In 2012 Intellect launched Punk & post-punk (ISSN 2044-1983; EISSN 2044-3706), a journal for academics, artists, journalists, and the wider cultural industries.
Placing punk and its progeny at the heart of interdisciplinary investigation, it is the first forum of its kind to explore this rich and influential topic in both historical and critical theoretical terms. The journal is edited by Philip Kiszely and Alex Ogg.
More articles about punk rock are here.
Filed under New periodicals, Popular music
“Odes to obesity: Images of overweight men and women in commercial sound recordings—A discography” by William L. Schurk and B. Lee Cooper (Popular music and society XXXIV/2 [2011] pp. 237–246) explores more than 200 commercial sound recordings that address obesity themes in lyrics and song titles.
The introductory text examines gluttonous dietary patterns and food addictions among endomorphs. It also traces socially inflicted and self-ascribed references to individuals of hefty stature. Finally, it probes assertions of personal affection and social rejection based upon excessive body weight.
The discography features recordings that address fat themes that were released over the past eight decades as either singles (45 or 78 rpm records) or as songs compiled in albums (33⅓ rpm records) or on compact discs. A brief bibliography of articles and books that address either physical or lyrical obesity concludes the study.
Below, Queen analyzes the concept of Fat bottomed girls.
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Filed under Humor, Popular music, Resources
Insects in rock ’n’ roll cover art is an article by Joseph R. Coelho, who teaches in the Biology Program at Quincy University.
The article, which can be read online here, was published in American entomologist (L/3 [fall 2004] pp. 142–151). It is part of a larger project called Insects in rock ’n’ roll music, which also includes lists of insect-related songs, albums, and artist names.
Above, a classic Iron Butterfly album cover. Below, ants dancing to Ant man bee from the legendary Trout mask replica by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.
Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for alerting us about Professor Coelho’s work!
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Filed under Animals, Nature, Popular music, Resources, Science, Visual art
While the composer of iconic marches is famous for directing the U.S. Marine Band and his own world-famous ensembles, John Philip Sousa’s early life as a violin prodigy is relatively unknown.
A sickly child, Sousa was home-schooled, and from the age of six his studies included lessons with an Italian violin teacher. He showed tremendous promise, and his father, a trombonist in the Marine Band, enlisted him as a Marine apprentice when he was 13; there he studied academics and several instruments.
Sousa went on to play the violin in orchestras and chamber groups, where he developed a taste for cutting-edge art music that he never lost; for example, his band performed excerpts from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger ten years before the opera’s first U.S. production.
This according to “John Philip Sousa’s violin: An American original” by Erin Shrader (Strings XXV/4:187 [November 2010] pp. 53–56). Above, Sousa’s childhood violin before (background) and after it was restored by John Montgomery. Below, Sousa’s Band performs Carl Friedemann’s Slavonic rhapsody.
Related article: Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
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Filed under Curiosities, Instruments, Popular music, Romantic era
On this Valentine’s Day, let’s look at an article that analyzes the 100 most popular songs between 1958 and 1998 for performer demographics and expressions of love.
In the 1990s women and black artists recorded more hits than in earlier periods; over time, references to love in lyrics performed by women artists decreased. References to sex in lyrics peaked between 1976 and 1984, when women used sexual references five times more than men; however, between 1991 and 1998, men used more sexual references.
Later songs and songs performed by white female artists expressed greater selfishness; the quality of love expressed in the lyrics remained the same.
This according to “Expressions of love, sex, and hurt in popular songs: A content analysis of all-time greatest hits” by Richard L. Dukes, et al. (Social science journal XL/4 [2003] pp. 643–650). Below, the Beatles—with a little help from their friends—provide further analysis.
Related article: Sexual attraction by genre
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Filed under Curiosities, Popular music
On 31 March 31 1990, in the early days of the newly restored democracy in Chile, the Cuban cantautor Silvio Rodríguez staged a concert in Santiago de Chile’s Estadio Nacional for an audience of 80,000 people. Accompanying him were the fourteen-piece band Irakere, led by the Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés, and the formerly exiled Chilean singer Isabel Parra and her group.
While it is entirely possible to see the concert as an event whose event-ness is created post facto, it is also useful to posit the concert as part of a construction of a larger process, that of opposition to the event of authoritarianism.
Two songs performed there, Víctor Jara’s Te recuerdo Amanda and Rodríguez’s Unicornio, involve evocations of death and disappearance. Death, as evoked in the Jara song, at least bears the comfort of a tangible end image; disappearance, as Unicornio bears witness, denies closure.
The afterlife of these recorded concert performances and the subjects of cover versions and tributes all contribute to the counter-event suggested by the Rodríguez concert.
This according to “Reconstructing the event: Spectres of terror in Chilean performance” by Richard Elliott (British postgraduate musicology VIII [June 2006]). Below, Rodríguez’s performance of Unicornio at the historic concert; click here for Jara’s performance of Te recuerdo Amanda.
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Filed under Politics, Popular music, Reception
Patti Smith’s direct assimilation of Arthur Rimbaud’s work into hers presents a case of cultural cross-fertilization in which the poetry of a foreign high-cultural figure enters into and influences a popular and countercultural discourse, illustrating how a nonacademic reading of a canonical text can help to produce a musical style that disseminates a message of social deviance.
Smith has foregrounded her debt to Rimbaud in several ways, explicitly referring to him as her major poetic influence and participating in a hermeneutic activity as she transformed his texts into her own. The poet has served as Smith’s most credible archetype of subversive behavior, and his work has provided the richest source for the development of her innovative aesthetic practices.
This according to “Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as social deviance” by Carrie Jaurès Noland (Critical inquiry XXI/3 [Spring 1995] pp. 581–610). Below, Smith performs Rock n roll nigger, one of the songs analyzed by Noland, in 2011; listen for Rimbaud’s name around 3:20.
More posts about punk rock are here.
Filed under Literature, Popular music, Reception
Władziu Valentino Liberace’s Las Vegas home represented the democratization of aristocracy, a do-it-yourself coronation, the people’s palace. It is the apotheosis of décor as persona and persona as décor.
The Moroccan Room (above, click to enlarge) is a tile-and-glass atrium with Tivoli lights made from a sundeck that Liberace had always found either too hot or too cold. The large convex sofa in flame-stitch upholstery (foreground) sounds a proper note of sloe-eyed languor, while pairs of Italian-Baroque-style blackamoors—referred to by Liberace’s lover Scott Thorson as “harem boys”—support the fireplace mantel (left) and the candelabras that flank the bar (rear).
This according to “Liberace’s taste” by Grant Mudford and Susan Yalevich (Nest 10 [2002] pp. 588–590). Below, Liberace plays Tiger rag in 1969, when he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world.
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Filed under Architecture, Curiosities, Popular music
Maintained since 1996 by Charley Pennell, a cataloguer at the D.H. Hill Library at North Carolina State University, Bluegrass discography lists bluegrass singles, LPs, tapes, CDs, and videos by label, performer, and album. Resources for obtaining these publications are also listed.
Below, the legendary Flatt & Scruggs perform Foggy mountain breakdown.
Filed under North America, Popular music, Resources
Like real rock guitar playing, air guitar—miming electric guitar playing without an instrument—is heavily informed by gendered practices in rock, where the electric guitar functions as a signifier of masculine power and implied sexual prowess, and performing on it involves symbolic aggression and dominance.
Women air guitarists appropriate and disrupt rock culture’s consensus, undermining and subverting its gendered performance. This gender bending emphasizes women’s critique of rock culture’s masculinist attitude while asserting female power through the nonthreatening manipulation of an imaginary phallic symbol.
This according to “The girl is a boy is a girl: Gender representations in the Gizzy Guitar 2005 Air Guitar Competition” by Hélène Laurin (Journal of popular music studies XXI/3 (September 2009) pp. 284–303. Above and below, the multi-award-winning Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura.
Related article: Sexual attraction by genre
Filed under Instruments, Popular music
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