put an X on the line between fear and love

new study suggests things being popular make them more popular shocking new evidence that there is no free will or taste, only sociology.

just got back from IASPM-US, which i have to tell you was a little disappointing after so many years of congregating with the EMP Pop Con folks. There were notable, passionate and original papers:

Carol Vernalis's paper on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was great as a way to think about transcribing video. Her book on music video is the same way - thoughtful breakdowns of complex, interwoven parts of sound and image.

Charles Kronengold's paper, after mine, on "changes" in gospel. harmonic changes and cycles as ways of thinking about expressing life-moments without giving a sense of disjunct to the sacred nature of the work. Interesting bc I'm always wondering in pop writing/scholarship what about the music that *isn't* trying to be transgressive, revolutionary, a form of resistance, and how to talk about that in cultural studies frameworks without sounding condescending.
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Andy Bennett's paper and topic is of great interest to me of late: what to do about the notion of subculture as relates to age. How do sociological/cultural studies models of subculture fail as fans get older and use music for different things besides identity/sense of difference? He's a smart dude and I need to read his work.

Steve Waksman, as usual, gave an entertaining and brilliant paper on the twin-lead guitar and strong lead vocalist syndrome in metal, and how it pushes up the vocal and away the rythmn section.

Larry Hamberlin gave my favorite paper of the conference, which was about orientalism at the Chicago World's Fair. If you know me, you know why I'd be in to this to begin with, and he sat at a piano and played/sang hits from the gilded age while discussing how late 19th century America learned and imagined the other through the midway. Love it.

Gary Moulsdale gave a fascinating account of the Tom Waits/Robert Wilson colab for "the Black Rider." I am like the least interested person about Tom Waits, but Moulsdale talked so much about the layering of voices, the strength of character between Waits/Wilson and what can be considered 'authorship' in the enterprise. He also had a great, theatrical voice that made his readings of the Waits' quotes really on.

but I have to tell you that I share the journo-crit of academia a little more after this weekend. There were quite a few times I said to myself, 'this person doesn't know the music they're talking about' or somehow felt that pop music was merely being used as a common text by which to discuss other issues, and as such the music/artist was being reduced to one aspect, one gesture, one line of thought and not understood/reasoned with/dealt with in their full complexity. It is impossible of course to write and say everything about every moment of an artist's musical output, but to ignore parts of the artist/music that would collapse or change the argument is simply bad research and bad scholarship. ILM would hang said folks out to dry, and there was very little 'calling them on it' going on this weekend.