Hang the DJs, #4

The phonograph is at its most musical when it fails because the conditions of its own production become audible in the moments of its technological failure; a hop-skip and a jump (over the usual murky pools of Marxist jargon) to the moments of social failure that might precipitate the revolution, the long-awaited communist utopia. Only when it ceases to provide us with the illusion that we can listen to Caruso in our own home (or Dylan in our car, or Thom Yorke in a corner cafe, or, or, or, or) does the phonograph begin to create music that might pierce the veil of ideology and precipitate genuine social change.