The two biggies have recently sent out their CFPs.  One (EMP) is much more tailored to my interests than the other (IASPM), which means I’ve got a better chance at going to LA than Cincinnati.  So.  If you’re interested, though: EMP is much easier to get into (I’m told) than IASPM, which typically wants academics [...]

Managing Media Work is out, via Sage.  My chapter, titled “Same as the Old Boss? Changes, Continuities, and Careers in the Digital Music Era,” is the twenty-first chapter.  It’s really nothing like the dissertation proposal, but more of an overview of how the hell an American music career works right now.  Amazingly, it’s still current, [...]

In blog years, I’ve been away for long enough to put out a reunion album.  If only I had more to show for it.
Not that I haven’t been “being productive.”  The opposite, actually.  It’s just that said productivity hasn’t manifested itself publicly.  Yet.  Along with taking trips out of town for various reasons (the Pitchfork [...]

Back soon, until then:
…(in 1905) the humor magazine Puck satirized this rapid turnover in a series of ‘diary entries,’ written from the point of view of a popular song, recounting its creation, its plugging, its meteoric rise, and its precipitous descent into neglect–all in the span of five weeks.
David Suisman, “Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution [...]

My friend (and ex-colleague) Jason Sperb, introducing his extremely interesting next research foray, posted to coincide with Memorial Day.  This excerpt doesn’t do justice to the entire post, which I recommend you read (also, to watch the “Hawaii 5-0″ YouTube embed):
My next major project, which will take many years to complete, will be a [...]

…so here goes.  I wanted to show you guys the amazing work that a certain lady of my fancy is doing, in the same department as yours truly.  If this post suddenly disappears, well that means she discovered it (she’s incredibly humble, but I’m incredibly not).  So, while we can, here’s a description of Aleena’s [...]

The NYT, on one interesting revelation that emerges during a “disorienting” first year for locals attending American University in Cairo.  This is sorta the plagiarism-as-cultural-category baseline I neglected to mention the other day when I was being bloggy about the Joke Thief Guy.  Particularly the first sentence of the third paragraph:
Egypt, like much of the [...]

That titular participle happens to be the title of a book, to be published by the good folks at Sage, which is due in September of this year, and in which yours truly has contributed a chapter titled “Same as the Old Boss? Changes, Continuities, and Careers in the Digital Music Era.”  I promise [...]

Starting from a conversation between Jonathan Gray and Henry Jenkins, Wayne Marshall ponders the utility of “paratext” (”all those things that surround a book that aren’t quite the ‘thing’ itself…the cover, prefaces, typeface, and afterwords, but also reviews”) for music:
…“Crank Dat”…perhaps best illustrates the problem with trying to apply a theory of para/texts to music [...]

It’s a bit thick, but good to my eyes:
Music is the discourse that passes itself off as nature; it participates in the construction of meaning, but disguises its meanings as effects.  Here is the source of its singular efficacy as a hidden persuader.
Teaching a week on ads for my music video course, and thus had [...]