Table of Contents

Introduction / Eric Wesibard 1
1. Whittling on Dynamite: The Difference Bert Williams Makes / W.T. Lhamon, Jr. 7
2. Searching for the Blues: James McKune, Collectors, and a Different Crossroads / Marybeth Hamilton 26
3. Abie the Fishman: On Masks, Birthmarks, and Hunchbacks / Josh Kun 50
4. The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Cha / Ned Sublette 69
5. Ghoulardi: Lessons in Mayhem from the First Age of Punk / David Thomas 95
6. Magic Moments, the Ghost of Folk-Rock, and the Ring of E Major / David Brackett 103
7. Mystery Girl: The Forgotten Artistry of Bobbie Gentry / Holly George-Warren 120
8. “Is That All There Is?” and the Uses of Disenchantment / Franklin Bruno 137
9. Ghetto Brother Power: The Bronx Gangs, the Beatles, the Aguinaldo, and Pre-history of Hip-Hop / Benjamin Melendez, as told to Henry Chalfant and Jeff Chang 150
10. Grand Funk Live! Staging Rock in the Age of the Arena / Steve Waksman 157
11. The Sound of Velvet Melting: The Power of “Vibe” in the Music of Roberta Flack / Jason King 172
12. All Roads Lead to “Apache” / Michaelangelo Matos 200
13. On Punk Rock and Not Being a Girl / Lavinia Greenlaw 210
14. The Buddy Holocaust Story: A Necromusicology / Eric Weisbard 219
15. ORCH5, or the Classical Ghost in the Hip-Hop Machine / Robert Fink 231
16. White Chocolate Soul: Teena Marie and Lewis Taylor / Marc Anthony Neal 256
17. Dancing, Democracy, and Kitsch: Poland’s Disco Polo / Daphne Carr 272
18. How to Act Like Darby Crash / Drew Daniel 286
19. Death Letters / Greil Marcus 296
Acknowledgments 307
Contributors 309
Index 313

Promotional Information

Collection of essays on the history of pop music

About the Author

Eric Weisbard is the organizer of the annual Experience Music Project Pop Conference. He was a curator and senior manager of the Experience Music Project from 2001 until 2005. Before that, he worked as an editor and contributing writer at Spin and The Village Voice. He is the author of Use Your Illusion I and II and the editor of This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project and the Spin Alternative Record Guide.

Reviews

"Listen Again collects 19 papers given at EMP's [Experience Music Project] annual pop music conference by journalists, writers and academics... it is testimony to the immense richness of American popular music history--and to the formidable analytic resources available in the US to illuminate that history... Time and again, I found myself putting down the book o download a song or to search You Tube for a dimly recalled performer evocatively discussed here. But this isn't a book of pop trivia, a scholarly version of TV nostalgia shows. Anyone who wants to revisit the pop past will find enjoyment in Listen Again, but learning and scholarship too."--Times Higher Education, 21 February 2008