Pop When the World Falls Apart

Music in the Shadow of Doubt

Eric Weisbard

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780822351085
  9780822350996
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822394693
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Histoire et critiques de la musique

Hearing Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan once said, was "like busting out of jail." But what happens when popular music isn't as simple as rock-and-roll rebellion? How does pop respond to such events as a decade-long war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina? In Pop When the World Falls Apart, a diverse array of music writers, scholars, and enthusiasts reflect on popular music's role—as commentary, as refuge, and as rallying cry—in times of military conflict, social upheaval, and cultural crisis.

Drawn from presentations at the annual Experience Music Project Pop Conference—hailed by Robert Christgau as "the best thing that's ever happened to serious consideration of pop music"—the essays in this book include inquiries into the sonic dimension of war in Iraq; the cultural life of jazz in post-Katrina New Orleans; Isaac Hayes's reappropriation of a country song, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," as a symbol of black nationalism; and punk rock pranks played on record execs looking for the next big thing in central Virginia. Offering a diverse range of voices, perspectives, and approaches, this volume mirrors the eclecticism of pop itself.

Contributors: Larry Blumenfeld , Austin Bunn, Nate Chinen, J. Martin Daughtry, Brian Goedde, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Jonathan Lethem, Eric Lott, Kembrew McLeod, Elena Passarello, Diane Pecknold, David Ritz, Carlo Rotella, Scott Seward, Tom Smucker, Greg Tate, Karen Tongson, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Oliver Wang, Eric Weisbard, Carl Wilson

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction - Eric Weisbard
• Collapsing Distance: The Love- Song of the Wanna- Be, or The Fannish Auteur - Jonathan Lethem
• Toward an Ethics of Knowing Nothing - Alexandra T. Vazquez
• Divided Byline: How a Student of Leslie Fiedler and a Colleague of Charles Keil Became the Ghostwriter for Everybody from Ray Charles to Cornel West - David Ritz
• Boring and Horrifying Whiteness: The Rise and Fall of Reaganism as Prefigured by the Career Arcs of Carpenters, Lawrence Welk, and the Beach Boys in 1973–74 - Tom Smucker
• Perfect Is Dead: Karen Carpenter, Theodor Adorno, and the Radio, or If Hooks Could Kill - Eric Lott
• Agents of Orange: Studio K and Cloud 9 - Karen Tongson
• Belliphonic Sounds and Indoctrinated Ears:The Dynamics of Military Listening in Wartime Iraq - J. Martin Daughtry
• Since the Flood: Scenes from the Fight for New Orleans Jazz Culture - Larry Blumenfeld
• (Over the) Rainbow Warrior: Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and Another Kind of Somewhere - Nate Chinen
• Travel with Me: Country Music, Race, and Remembrance - Diane Pecknold
• The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro- Soul Audience - Oliver Wang
• Within Limits: On the Greatness of Magic Slim - Carlo Rotella
• Urban Music in the Teenage Heartland - Brian Goedde, Austin Bunn, and Elena Passarello
• “Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism”: Alice Bag’s Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk - Michelle Habell- Pallán
• Of Wolves and Vibrancy: A Brief Exploration of the Marriage Made in Hell between Folk Music, Dead Cultures, Myth, and Highly Technical Modern Extreme Metal - Scott Seward
• The New Market Affair: Media Pranks, the Music Industry’s Last Big Gold Rush, and the Hunt for Hits in the Shenandoah Valley - Kembrew McLeod
• All That Is Solid Melts into Schmaltz: Poptimism vs. the Guilty Displeasure - Carl WiLson
• Contributors
• Index