PUNK! Attitude

Post-Rock, Subcultures and the End of Authenticity

The prompt for your second short paper is linked to in the previous post. Paper is due on Friday. Enjoy.

Assuming that at this point you should be on your way to completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the final readings for the session --readings in bold are required; readings in italics are (highly) recommended.

On Jamaican Music:
from Dick Hebdige, Cut'n'Mix here.

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" here.

On Gender:
Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, "Rock and Sexuality"
Simon Frith, "Afterthoughts"
Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Find these articles here as a single PDF file --nb. skip the initial Sara Cohen article.



On 'sub-cultures':
Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Refer back to the Punk: Attitude film screening.

On sampling, mash-ups and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?"
Negativland, "from Wired: Negativland Interviews U2's The Edge"

Also, to clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism' please help yourself --in case you have not encountered it in your other studies-- to Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

Pop Music. Second Short Paper.

Paper Prompt here. Enjoy.

For Those About To Rock: Return of the Aura

Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart

"I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"
-Jack Kerouac

-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

Here are a couple of articles to integrate Keightley's Reconsidering Rock article. The first Frith article is required; the second article is a highly recommended read. Enjoy the Lester Bangs reviews from Creem. Reebee Garofalo's article on Soul ("Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement") is required.

Simon Frith - "Rock and Popular Culture"
Simon Frith - "The Magic The Can Set You Free": The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community
Paul Clarke - "'A Magic Science': Rock Music as a Recording Art"
Lester Bangs - Various Record Reviews from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Reebee Garofalo - Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Also, here is Andrew Chester's "For A Rock Aesthetic", Richard Merton's response, "Comments" and Chester's response to the response, "Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band". It's all here at this link --the whole epochal exchange in one handy location.

Please read in 'Rocking Out' up to and including Chapter 8.

AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977) 

Reverend Bon tells you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.

The In-Between Years (or The Empire Strikes Back)

The Folk Revival:

The Kingston Trio - Tom Dooley
Pete Seeger - Turn Turn Turn!
Joan Baez - Silver Dagger
Bob Dylan - Masters of War
Lyrics here.

Surf & Hot Rod Combos:

The Beach Boys - Surfin USA
Dick Dale & The Del-Tones - Miserlou
Link Wray & His Ray Men - Rumble (Outtake)
The Stingers (Jack Cole) - Mustang

Uptown R&B from Motown/All songs by Holland-Dozier-Holland:

Martha & The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run
The Four Tops - Reach Out I'll Be There
The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love
Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is

Girl Groups/Phil Spector Wall of Sound/Songs by Weill & Mann:

The Ronettes - Be My Baby
The Crystals - Then He Kissed Me
The Crystals - Da Doo Ron Ron

Cynthia Weill & Barry Mann songs NOT produced by Phil Spector:

Lesley Gore - It's My Party

The Wall of Sound in full-effect:

Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep, Mountain High

The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling

Readings:
Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

nb. You will not be responsible for this reading for the midterm. We will discuss the issues and concepts raised in it after the exam. I do however urge you to read it as it offers a lot of points that would help your review of material that will actually be covered on the midterm.

In Garofalo you should read up to and including Chapter 6.

R'n'R or Trasubstantiated R'n'B?

Elvis Presley - That's All Right, Mama + Blue Moon of Kentucky
Bill Haley & The Comets - Crazy Man Crazy
Fats Domino - Ain't That A Shame + Blueberry Hill
Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
Chuck Berry - Almost Grown + Little Queenie
Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing
The Chords - Sh-Boom
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall In Love

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers: Something Wild

This is the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, the Suzie-Q. The clip is an excerpt from H.C. Potter's Helzapoppin' (1941).
More Lindy Hoppers doing "The Big Apple" in 1939 at this link here. Enjoy.
(In this clip the dancing starts at the 2:15 mark.)



from Jonathan Demme's Something Wild; The Feelies play David Bowies's "Fame" and Jeff Daniels dances with his eye on the 'Other' for cues.

R'n'B is on the Indies

Big Joe Turner - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
Rufus Thomas - Bear Cat
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup - That's All Right
Jackie Brenston & His Delta Kings (aka Ike Turner) - Rocket 88
Junior Parker - Mystery Train
Little Walter - Dead Presidents

Post-War Hillbillies: Western Swing, Honky Tonk and Bluegrass

Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys - Take Me Back To Tulsa

Hank Williams - Hey Goodlookin' + Lovesick Blues

Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys - Muleskinner Blues + Blue Moon Of Kentucky

Teddy and Walt in The New Yorker

The Naysayers: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and the Critique of Pop Culture
by Alex Ross

Even the New Yorker catches up:

"One way or another, the Frankfurt School mode of criticism—its skeptical ardor, its relentless scouring of mundane surfaces—has spread far. When online recappers expend thousands of words debating the depiction of rape on “Game of Thrones,” or when writers publish histories of sneakers or of the office cubicle, they show intense awareness of mass culture’s ability to shape society. And in some cases the analysis takes a recognizably dialectical turn, as in Hua Hsu’s 2011 essay, for Grantland, on Kanye West and Jay-Z’s album “Watch the Throne.” A dispassionate hip-hop fan, Hua Hsu ponders the spectacle of two leading rappers making an “album against austerity,” in which they mark their ascension to a world of “MoMA and Rothko, Larry Gagosian, and luxury hotels across three continents,” and at the same time forfeit a hip-hop tradition of fantasy and protest. Citing the Kanye track “Power”—“Grab a camera, shoot a viral / Take the power in your own hands”—Hsu writes, “This version of power is entrancing—it explains an entire generation. But it also confuses ubiquity for importance, the familiarity of a celebrity’s face for true authority.” There is no telling how Adorno and Benjamin might have negotiated such contemporary labyrinths. Perhaps, on a peaceful day, they would have accepted the compromise devised by Fredric Jameson, who has written that the “cultural evolution of late capitalism” can be understood “dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together.”

These implacable voices should stay active in our minds. Their dialectic of doubt prods us to pursue connections between what troubles us and what distracts us, to see the riven world behind the seamless screen. “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism”: Benjamin’s great formula, as forceful as a Klieg light, should be fixed as steadily on pop culture, the ritual apparatus of American capitalism, as it has been on the art works of the European bourgeoisie. Adorno asked for only so much. Above all, these figures present a model for thinking differently, and not in the glib sense touted by Steve Jobs. As the homogenization of culture proceeds apace, as the technology of surveillance hovers at the borders of our brains, such spaces are becoming rarer and more confined. I am haunted by a sentence from Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves”: “One cannot live outside the machine for more perhaps than half an hour.”"

The Sound Begins: Popular Music Readings II

Rufus Thomas, DJ Extraordinaire

in Garofalo:

-Chapter 2: Blues and Country Music: Mass Media and the Construction of Race
-Chapter 3: “Good Rockin’ Tonight”: The Rise of Rhythm and Blues

Charlie Gillet from The Sound of the City, "The Sound Begins"
Nelson George from The Death of Rhythm and Blues, "Dark Voices in the Night"

Pre-War Specialties

Doc Boggs - Sugar Baby

Jimmie Rodgers - Mule Skinner Blues

The Carter Family - Wildwood Flower

Jimmie Rodgers & The Carter Family - Blue Yodel

Skip James - Devil Got My Woman

Robert Johnson - Love in Vain

Blind Willie Johnson, "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground"
"The most transcendent piece in all American music" (Ry Cooder)

Art & Folk

Beethoven - Symphony N.9 d-moll Op. 125 (extract)

Text by Schiller here.

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 "Moonlight"

Chopin - Nocturne b-moll Op. 9 No. 1

Schumann - Dichterliebe, Opus 48, "A Poet's Love"

Text by Heine here.

Schumann - Liderkreis, Op. 39, "Intermezzo"

Text by Eichendorff here.

Schubert - An Silvia (D891 1826)

Text by Shakespeare here.

The virtuoso instrumentalist and composer as superstar: Franz Liszt.

Good interview on WNYC's Soundcheck with Tim Blanning author of The Triumph of Music, a 'social history' of musicians in the west and how they went from being considered merely servants to being 'stars'. This is an excellent example of metacontextual musical knowledge. Required listening.

Download entire interview mp3 here. Stream interview.

from North Vietnam: A Brao Song
from the Mississippi Delta: Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night
from the Mississippi Delta: Alan Lomax Collection - Arwhoolie (Cornfield Holler)

from Ireland: The Dubliners - Home Boys Home

from Democratic Republic of Congo: Konono No. 1 - Ditshe Tshiekutala

from India: Ravi Shankar - Dhun

But this is not 'folk music' as we defined it, rather it is an example of the 'high' in a different cultural and social context.

Music Becomes A Thing

Readings Week 1&2:

in Garofalo, Rockin' Out:
-Introduction + Chapter 1: Tin Pan Alley

in Cambridge Companion:
-Introduction + Chronology
-Theberge, "'Plugged In': Technology & Popular Music"
-Frith, "The Popular Music Industry"
-Frith, "Pop Music"

-Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular"

-Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

from Frith & Goodwin (eds), On Record
-Adorno, "On Popular Music"
nb. You can find this essay together with "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" co-written with Max Horkheimer --an essay which if you have not read should definitely do so-- here.

from Even Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Music Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa
-Eisenberg, Chapter 2: Music Becomes a Thing

Grimes, "Genesis" Live Session for KEXP

Welcome To Popular Music & Mass Culture Summer I 2016