the Paisley Underground: the mythic scene and Los Angeles legacy of the neo-psychedelic 80s
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.
![Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]](https://pages.vassar.edu/musicalurbanism/files/2024/09/Book-cover-290x290.jpg "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]")
Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]
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]](https://pages.vassar.edu/musicalurbanism/files/2024/07/DVSMindz-290x290.jpg "DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]")
DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]
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
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
“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
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
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...
a Hudson Valley tourist town faces the pandemic: the second Rhinebeck small business survey
For a second time, I was asked to analyze the data from an online questionnaire distributed to small businesses in Rhinebeck, New York. Created by the local civic group Rhinebeck Responds, the survey asked businesses about the economic impacts from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as their opinions of the expanded sidewalk arrangements for dining...
favorite music of 2020
2020: what a year, right? Under pandemic conditions, without concerts or other in-person settings to share the experience of music with others, my listening became even more isolated and disconnected from whatever else was going on in music. My consumption of ambient music and other forms of beatless experimental music went way up in part...
economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic: the Rhinebeck small business survey
I was recently asked to analyze the results of an online questionnaire that was distributed to small businesses in Rhinebeck, New York, over the second half of May 2020. Created by the local civic group Rhinebeck Responds, the questionnaire asked businesses about various impacts related to the coronavirus pandemic and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “New York...
new publication: the racialized Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley
An article I’ve co-authored with Joshua Simons (from SUNY New Paltz’s Benjamin Center) has just been published in the academic journal City & Community. Titled “Small-City Dualism in the Metro Hinterland: The Racialized ‘Brooklynization’ of New York’s Hudson Valley,” it’s part of the journal’s special issue symposium on small cities. I’m pleased to report...