Adventures in the Life of Lady Soul

First of all, let me extend my congratulations to Ms. Aretha Franklin on her recent engagement to William Wilkerson.  I understand the couple is planning a wedding this summer in Florida with a reception to be held on a private yacht.  Catharine and I will be very pleased to attend.

But wait, there's more Aretha-related news!  As you may have also heard, Franklin is starting a kind of singing contest in order to find an opera singer worthy of being signed to her record label (and, presumably, mentored by Franklin herself).  In a bizarre justification given to NPR, Franklin says, "Some of the older classical singers like Jessye Norman, Leotyne Price, and Barbara Hendricks are retiring, they're not singing anymore, and I'd like to see some younger singers come along and take their place."

Indeed, Price has been retired since 1985.  But even weirder is this idea that, unless Aretha finds some new singers, there won't be anyone around to sing opera.  As imperfect as it is, Franklin is aware of the fact that there is an extensive vocal training infrastructure in this country, right?  That the streets of New York are awash in trained young sopranos eager to sing the classical repertory instead of working as waitresses and nannies?

So maybe Aretha is unsatisfied with this system and is going to use her money and influence to give attention to young singers in ways that the more conventional structures haven't been able to do.  But I actually like the idea better that she, in fact, lives in her kind of celebrity bubble and actually has no idea that thousands of students are enrolled in vocal performance degree programs.  It's kind of like when Prince released a song a few years ago called "Cinnamon Girl."

Obviously, "Cinnamon Girl" is a bizarre and racially problematic title.  It was also used as the title for a iconic rock song written by Neil Young, which features Young's droning one-note guitar solo (which I actually kind of love).  Surely Prince was aware of this song, right? 

The other explanation is that both Prince and Aretha are fully aware of the antecedents their work is engaging with, but they feel they don't even need to acknowledge these things whatsoever, that whatever they are doing is so obviously superior that whatever came before is just irrelevant.  Certainly that's an attitude of arrogance, but why else do we have pop stars? 

Happy Anniversary

I promised a few dissertation excerpts, and this seemed like a particularly appropriate one today. Here's a passage from my chapter on historical consciousness, after I talked about attending a concert in 2008 which re-created The Beatles' White Album to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release in 1968. 

"In fact, the period of my fieldwork found me in the midst of quite a few 40th anniversaries for some of the iconic events of the 1960s and 1970s.  In 2009, the 40th anniversary of the release of the album Abbey Road was marked by a similar concert at the festival.  Several Beatles tribute bands around the world also took the opportunity to recreate the Beatles’ final concert on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, in January of 2009.  And the 40th anniversary of the release of the rock opera Tommy by The Who was also marked by several tribute bands playing the album in its entirety.  This historical consciousness that these anniversary concerts seem to be both partaking in and helping to construct is unlikely to go away once the current spate of anniversaries passes, however.  It seems all but certain that the early years of the 2010s will feature many '45th anniversary' performances of events from the late 1960s before ramping up for '50th anniversary' celebrations at the end of the decade."

The festival in question here is Abbey Road on the River, a Beatles tribute band festival held every year over Memorial Day weekend in Louisville, KY--now with a sister festival held over Labor Day weekend in the Washington, D.C. area.  AROTR has a strong presence on Facebook.  Here was an announcement they posted on their status today about this year's festival: 

Sometimes it's nice to know that I'm not making this stuff up.  Anyway, Abbey Road Live! is a phenomenal band, and they're also very nice guys--I interviewed them for my fieldwork.  Sounds like it should be a great show. 

You Say You Want a Revolution

I just finished reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, a book Robbie gave me last year for Christmas.  (We returned the favor and gave him a copy of it this year for Christmas.)  It took me a year to read it because I was, well, busy with other things.  I also knew hardly anything about Patti Smith and my interest wasn't immediately piqued.  But I'm glad that I took it with me over the holidays and that I finished reading it.  It made me want to listen to some Patti Smith records and look at some Robert Mapplethorpe photos, which, I assume, was the book's goal.  One thing near the end interested and amused me, though, especially because it connects with some of the concerns of my research.  

Describing her newly-formed band, Smith writes:

"We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll.  We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation.  We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.  We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms.  We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone."  

Pretty remarkable rhetoric.  This is at the top of page 245.  Near the bottom of that page, Jane Friedman introduces Smith and her band to Clive Davis.  On page 247, Smith signs a record contract with Davis.  Just saying. 

Now That We Found Love

I had a dream last night that I was on a bus.  A black woman in her 30s was also on the bus, and she was railing against contemporary culture.  Politics, art, fashion, film, and (most importantly) music were all criticized for their shallowness, their violence and misogyny, their lack of aesthetic couth.  With a final rhetorical flourish, she addressed all of us riding on the bus, laying the blame on her fellow riders for all that was lacking in society:  "I love this city, but I hate its people!"  And with that, she got off the bus.  

The ghost of Heavy D (yes, really) suddenly appeared sitting to me right.  He tapped me on the shoulder, leaned over, and said:  "I don't know, man.  I love the music."  

End of dream.  

I have no idea what that means, but I think it's kind of telling that I remembered this dream, when I hardly ever remember any of my other dreams.  I'm not sure this dream has much insight into either the past year or the year to come; I seem to be suffering from a general lack of insight all around.  But I love the music, too.  See you in 2012. 

Album of the Year

The Grammy nominations came out this week.  As is customary, the nominations elicit an equal number of thumbs-ups and WTFs.  One of the more bizarre items on the list is Bon Iver's nomination as Best New Artist (snubbing Pittsburgh native Wiz Khalifa).  There's really no universe in which Bon Iver can be considered a new artist.  The Grammy time lags lead to all sorts of weirdness, including the fact that Rihanna's Loud (released in November of 2010) is still eligible this year, when she has already released another album, Talk That Talk.  Similarly, Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has to compete against his duet album with Jay-Z, Watch the Throne--not sure where I stand on that battle.  

Anyway, I just made a playlist of all of the albums nominated for Album of the Year.  So, that's 21 by Adele, Born this Way by Lady Gaga, Doo Wops and Hooligans by Bruno Mars, Wasting Light by the Foo Fighters, and the aforementioned Loud by Rihanna.  Wasting Light is the wild card on this list for me:  I haven't heard a single thing from it.  Everything else has been played pretty incessantly on pop radio that you would had to have made a special effort to avoid, for example, "Grenade" or "Edge of Glory," to say nothing of "Someone Like You."  There may be a radio station somewhere that, in fact, only plays "Someone Like You."  Lord knows that may be a more successful format than some of the stuff you hear while spinning your FM dial.  

So this is going to be my gym mix this week.  In particular, I'm going to try to give the Foo Fighters a serious listen:  in homage to my 14-year-old self, if nothing else.  Right now, however, I think the smart money is on Adele winning Album of the Year--along with every other award for which she is nominated.  And, as I said to a few folks before the nominees were announced, I think Adele might win all of next year's Grammys, too--and then perhaps be awarded last year's Grammys retrospectively.  I'm not sure that 21 is my favorite record of this year, but it's a pretty stunning blend of chops and pop appeal.  Not many records get made like that. 

On to the Next One

Well, it's really done now. 

On Wednesday, I drove 11 hours back and forth to Philadelphia to deposit my dissertation.  So I think that means I'm officially done?  I don't know.  I think I don't technically get awarded my degree until December.  And then it will take another 2 months for the degree to actually arrive.  They only do one Commencement ceremony a year, and that isn't until May.  (I haven't decided if I'm going to go to that.  It depends on who they get as their Commencement speaker.  To really celebrate Penn's Philly cred, I think they should get Ryan Howard or ?uestlove.) 

But, of course, work never ceases.  I need to turn my attention to the conference paper I'm giving at SEM in a week.  SEM this year is back in Philadelphia, which is adding to my confusion about being done.  I seem to always do this fade-out with cities--I never can leave them all in one go.  I left New York and moved to Philadelphia to go to graduate school at Penn, but Catharine was still finishing up at Barnard, so I went back to visit about three times a month.  Then when she moved to Philadelphia, it was rather anti-climactic.  We left Philadelphia and moved to Guatemala/Buenos Aires.  That was rather dramatic.  Except then we moved back to Philadelphia for 4 months before coming to Pittsburgh.  Then I spent last year living in Philadelphia again three days a week.  So you'll excuse me if I have the sneaking suspicion that I might not quite be done with the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Compassion quite yet. 

Anyway, now that the dissertation is officially submitted (coming soon to a ProQuest near you!), I was thinking about posting some excerpts of it here.  Not all of it, but a few things that might be of interest to a wider audience.  If I'm smart about it, I'll even do some hyperlinking and stuff so that you can follow some of the threads that I followed in the writing of it.  (I'll spare you some of the dead-ends that I took along the way.) 

But for now, see you in Philadelphia?  I've got to get to work on this conference paper. 

The Fall

I'm trying to enjoy this fall. Certainly, I try to enjoy every season (though I'm not always successful, ask my wife Catharine about the person known as "Summer John"), but I have a particular reason to try to enjoy my time right now. A certain monkey is mostly off my back. On October 6th, I defended my dissertation. The title I settled on is "'Rock and Roll Never Forgets': Memory, History, and Performance in the Tribute Band Scene." I'll have other occasions to talk about it here.

But happy as I am to be done with my dissertation, working on the final edits made me miss late summer. Literally, I have no idea what really happened in the world in months of August and September. There was my wedding anniversary on August 29th. And the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I remember both of those. The rest of the time, I was secluded at the 61C coffee shop in Squirrel Hill, type, type, typing on my dissertation. The end result seemed to please my committee, and I'm actually fairly happy with the work, too. Now that I'm working on the last proofreading, I can turn a little bit of my attention to other concerns.

So. The fall. It's been a pretty beautiful one in Pittsburgh. The leaves are starting to turn, and there's a nice chill in the air. The seasons, when I'm not obsessed with my dissertation, exert a pretty strong pull on me. For starters, there are certain foods that I really start to crave. In the fall, those include:

Bacon
Maple Syrup
French Toast/Pancakes
Soups and Stews, with good bread
Pumpkin Pie
Whisk(e)y
Brown Ales (not pumpkin ales,which I actually think are disgusting)

We made a great bean stew last week, which we've been working our way through the help of bread from our excellent local bakery, Allegro Hearth. I made French toast on Sunday morning. I'm excited to make pumpkin pie, though I may have to eat it all myself, because Catharine doesn't like pumpkin pie (sacrilege, I know). Anyway, that shouldn't be a problem, since pumpkin is one of my hands-down favorite foods.

My musical tastes change a little bit in the fall, too. And I'm actually going to make an effort to listen to music for pleasure, as opposed to just for "work." I've got some catching up to do. There are new albums from Ryan Adams and Wilco that I haven't heard yet. And Bjork's record just came out, too, though it seems like I've been hearing about how awesome and wide-ranging the record is for about the last three years. Currently, I'm listening to Dierks Bentley's bluegrass album, Up on the Ridge.

A couple of short music thoughts to finish up. Adele's 21 is going to win about a million Grammys. Kind of amazing to see an artist with such a wide-ranging appeal. And if "Pumped-Up Kicks" wins any Grammys, I'm going to be very upset. The song is fine, but that's the point. It's just fine. It's a little stupid ditty (admittedly one about a school shooting). I have no idea how this tune became wildly popular. I think the more time I spend studying contemporary popular music, the less I understand. I guess that means I'm not done yet.