Surround journal, No 1 (2013)

First issue of an online music journal featuring pieces on Wandelweiser collective, Ralf Wehowsky, Vanessa Rosetto, AEU, Kevin Drumm, Graham Lambkin, and more.

Edited by Mark Flaum, Jon Abbey (of Erstwhile Records)
Published on 24 March 2013

View online (HTML articles)

Irwin Chusid: Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (2000)

Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. This book profiles dozens of outsider musicians, both prominent and obscure—figures such as The Shaggs, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Harry Partch, and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy—and presents their strange life stories along with photographs, interviews, cartoons, and discographies. About the only things these self-taught artists have in common are an utter lack of conventional tunefulness and an overabundance of earnestness and passion. But, believe it or not, they’re worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality.

A CD featuring songs by artists profiled in the book is also available.

Publisher A Cappella/Chicago Review Press, 2000
ISBN 1556523726, 9781556523724
272 pages

interview with the author (Richard Metzger’s Disinformation TV show)
review (Graham Johnston, beefheart.com)
review (Ben Tausig, Dusted)

author
wikipedia
publisher
google books

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Listen to Irwin’s show on WFMU

Michael P. Jeffries: Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop (2011)

Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and DJing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated b-boying and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United States, a massively successful corporate enterprise predominantly controlled and consumed by whites while the most prominent performers are black. How does this shift in racial dynamics affect our understanding of contemporary hip-hop, especially when the music perpetuates stereotypes of black men? Do black listeners interpret hip-hop differently from white fans?

These questions have dogged hip-hop for decades, but unlike most pundits, Michael P. Jeffries finds answers by interviewing everyday people. Instead of turning to performers or media critics, Thug Life focuses on the music’s fans—young men, both black and white—and the resulting account avoids romanticism, offering an unbiased examination of how hip-hop works in people’s daily lives. As Jeffries weaves the fans’ voices together with his own sophisticated analysis, we are able to understand hip-hop as a tool listeners use to make sense of themselves and society as well as a rich, self-contained world containing politics and pleasure, virtue and vice.

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2011
ISBN 0226395855, 9780226395852
280 pages

author
publisher
google books

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