Jon King (musician)

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Jon King, born June, 1955, 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."^{[citation needed]} 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."^{[citation needed]}

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 [sic] 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."^{[citation needed]}

He has written a great deal of 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.^{[citation needed]}