Malcom McLaren
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When the Sex Pistols disbanded in 1978, McLaren was invited to revamp the
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image of Adam and the Ants. His first move was to separate Adam from the
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group, rename it Bow Wow Wow and enlist 14-year old Annabella Lwin as its lead
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singer. As the era of conservative Thatcherism began, McLaren initiated the
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look of "punk gone high seas." The theme was piracy and the performers adopted
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the theatrical look of swashbuckling outlaws. The concept of the outlaw was
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adapted and romanticized in the guise of such legendary figures as Geronimo and
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Blackbeard. Whereas punk fashion has recreated the look of poverty, the new
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romantic style was a costume of great riches with gold dust, glitter, and
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flamboyant color overdone to the point of caricature. Developing the piracy
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theme, Bow Wow Wow's song "C30 C60 C90 GO!" encouraged listeners to tape music
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directly from the radio instead of buying records. This was modern-day
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high-tech appropriation. Exploitation was at the heart of its sensibility.
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McLaren capitalized on lead singer Annabella's youth and her "exotic" Burmese
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background by developing the exploitation theme through images of blatant
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sexism, soft core pornography, and racial stereotyping.
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McLaren's association with Bow Wow Wow ended in 1982 and in 1983 he
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released his first solo album, Duck Rock. With this step he inserted himself
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into a youth culture that had been gaining momentum in New York City since the
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late 1970's. That culture was hip-hop, a movement originating in the South
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Bronx which encompassed rap and scratch music, break dancing, graffiti, and its
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own forms of clothes and speech. McLaren adopted the techniques of hip hop
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music by mixing previous recordings in new combinations, a procedure
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conceptually similar to his earlier method of creating new fashions by
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juxtaposing unlike styles and forms. To achieve an authentic South Bronx sound
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McLaren collaborated with the New York City DJ duo, the World Famous Supreme
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Team. Together they intermixed African, Cuban, and American recordings which
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McLaren had collected while traveling around the world. Among the results was
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"Buffalo Gals" which attracted a crossover audience of both black and white
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listeners.
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McLaren's project owed much to hip hop, but also differed from it in a
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substantial way. While most hip hop conveys young DJ's attitudes and
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experience of urban life, McLaren kept one foot in the realm of fantasy. To
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accompany the record, McLaren and collaborator Vivienne Westwood developed a
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line of "Buffalo Gal" clothes based on styles from old rural America. Look
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muddy, they said, expounding on the pleasures of square dance as a pagan
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courting ritual.
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In 1984, McLaren released another album, Fans, which brought him much
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acclaim. The record's most intriguing song, "Madam Butterfly", mixed rap music
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with Puccini opera. It combined extreme genres in a glossy and sophisticated
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package that appealed to yuppies and B-Boys alike. The interpenetration of
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high and low culture is not a new idea. But in his music, McLaren not only
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combined contrasting styles, he found convincing connections between the
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content of operatic libretto and contemporary culture, such as "Cho Cho San's"
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woeful tale of unwanted pregnancy in "Madam Butterfly." In McLaren's upcoming
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project, a Broadway production based on the album, contemporary teenagers go
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opera-mad, living life as if it were a libretto. They reinvent themselves as
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Carmens, Toscas, and little "Cho Chos."
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Like punk in the 1970's, this and McLaren's other projects continue to
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test the flexibility of art forms and institutions. His primary techniques,
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misuse and modification of pre-existing elements, are methods with a long
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history in the 20th century from Marcel Duchamp's rectified readymades to
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today's "appropriation art." In the 1960's, McLaren was influenced by the
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Situationist idea that iconoclasm is a liberating force and an agent of social
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change. Is such a strategy viable in today's media-saturated consumer culture,
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a culture which seems ever able to absorb outrage and atrocity, as long as
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there's a profit to be made? McLaren's accomplishments are perched precisely
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on the dialectic between the shocking and new, and its consumption and
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popularization. Is there a critique implied in his work or is he just in it
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for the sport? I leave it to you to decide."
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"I think the only rule I ever had was... that if it didn't annoy someone
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it wasn't worth doing. If it didn't create problems, too, it wasn't worth
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doing. If it didn't have any politics, it was suspect. And from that it then
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had to have a lot of style and be sexy, to sell."
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- Malcom McLaren
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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Behavior Modification.....806/793-9462 The Dead Zone.............214/522-5321
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Demon Roach Underground...806/794-4362 Dragonfire Private........609/424-2606
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Question Authority........715/341-6516 Pure Nihilism.............517/337-7319
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Tequila Willy's...........209/526-3194 The Metal AE..............201/879-6668
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===============================================================================
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(c)1988 cDc communications by The Pusher 12/30/88-95
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All Rights Worth Shit
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