Blogging at the intersection of urban studies and popular music

the Paisley Underground: the mythic scene and Los Angeles legacy of the neo-psychedelic 80s
Leonard Nevarez

the Paisley Underground: the mythic scene and Los Angeles legacy of the neo-psychedelic 80s

by Leonard Nevarez on Jan 1, 2025 • No Comments
The Los Angeles legacy of the Paisley Underground can be understood through three “L.A. stories”: how it was a scene that was never actually a scene, how its urban representations included the manifest absence of Los Angeles, and how its aesthetic sensibility presaged a future Los Angeles.
dance with me while they sleep: the 7" singles of Martha and the Muffins
Leonard Nevarez

dance with me while they sleep: the 7″ singles of Martha and the Muffins

by Leonard Nevarez on Jan 22, 2020 • 3 Comments
Let’s start with the obvious: Martha and the Muffins were never a ‘singles band.’ The musicians in Canada’s greatest new wave band came of age in the 1970s, a time when the rock album was the format of choice for mass audiences and (in the case of the young Muffins)...
the story of DinDisc Records
Leonard Nevarez

the story of DinDisc Records

by Leonard Nevarez on Mar 1, 2019 • No Comments
OMD were a perfect fit for what I had in mind for DinDisc — they had a serious, artistic side with real depth, as well as a commercial, pop side. That duality was reflected in all the early DinDisc signings, like Martha and the Muffins, and then the Monochrome Set....
how the Queen Street West scene began, pt. 1: the Thornhill sound
Leonard Nevarez

how the Queen Street West scene began, pt. 1: the Thornhill sound

by Leonard Nevarez on Sep 11, 2017 • 6 Comments
THE EVERGLADES are ambassadors of the Thornhill Sound, a sound long fermenting in the rec rooms and condo apartments just north of STEELES AVE. Among its proponents include: Martha and the Muffins, Johnny and the G-Rays, the B-Girls, and the now defunct Dishes, Cads, E-Static and the legendary Oh Those...
in exile: the rootless cosmopolitanism of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club
Leonard Nevarez

in exile: the rootless cosmopolitanism of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club

by Leonard Nevarez on Jun 23, 2015 • 7 Comments
I’ve never quite understood why the Gun Club, one of the all-time great Los Angeles bands, had an estranged relationship with their city of origin. It seems to me no local critic or serious music fan can deny their impact on L.A.’s music legacy. One of the great cult bands...
putting the Hudson Valley on the musical map: Basilica Soundscape and O+ Festival
Leonard Nevarez

putting the Hudson Valley on the musical map: Basilica Soundscape and O+ Festival

by Leonard Nevarez on Oct 17, 2014 • No Comments
Over the last month I’ve been writing for Sound It Out, a new music blog that covers adventurous new music from a snark-free, consumer-friendly point of view. “The music may be evil, but we’ll try not to be” is the motto. Most of my writings there are basic reviews and...
the greatest reinventions in pop-music careers, #50-41
Leonard Nevarez

the greatest reinventions in pop-music careers, #50-41

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 22, 2014 • No Comments
Today I take up a question of pop-culture history: which performers made the most unexpected left turns with their careers?  I farmed this question out awhile back to readers of this blog, and today I start filing the results based on my own subjective assessment.  Debate and criticisms are welcome...
Martha and the Muffins: a book project in musical urbanism
Leonard Nevarez

Martha and the Muffins: a book project in musical urbanism

by Leonard Nevarez on Jun 18, 2014 • 4 Comments
This summer I begin in earnest a new research project on the Canadian new wave group Martha and the Muffins.  I’ve blogged about them extensively already, focusing on the mixed-gender approach and geographical sensibilities that inform their work.  The book I intend to write will incorporate these into a new...
sound in 70 cities: the European urbanism of Simple Minds
Leonard Nevarez

sound in 70 cities: the European urbanism of Simple Minds

by Leonard Nevarez on Aug 6, 2013 • 14 Comments
Dream, dream, dream It’s the eighties’ youthful theme Loving the city A theme for great cities And loved ones And love – “Wonderful In Young Life” (1981)   Americans know them mostly as “that Breakfast Club band” from the 80s, but Scotland’s Simple Minds have carried on in one form...
musical suburbanism, pt. 1: Kidz Bop and the commodification of kids' listening
Leonard Nevarez

musical suburbanism, pt. 1: Kidz Bop and the commodification of kids’ listening

by Leonard Nevarez on Jan 18, 2013 • 4 Comments
Last summer I took a family roadtrip and was driven slightly insane by the heavy rotation of Kidz Bop CDs on the car stereo.  In a rare moment of solitude carved out of a frenzied week, I sent out these missives via Twitter:   1. if one promise of musical...
studying the college music scene and beyond
Leonard Nevarez

studying the college music scene and beyond

by Leonard Nevarez on Nov 11, 2012 • No Comments
Remember the bands that formed in college?  You heard them at dorm parties, frat parties, apartment parties, the campus bar, battle-of-the-bands competitions, and impromptu outdoor settings.  They practiced in dorm rooms, dorm basements, conservatory and theater rooms, backyard sheds, and laundry rooms, amusing/irritating neighbors and passers-by.  Many college rockers and...
Tito Larriva: the hombre secreto of L.A.'s culture industry
Leonard Nevarez

Tito Larriva: the hombre secreto of L.A.’s culture industry

by Leonard Nevarez on Jan 31, 2012 • 9 Comments
As a central destination for musicians, actors, filmmakers and artists, Los Angeles has more than its share of unsung, forgotten or behind-the-scenes figures who have made a significant mark on the city in the course of their careers. In this category, one of my favorites is Tito Larriva, who readers...
living the urban crisis at the new wave rent party
Leonard Nevarez

living the urban crisis at the new wave rent party

by Leonard Nevarez on Nov 10, 2011 • No Comments
I recently downloaded the reissued Human Switchboard album, Who’s Landing in my Hangar? Anthology 1977-1984, which set me off again obsessing about a subgenre of new wave that I’ve never really seen recognized.  I don’t even know how best to name this subgenre, although I’m convinced it has a musical coherence. ...
looking for the Hudson Valley hipster
Leonard Nevarez

looking for the Hudson Valley hipster

by Leonard Nevarez on Aug 8, 2011 • No Comments
In the town where I live, there’s been a lot of chatter over a recent NY Times article which reports how Brooklynites (an apparent synonym for NYC’s mobile, creative types) are descending upon the Hudson Valley area some 75 miles north of the city to live, visit, consume, and generally do...
musical urbanism: statement of a scholarly project
Leonard Nevarez

musical urbanism: statement of a scholarly project

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 21, 2011 • No Comments
It’s promotion review time for me, and in writing a research statement for the three anonymous sociologists evaluating my work, I’ve had the occasion to compile and synthesize my thinking on musical urbanism into a single essay.  Think of this post as a users manual for understanding what I’ve been...
how Joy Division came to sound like Manchester
Leonard Nevarez

how Joy Division came to sound like Manchester

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 13, 2011 • 2 Comments
[Update: this blog post has been expanded and revised into an article for the Journal of Popular Music Studies.] I’m always puzzled when I hear how Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger “sounded black” when they first appeared on the radio.  Back in the 70s, when I was a kid listening...
just stay put: an alternative vision for arts-based urban revitalization
Leonard Nevarez

just stay put: an alternative vision for arts-based urban revitalization

by Leonard Nevarez on Apr 1, 2011 • No Comments
Here are some thoughts about a different way to think about arts-based urban revitalization, written in the form of a suspiciously confident manifesto.  These ideas are completely pie-in-the-sky and fly in the face of the prevailing wisdom in this field, but I’m fine with that if it reveals some fallacies...
Latest entries
find Musical Urbanism on Substack
Leonard Nevarez

find Musical Urbanism on Substack

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 29, 2026 • No Comments
This Wordpress blog will be under construction for 2026-27. Meanwhile, I invite you to visit the Musical Urbanism Substack page (musicalurbanism.substack.com) and subscribe to my weekly newsletter of long-form posts.
down and out in 1980s San Francisco: Roddy Bottum's The Royal We
Leonard Nevarez

down and out in 1980s San Francisco: Roddy Bottum’s The Royal We

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 29, 2025 • No Comments
A personal journey through the post-punk, pre-email milieu of Frightwig and Survival Research Laboratories, when the city’s civil libertarian ethos mixed with its cultural chip on the shoulder (against suburbia, Los Angeles, puritanical scolds and authorities) to light a bonfire of freakishness, bad attitude, and self-destructiveness. And of art, be that the primary purpose for...
favorite music of 2025
Leonard Nevarez

favorite music of 2025

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 17, 2025 • No Comments
This album activated the serotonin in my brain that was dormant ever since Fatboy Slim and other "big beat" practitioners faded away from my collection. More, please!
time for a place in the country: how the New York Times reports the Hudson Valley, part 2
Leonard Nevarez

time for a place in the country: how the New York Times reports the Hudson Valley, part 2

by Leonard Nevarez on Sep 25, 2025 • No Comments
The Times refers often to second homes in its reporting on the Hudson Valley, and since well before the years of pandemic gentrification. The longer, regular stream of references raises the question: Why does the Times write so much about second homes in its Hudson Valley coverage?
from regional neighbor to lifestyle colony? how the New York Times reports on the Hudson Valley, 2002-2022
Leonard Nevarez

from regional neighbor to lifestyle colony? how the New York Times reports on the Hudson Valley, 2002-2022

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 9, 2025 • No Comments
In 2019, I posted on this blog about how the New York Times has written about places, people, issues, and changes in the Hudson Valley since the new millennium. The piece seemed to hit a nerve with HV readers on social media, maybe because they had encountered one too many lifestyle/real estate profiles about the...
favorite music of 2024
Leonard Nevarez

favorite music of 2024

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 22, 2024 • No Comments
What if Royal Trux arranged Lesley Gore’s 1960s pop heartbreak? Now we know.
Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]
Leonard Nevarez

Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]

by Leonard Nevarez on Sep 11, 2024 • No Comments
In the small riverfront city of Newburgh, NY, gentrification draws upon newcomers’ reflections on their geographical journeys. In an earlier era, they were New Yorkers proud of their abandoned neighborhoods, artistic commitments, and racially diverse environs. Now displaced from the big city by its cost of living, they embrace Newburgh’s “gritty” urbanism as they restore...
DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]
Leonard Nevarez

DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 26, 2024 • No Comments
How might sociologists engage the music biography genre? Biographical works can shed light on an important concern: the career as outcome of life-course sequence, social reproduction patterns, formal and informal status attainment, and larger contexts that enable and constrain advance through social fields.
favorite music of 2023
Leonard Nevarez

favorite music of 2023

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 28, 2023 • No Comments
2023 saw my continuing drift toward esoteric sounds validated by no less than André 3000, who released his album of flute-based ambient soundtracks only six years after my own band had been plundering that sound. Also of musical significance: this is the year my sprawling album and CD collection became my 14-yo son’s collection too....
1000 day album challenge
Leonard Nevarez

1000 day album challenge

by Leonard Nevarez on Jul 23, 2023 • No Comments
“Michael Guerrero challenged me to post 1000 albums that influenced my musical tastes. One album cover per day for a thousand days.” A few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, I took to Facebook like many others for what remained of a social life. I’ve always been a sucker for those circulating challenges that dare you...
favorite music of 2022
Leonard Nevarez

favorite music of 2022

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 31, 2022 • No Comments
This month I got my regular biannual dental check-up, where the dental hygienist informed me it had been a year and a half since my last visit. “Whaat?!” I also lost track of the year in putting together this music list. I was preparing to push Jane Weaver’s Flock to the top, having been won...
favorite music of 2021
Leonard Nevarez

favorite music of 2021

by Leonard Nevarez on Dec 21, 2021 • No Comments
Wasn’t “music to reflect a pandemic” the theme for last year’s end-of-year-lists? 2021 finds us really thick in music that was made in the pandemic. My self-care regimen involves not wishing away the formless, endless present (my band is still in its ambient phase) and supporting art during economically and politically brutal times (another year...

Follow us

RSS Feed
Twitter followers
Facebook Like us!
Flickr group Flickr

© 2010 Musical Urbanism. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress.

Designed by WPSHOWER

Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.