Listen Again

Eric Weisbard

Description

Arguing that pop music turns on moments rather than movements, the essays in Listen Again pinpoint magic moments from a century of pop eclecticism, looking at artists who fall between genre lines, songs that sponge up influences from everywhere, and studio accidents with unforeseen consequences. Listen Again collects some of the finest presentations from the celebrated Experience Music Project Pop Conference, where journalists, musicians, academics, and other culturemongers come together once each year to stretch the boundaries of pop music culture, criticism, and scholarship.Building a history of pop music out of unexpected instances, critics and musicians delve into topics from the early-twentieth-century black performer Bert Williams's use of blackface, to the invention of the Delta blues category by a forgotten record collector named James McKune, to an ER cast member's performance as the Germs' front man Darby Crash at a Germs reunion show. Cuban music historian Ned Sublette zeroes in on the signature riff of the garage-band staple "Louie, Louie." David Thomas of the pioneering punk band Pere Ubu honors one of his forebears: Ghoulardi, a late-night monster-movie host on Cleveland-area TV in the 1960s. Benjamin Melendez discusses playing in a band, the Ghetto Brothers, that Latinized the Beatles, while leading a South Bronx gang, also called the Ghetto Brothers. Michaelangelo Matos traces the lineage of the hip-hop sample "Apache" to a Burt Lancaster film. Whether reflecting on the ringing freedom of an E chord or the significance of Bill Tate, who performed once in 1981 as Buddy Holocaust and was never heard from again, the essays reveal why Robert Christgau, a founder of rock criticism, has called the EMP Pop Conference "the best thing that's ever happened to serious consideration of pop music."Contributors. David Brackett, Franklin Bruno, Daphne Carr, Henry Chalfant, Jeff Chang, Drew Daniel, Robert Fink, Holly George-Warren, Lavinia Greenlaw, Marybeth Hamilton, Jason King, Josh Kun, W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Greil Marcus, Michaelangelo Matos, Benjamin Melendez, Mark Anthony Neal, Ned Sublette, David Thomas, Steve Waksman, Eric Weisbard

Sujets

• 20th century

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822390558
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

“ThE e m p PaPErs arE a tExt radio, sPilling out EvidEncE of so Many strangE brilliant forays into thE starry night of our coMMon culturE. HErE’s whErE My AMErican history — and yours — goEs to find itsElf.”

Jonathan Lethem, author ofYou Don’t Love Me Yet

LISTEN C A M O M E N TA RY H I S T O RY O F P O P M U S I AGAIN Eric Weisbard, editor

An Experience Music Project Book

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∫2007 Experience Music Project

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on

acid-free paper$

Designed by Heather Hensley

Typeset in Scala by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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Introduction eric weisbard

1.WhittlingonDynamite:TheDifferenceBertWilliamsMakes w. t. lhamon, jr.

2.SearchingfortheBlues:JamesMcKune,Collectors, andaDifferentCrossroads marybeth hamilton

3.AbietheFishman:OnMasks,Birthmarks,andHunchbacks josh kun

4.TheKingsmenandtheCha-Cha-Chá ned sublette

5.Ghoulardi:LessonsinMayhemfromtheFirstAgeof

Punk david thomas

6.MagicMoments,theGhostofFolk-Rock,andtheRing ofEMajor david brackett

7.MysteryGirl:TheForgottenArtistryofBobbieGentry holly george-warren

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contents

8.‘‘IsThatAllThereIs?’’andtheUsesofDisenchantment franklin bruno

9.GhettoBrotherPower:TheBronxGangs,theBeatles,the Aguinaldoa,adnerPsiH-oftoryHopHip- benjamin melendez, as told to henry chalfant and jeff chang

10.GrandFunkLive!StagingRockintheAgeoftheArena steve waksman

11.TheSoundofVelvetMelting:ThePowerof‘‘Vibe’’inthe

MusicofRobertaFlack jason king

12.AllRoadsLeadto‘‘Apache’’ michael angelo matos

13.OnPunkRockandNotBeingaGirl l avinia greenl aw

14.TheBuddyHolocaustStory:ANecromusicology eric weisbard

15.ORCH5,ortheClassicalGhostintheHip-HopMachine robert fink

16.WhiteChocolateSoul:TeenaMarieandLewisTaylor mark anthony neal

17.Dancing,Democracy,andKitsch:Poland’sDiscoPolo daphne carr

18.HowtoActLikeDarbyCrash drew daniel

19.DeathLetters greil marcus

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

EricWeisbard

Introduction

Pop music turns on moments more than movements: mysteries, like the proverbial song you hear on the radio and have to know everything about immediately. The categories we impose on its bloomings, as would-be scholars, lovelorn fans, or harried entrepreneurs, are necessary afterthoughts. But these frameworks are also profanations: an irritant, usually, to the performers, who feel stereotyped, and often just as bothersome to hard- core participants who exactly value the singular irreduc- ibility of their experiences. Does rock and roll belong in a museum like the one, Experience Music Project, that has sponsored this book? Many would say no: don’t put grooves behind Plexiglas. Yet the irony is that our re- issues, databases, blogs, exhibitry, and bookshelves of analysis and memoir all ultimately work to corrupt only the consumerist boundaries of genre and taste, not the miracles of sound and stance that prompted them. So let’s try again. If, as now seems increasingly clear, rallying terms like folk, jazz, blues, rock and roll, soul, hip-hop, and so on are more confining than illuminat- ing, what should take their place? Perhaps an expanded view of pop, which has numerous meanings, but, as the catch-all music fan’s term for sticky sounds, inauthentic identity, and commercial crazes of every sort, remains

the best word for all that is heard, loved, and yet rarely ennobled. Like its predecessor,p,PosIisThthis book represents work that was presented at the annualempPop Conference—a gathering dedicated to the notion that mixing academics, journalists, musicians, and other culturemongers into one place for one long weekend might produce an intellectual product equal to the clamor of contexts lurking underneath any givenBillboard week’s Hot 100 and Top 200. Each year, the theme of the conference has changed, yet a certain range of concerns remains perennial. Artists who fall between genre lines, songs that sponge up influences from every- where, strange species of cultural transmission, and studio accidents with unforeseen consequences all register as intellectual hooks: catchy in- stances of a larger history we are better able to evoke than summarize. Still, it is possible, using the material collected here, to speculate about what may turn out to be landmarks of a revisionist popular music history focused explicitly on pop itself, the neither completely glorious nor com- pletely odious intersection of music and modernity. Switch blackface minstrelsy and ragtime vaudeville for blues at the start of the story: a masquerade that allowed what W. T. Lhamon, Jr., calls ‘‘subaltern song’’ only within the context of a racialized landscape as polarized and entrenched as our own. Bert Williams, who failed to re- lease an album in the twentieth century, now bridges the nineteenth and twenty-first with his comic speak singing and an identity (New York based, West Indian derived, outlandish and yet showbiz to the core) that many a rapper might recognize. In a linked vein, Marybeth Hamilton resurrects James McKune, the record collector who persuaded jazz obses- sives to obsess over bottleneck guitar and scratchy 78s, transforming purist fanship just in time for rock to arrive. Ned Sublette summons up all that was forgotten in a post-Castro heartbeat about hundreds of years of Latin music hybrids, so that ‘‘Louie Louie,’’ a cha-cha-chá, sedimented into the cornerstone of all subsequent garage rock: seemingly as mono- cultural a genre as rock and roll ever produced. And Josh Kun imagines a similar unveiling, a Marx Brothers chant that would restamp Jewishness (and what has been more ‘‘pop,’’ pure diaspora, than Judaism?) back onto ‘‘passing’’ music, but his punch line is subtle: that we learn to value the ethnicity of ethnic masquerade. With Jewish and Latin identities challenging settled popular music oppositions of white and black, with minstrelsy and record collecting

2eric weisbard

recontextualizing the ‘‘birth’’ of the blues, pop history becomes the one thing that pop itself can never a√ord to be: defamiliarized. Several pieces here, for example, intersect at a complicated angle with hip-hop—a music that has called rock assumptions into constant question with its pop vitality, continued coherence as a genre, and non–baby boomer relation- ship to the musical and sociocultural past. Michaelangelo Matos looks at the entirely ersatz history of ‘‘Apache,’’ which began in the head of a Lon- doner watching Burt Lancaster playing an Indian and just got stranger from there, yet ultimately became the quintessential b-boydjtrack. Ben- jamin Melendez, from a surreptitiously Jewish Puerto Rican family (Josh Kun in reverse!), played in a band, the Ghetto Brothers, that Latinized the Beatles (Ned Sublette in reverse!), and led a South Bronx gang, the Ghetto Brothers. His musical and political successor, Afrika Bambaataa, turns up next in Robert Fink’s essay, which adds a third element, ‘‘post-canonic’’ classical music, to Bambaataa’s well-known incorporation of the German art band Kraftwerk. Another cluster of essays tries to defamiliarize punk rock, too, by turning it into a story that is less about rock reclamation than pop cultural mediation. David Thomas, a punk legend as the leader of Pere Ubu, invokes as his and the Ohio scene’s key influence the unlikely figure of Ernie Anderson, a horror filmtv host in the early 1960s and later the voice ofTheLoveBoat.Lavinia Greenlaw presents punk in terms of the gendered opportunities it presented an Essex girl who hung out in discos: a new masquerade, no better necessarily, that simply ‘‘did what it could.’’ Still, as bildungsroman, it’s a happier outcome than the tale of Bill Tate, who for one performance in 1981 billed himself as Buddy Holocaust and was then never heard from again, yet whose less than magic moment still strikes me as a mass cultural product in all that made him and unmade him. Drew Daniel, whose holidays from graduate school backing Björk with his band Matmos have taught him something about crossings, looks at another such instance, as a fictional Germs movie band, fronted by an ERregular, plays at a fundraiser with the survivors of the real group. Throughout this book, we see an attempt to widen the overall scope of the popular music story that rock and roll chroniclers often essentialized, so that a tale of how the songwriters Leiber and Stoller turned a Thomas Mann short story into a Peggy Lee adult pop cabaret song has as much place as the long-repeated narrative of how the duo’s earlier hit, ‘‘Hound

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