Hey guys, I'm at college doing a music tech course, and as part of it I have to choose an artist/group and make a presentation of a PEST analysis on them (For those of you who don't know, PEST stands for Political, Economical, Sociological and Technological). I figured who else has had such a rich and varied career in the music industry? Maybe Prince, but Dev comes in a good second.

So if some of you could be as good as to help me fill in the blanks and point me in the right direction with these aspects of Dev's career, it would be much appreciated. I've got some stuff down, for instance how Ziltoid the Omniscient was a 'political' statement of how anyone can sit at home and record an album on their own, I seem to remember reading somewhere (Although not everyone has access to a high-quality home studio, lol). It can be anything like lyrical subject matter, the fact that wall-of-sound production has been extensively used (under Technological), etc.

Cheers!

Prince would probably be an easier subject, because there is so much out there as far as making statements, Dev would be a challenge to write your paper thingy about. More power to you!

Haha, I would if I liked Prince enough.

I dunno, it came down to being between Dev and Paul Masvidal from Cynic, as Paul's done charity work with the sick and dying, but I figured Dev would be a lot more fun with the amount of humour put into his stuff.

may be kind of tough, especially with the political aspect. i wouldn't really call ziltoid political... [i]maybe[i] you could use SYL (the album) being influenced by the rage he felt due to 9/11 but even that is kind of a stretch. Economical as in... he doesn't make much money but still makes kick ass music and gets by to support his family? not sure how you would explain that either. good luck if you decide to use him.

His music's never been directly political—sometimes it touches on vaguely political ideas (Gaia, the SYL album) but even then they're approached from an emotional/spiritual perspective rather than a political one.

But there are themes of the fakeness/oppression of society (Detox, SYL, Colour Your World, Earth Day), the inherent serfdom of the rock lifestyle (Colonial Boy, Heaven Send, Traveller/Away, Addicted), the soullessness of consumerist/commercial/urban life (Night, Bastard, Ants, The Fluke), the fakeness of our identities (Vampira, Ziltoid, The New Black), all of which could be spun in a political sense if you were willing to take a few leaps.

Thanks, this is the kind of stuff I'm after. And yeah, the term 'political' is being used very loosely for this project, haha.

Frank Zappa might also be an interesting choice for this kind of project, since he was such an eclectic musician and so outspoken about his opinions.

IIRC, Detox is not so much about oppression of society, but about a mushroom badtrip (someone confirms).

Economically, he pretty much started his solo career with a parody album making fun of the music industry (the whole granny award thing makes some good content for your project)
Created his own label cuz' others would only sign the strapping stuff and not his solo material
Stopped SYL when it was about to get big (well he had a burnout at that time too, that doesn't help)
He did the MTV commercials though (for a steak and a new guitar IIRC )
His opinion on downloading music and things like that.

His rather recent posts ("post tour reflection" or something) about how he says he's just a dude with some good days and bad days can probably be useful for the sociological part (and those are recent and straight from him, not fading memories from a fan or old interviews where he may have changed his mind since then )

Say, can you just do it for me and email it to me in a couple of weeks?

As much as I hate to bump this, does anyone else have any suggestions? I've thought of things like talking about how political Aftermath is (Also a good excuse for making my class laugh with the For Those Aboot To Rock intro) etc., but I'm getting a bit stumped. And hey, why read through countless interviews and reviews to find a political/sociological/economical/technological meaning to the music, when I can get the fanboys to do it for me?

[swervedriver]

You've got it all wrong. Aftermath is about how much Dev liked Social Studies in high school.

AHOY MATIES! WE BE PIRATES!