Table of Contents

Introduction / Eric Weisbard 1
Collapsing Distance: The Love-Song of the Wanna-Be, or The Fannish Auteur / Jonathan Lethem 7
Black Rockers vs. Blackies Who Rock, or The Difference between Race and Music / Greg Tate 15
Toward an Ethics of Knowing Nothing / Alexandra T. Vazquez 27
Divided Byline: How a Student of Leslie Fiedler and a Colleague of Charles Keil Became the Ghostwriter for Everybody from Ray Charles to Cornell West / David Ritz 40
Boring and Horrifying Whiteness: The Rise and Fall of Reaganism as Prefigured by the Career Arcs of Carpenters, Lawrence Welk, and the Beach Boys in 1973–74 / Tom Smucker 47
Perfect is Dead: Karen Carpenter, Theodor Adorno, and the Radio, or If Hooks Could Kill / Eric Lott 62
Agents of Orange: Studio K and Cloud 9 / Karen Tongson 82
Belliphonic Sounds and Indoctrinated Ears: The Dynamics of Military Listening in Wartime Iraq / J. Martin Daughtry 111
Since the Flood: Scenes for the Fight for New Orleans Jazz Culture / Larry Blumenfeld 145
(Over the) Rainbow Warrior: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and Another Kind of Somewhere / Nate Chinen 176
Travel with Me: Country Music, Race, and Remembrance / Diane Pecknold 185
The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro-Soul Audience / Oliver Wang 201
Within Limits: On the Greatness of Magic Slim / Carlo Rotella 230
Urban Music in the Teenage Heartland / Brian Goedde, Austin Bunn, and Elena Passarello 240
"Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism": Alice Bag's Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk / Michelle Habell-Pallán 247
Of Wolves and Vibrancy: A Brief Explanation of the Marriage Made in Hell between Folk Music, Dead Cultures, Myth, and Highly Technical Modern Extreme Metal / Scott Seward 271
The New Market Affair: Media Pranks, the Music Industry's Last Big Gold Rush, and the Hunt for Hits in the Shenandoah Valley / Kembrew McLeod 282
All That Is Solid Melts into Schmaltz: Poptimism vs. the Guilty Displeasure / Carl Wilson 299
Contributors 313
Index 317

Promotional Information

This is our second collection of essays from the annual Experience Music Project conference and the third since its founding (Harvard UP published the first). This volume brings together top essays from the last few years of the conference, during the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath of Katrina. Some contributors address these more global forms of trouble, while others - there are two pieces on Karen Carpenter - address more interior kinds. In addition to academic critics, the contributors include writers from the New York Times (Nate Chinen), the Village Voice (Greg Tate, Tom Smucker), and the Wall Street Journal (Larry Blumenthal), along with novelist Jonathan Lethem and David Ritz, the ghostwriter for Aretha Franklin, B.B. King and others.

About the Author

Eric Weisbard is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama. His previous books include, as editor, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"The voices in Pop When the World Falls Apart are so strong the book raises a new question: which critics would you take to a desert island? Everyone will have a different answer. For me, it would be Tom Smucker, Eric Lott, and Scott Seward. They'd argue till the sun came up, full of smiles and exasperation; I'd get to listen." Greil Marcus "The best essays in this brooding, often brilliant collection both reflect and reflect upon struggle and trouble, whether it's the sonics of the Iraq conflict, the post-Katrina culture war threatening New Orleans' jazz scene, or the self-annihilation of those Nixon-era popmeisters, the Carpenters. Pop When the World Falls Apart is an indispensable document of what cultural criticism reads and rocks like during these hard and bewildering times." Alice Echols, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and History, University of Southern California and author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture "Both entertaining and educational, this latest compilation in the series will appeal with equal measure to both critics and fans." - Joshua Finnell, Library Journal "This collection covers a varied terrain: ghostwriting celebrity memoirs; Karen and Richard Carpenter's reassuring pop songs, whose darkness bubbled below a syrupy surface of melody and lyrics: Retro-Soul's appeal to middle-class whites; and Morris Holt - a.k.a. 'Magic Slim' - as the last keeper of traditional Chicago Blues. While some of the articles stray from the book title's promise, together they offer a stimulating view of popular music's indelible cultural imprint."--Karl Helicher, ForeWord Reviews "Let there be no doubt that this is one of the best anthologies of music writing you'll find this year and one that's destined to be required reading for any kid who thinks he has what it takes to make it in the rough 'n' tumble world of music criticism."--Jedd Beaudoin, PopMatters