Pop When the World Falls Apart

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.

“Pop When the World Falls Apart gazes deep into the abyss of pop fandom-its pleasures and fears, complexities and contradictions-and then dives right into the heart of all of it. These essays enliven the sheer absurdity of loving music so much through the caustic precision of their insights. Read them and weep, and laugh, and sing.”-Barry Shank, Ohio State University “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 “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 til the sun came up, full of smiles and exasperation; I’d get to listen.”-Greil Marcus “The point of this sort of criticism isn’t - or shouldn’t necessarily be - to convince us of a single interpretation, but rather to invite us to consider ones we had either never thought about or dismissed long ago. Nearly all the essays ... in the book ... confront the reader with more questions about pop’s past and present than anyone could seriously engage in a lifetime.” - Gary Sullivan (Los Angeles Review of Books) “[T]he range of contributors in this collected volume refreshingly breaks the cult of expertise often surrounding popular music discourse and refrains from burying the reader under a barrage of cultural theory verbiage. Both entertaining and educational, this latest compilation in the series will appeal with equal measure to both critics and fans.”- Joshua Finnell (Library Journal) “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) “...the twenty-one assorted authors of this volume weave together a tapestry of varied approaches and interests that is both refreshing and disorienting...Its strength is its variety.” - Joseph R. Matson (Notes) “Perhaps because these EMP conferences differ from typical academic events by combining presentations from a range of experts from inside and outside the academic sphere, the resulting papers-written by music journalists, scholars of American studies, obsessive fans and a variety of professional specialists-are often highly original and occasionally quite brilliant." - Alex Seago (Journal of American Studies) “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)

• Introduction / Eric Weisbard 1Collapsing Distance: The Love-Song of the Wanna-Be, or The Fannish Auteur / Jonathan Lethem 7Black Rockers vs. Blackies Who Rock, or The Difference between Race and Music / Greg Tate 15Toward an Ethics of Knowing Nothing / Alexandra T. Vazquez 27Divided 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 40Boring 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 47Perfect is Dead: Karen Carpenter, Theodor Adorno, and the Radio, or If Hooks Could Kill / Eric Lott 62Agents of Orange: Studio K and Cloud 9 / Karen Tongson 82Belliphonic Sounds and Indoctrinated Ears: The Dynamics of Military Listening in Wartime Iraq / J. Martin Daughtry 111Since 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 176Travel with Me: Country Music, Race, and Remembrance / Diane Pecknold 185The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro-Soul Audience / Oliver Wang 201Within Limits: On the Greatness of Magic Slim / Carlo Rotella 230Urban 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 247Of 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 271The New Market Affair: Media Pranks, the Music Industry's Last Big Gold Rush, and the Hunt for Hits in the Shenandoah Valley / Kembrew McLeod 282All That Is Solid Melts into Schmaltz: Poptimism vs. the Guilty Displeasure / Carl Wilson 299Contributors 313Index 317