The Committee to Nuke Elysium

many of the characters in the second volume of Phonogram spend a lot of time worrying about who they are. They’d be doing this even without the magic stuff, of course– because they’re 19- and 20-year-olds stress-testing the identities they’ve been building. But there’s an enjoyably literal element to it in Phonogram– the kids are choosing or being given their magical names: Laura Heaven, The Marquis, Mr. Logos. Which could as easily be fanzine names, and are only a step or two away from the ones pop stars give themselves.

The pop identity– the glamorous, codename-ready mirror-self you summon by making music or loving it– is an idea with deep roots and great power. In Britain it arrived when a teen-market entrepreneur Larry Parnes turned boys into stars by giving them totemic stage names– Vince Eager, Billy Fury, Lance Fortune. It came back in the glam era, more clumsily, and then was part of what punk borrowed from rock’n’roll. By the 1980s and 90s these identities had left the stage and entered fan culture, with zine writers cut-and-pasting new selves in a storm of glue and typewriter ribbons.