heavy metal before subculture
Anyone who went to an American high school in the 1980s or later, when black t-shirts displaying stylized band logos were a common sight, is likely to be confused by what “heavy metal” meant in the prior decade. I’m still unsure, frankly. Today, the consensus is that in the 1970s, heavy metal was whatever Black...
making the scene in the creative city
In exploring how cities sustain musical creativity, you eventually get around to the creative city thesis. This is most commonly associated with Richard Florida, the regional planning professor and urban consultant who contends in books like The Rise of the Creative Class that the most prosperous cities and regions are the ones with the highest density of...
the urban ethos on a Saturday night
My considerations of musical urbanism owe a good deal to the work of Adam Krims, particularly his book Music and Urban Geography. Like much scholarly work on popular music, at times it’s a little weird to read his highly academic language (I had to look up one of his favorite terms, “cathexis”) applied to the Wu-Tang...
dancing in uptown Kingston
Ran across “This is Ska!,” a light but fun promotional film from 1964, on Dangerous Minds (one of my go-to culture aggregators). Some thoughts: 1.Wow, that place is jumping. It must have been amazing to be young at that moment in post-independence Kingston. 2: [Around 3:45] Really? That’s how you “dance the ska”: plant your feet, wave...
great moments in selling out: the Paisley Underground
I first heard about the so-called Paisley Underground in 1985. Sitting in the office of a drivers ed classroom, I flipped through a copy of People magazine, where I read a feature about the Los Angeles scene of 60s garage, country-rock and pop revivalists, and gawked at photos of groovy kids in paisley shirts and...
haunting the urban: dubstep
First post draws on Bassweight, a new documentary about the dubstep scene coming out of South London. The film begins with a DJ leading the camera on a daytime tour of Croydon’s sidewalks, pointing out a nightclub here or there atop anonymous commercial buildings before ending up at (what else?) a record store. At some point...