Episode 77- This Episode is a Hologram.
The Mark Lanegan Band, Burial, Air, Dirty Mittens

April 27, 2012 by The Polygraph Record No Comment

There’s been a lot of discussion lately in the music world about the ethics of bringing back the dead to perform as a hologram. As technology moves forward, the way in which the music industry raises the dead may change, but its intentions and motives to suck the last amount of cash value from a dead star will not. I’m not here to talk about the virtues or the destruction of capitalism, but I think that it shouldn’t come as surprise the music industry is happy to be a leech the sucks the money out of dead corpses.

The newest, and in my opinion, most distasteful use of this is the resurrection of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes to “tour” with an obviously desperate TLC. Despite the fact that Lopes was ready to leave the band and was in the middle of an all out creative feud, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas has since decided that it’s OK to tour with her on the 10th anniversary of her death.

Look, I was never a fan of TLC (although I do reserve the right to do a stupid dance if their music happens to be within earshot) but forcing someone who is dead to tour with you is distasteful at best and shitting on someone’s legacy and integrity at its worst. George Orwell famously wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” In this case, Watkins and Thomas have done both. By controlling the way in which Lopes’ past is presented, they now control the memory of the thousands of people who will pay to watch a zombie version of TLC. Additionally, because they now are able to tour with a version of Lopes that they themselves have white washed, they now control the legacy that she has left and will use that in any way they can exploit.

And all because they wanted to make more money….

Well, that was deep. *BURP*

This episode has some fantastic moments in it (check out where we compare Mark Lanegan to Robbie Williams!) and we are happy to have Lindsay Taylan back with us reviewing albums and giving us a good dose of comic book pop culture shout out delights!

As always, let us know what you think about the episode and the podcast via Facebook or down below in the comments section. Thank you for listening!