Geek Rock

Alex DiBlasi has done extensive research on The Kinks, The Who, The Monkees, Frank Zappa, and the influences of Eastern religion in popular music. His other fields of research include experimental film, Czech New Wave cinema, and east European History.Victoria Willis, Ph.D., is a research analyst in the Office of Institutional Research at Georgia State University. Her research interests revolve around the intersections of rhetoric, music, and popular culture.

Geek Rock, a series of essays edited by Alex DiBlasi and Victoria Willis, places key figures and trends in the burgeoning geek rock subculture under the lens of critical theory. The inspiration for the book came out of a panel at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s annual meeting in Boston in April 2012. . . .As a study of geek subculture, Geek Rock suggests possibilities for future scholarly exploration.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: “Q: Are We Not Geeks? A: We Are Geek Rock!”Chapter 1 “Frank Zappa: Godfather of Geek Rock”Alex DiBlasi, independent scholarChapter 2 “Taste, Kitsch, and Geek Rock: A Multiple Modernities View”Martina Topic, University of ZagrebChapter 3 “Futurists and New Traditionalists: The Antagonistic Critique of Devo and Italian Futurism”Ian Steinberg, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityChapter 4 “Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Geek Rock: Haustor and Darko Rundek”Julijana Zhabeva-Papazova, DMBUC Ilija Nikolovski-LujChapter 5 “They Might Be Lacanian: They Might Be Giants, Jacques Lacan, and the Rhetoric of Geek Rock”Victoria Willis, Georgia State UniversityChapter 6 “‘A Very Subtle Joke’: T.S. Eliot, J. D. Salinger, and the Puer Aeternus in God Shuffled His Feet”Paul Alexander Cantrell, independent scholarChapter 7 “‘Fuck Me, I’m Twee’: Performing Gender and Age in Twee PopCaroline Gates-Shannon, independent scholarChapter 8 “Man [Seeking] Asto-man?: Nouveau Surf Rock and the Futuristic-Past Nostalgic”Shannon Finck, Georgia State UniversityChapter 9 “The Geek’s Guide to Love: Knowledge and Failure in the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs”Nadav Appel, Bar-Ilan UniversityChapter 10 “‘My God, What an Infantile Gesture’: The Mountain Goats as Emblematic of Geek Rock’s Relationship with the Authentic”Taylor Peters, independent scholarChapter 11 “‘Now It’s Time for a Little Braggadocio’: Nerdcore Rap, Race, and the Politics ofAppropriation”Christopher Russell, Northwestern UniversityAppendix 1: Contributor BiographiesAppendix 2: Suggested Listening