I suspect they’re dead and gone now as uni courses (cos’ Madonna is a very Gen X phenomenon), but one of the staples of the anti-pomo anti-cultural studies culture wars used to be claims that Universities were teaching subjects about the Detroit diva rather than, you know, Shakespeare.
But I still think she was and is a cultural phenomenon. Her radicalism and her cultural reach into lives shouldn’t be underestimated. I was bopping around (bipedally in those days) to Like a Virgin in 1985 when I was just a little twelve year old thing, and I can remember being thrilled by Desperately Seeking Susan, which in retrospect now reads like a mirrored fantasy where both Susans incarnate different aspects of Madonna’s own biography and evolving mythos, transposed to New Jersey and New York City. In any case, she made a lot of sense to a Catholic school girl!
I have no idea what that means. [I think I’m channelling Letterman.]
The point of this post, of course, is to register and share my excitement that Adelaide’s favourite, The Audreys have a new album out, When the Flood Comes. Available now.
Last week, I was having a look at Tony Bennett, Mike Emmison and John Frow’s 1999 book, Accounting for Tastes in my QUT Creative Industries postgrad class. Bennett et al were doing something similar to Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction, mapping the social patterning of cultural taste. But unlike Bourdieu’s work on France in the early 60s, the data their team collected in Australia in 1994/5 showed social status/education level, age and gender to be more powerful predictors of taste than social class.
The chapter on music was particularly interesting - for instance, they found only 1.6% of respondents aged 18-25 and 4.0% of those aged 26-35 nominated classical music as their preferred genre, while 11.3% of the 60+ cohort did. As Bennett et al correctly surmised, without longitudinal data you can’t tell whether there’s a cohort effect (that is to say - older respondents liked classical music in their youth and continued to have that preference) or whether musical tastes change with age. But their qualitative interviewing found a lot of stability in music preferences over time - that is to say, people still liked the same or similar music as they grew older. Continue reading ‘Avalon II’
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
After a big burst of thesis writing, I’ve spent a rather miserable weekend, lamenting the fact that I didn’t get a flu shot this year. But before the lurgy got its grips into me, I did go down with an old Uni friend to The Bowery in Ann Street in the Valley - Brisneyland’s best bar to be sure - for a propitiatory Laphroaig or three. When the nights start getting cooler, it’s time to unstop the malt scotch bottle!
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
As one of a number of Brisbane university staff and students who walked several kilometres in the rain in support of the workers at the Port of Brisbane, I’d like to commemorate the occasion by linking to a great song, written by the late, great Stan Rogers, and performed here by Makem & Clancy, about a bunch of Canadian maritime workers who wouldn’t just let management cut them, and their ship, adrift for the sake of profits. Up the workers!
I was actually thinking about this today when I read Scott McLemee’s piece in Inside Higher Ed - this decade has no name. The “Naughties” never caught on (and for good reason probably). The 2000s is ambiguous. That, I reckon, has done something odd to our time-sense. Maybe there’ve been more periodisations like post-s11, but I, for one at any rate, had hardly realised the decade was coming to an end despite the 08 thing.
What’s interesting about McLemee’s take is that he argues there may be no recognisable Zeigeist in a cultural sense for these times, and when you think about it, in an age where the medium is not the message but the culture is the commodity, the absence of a brand is puzzling. Continue reading ‘Mysterons’
Many years ago (and when I say many I mean many), I donned a John Taylor t-shirt, a bubble skirt and jellybean sandals to go see Duran Duran play live in concert at Festival Hall. I also teased my hair in a way that probably made me look like an extra from Dynasty rather than a New Romantic. The excitement of just thinking about that momentous show is causing a strange pain to spread toward my left arm. While Festival Hall has long since been converted into a block of unsightly apartments, Duran Duran lives on and on and on and on and on. Alas, it seems Simon Le Bon, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes and John Taylor (sigh) stuffed up the first show of their latest world tour a little bit. Nevertheless, the “screaming women in their 30s…did not seem to mind the snafus”. Of course, Duran Duran had some wonderful pop hits such as “Planet Earth”, “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Save a Prayer” (sigh). This one’s for all the “screaming women in their 30s” and beyond.
So, it’s time again to condemn. Here’s a sixteenth open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this month so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except Juliette Lewis’s band Juliette and the Licks who are touring Australia in April. But you can condemn Brendan Nelson for his party of compassion hypocrisy and the punditariat for writing it up as “necessary pragmatism”, “end of Kevin’s honeymoon” etc! You could also condemn Juliette Lewis for over-acting in Natural Born Killers, and that movie for being a dumbing down of the 90s wave of American indie films. But I do condemn myself for thinking her band would be rubbish… Judge not, lest, etc…
ThirteenTonneTheory: LifeInsideHuntersandCollectors is the title of Mark Seymour’s book about the Hunters and Collectors, one of Australia’s most interesting, if never as successful as they should’ve been, rock bands. Seymour appeared before a packed bookshop in Carlton last night to discuss the book, and to perform a superb acoustic version of “Say Goodbye”. Seymour provided an interesting insight into internal band politics and the way record company executives sometimes shoot you down just when you think you’re about to hit it big. The former lead singer of the “Hunters” still looks the part of an Aussie rock god, and he also still possesses that strong masculine presence which played such an important role in the image of the group. When asked whether he would do the music thing again but just for fun and not a career, Seymour replied that he never does anything just for fun. Incidentally, Seymour was interviewed by the amiable Mick Thomas, who used to front the band Weddings, Parties, Anything (they’re touring again, by the way).
I’ve given Coda a plug before - in this glockenspiel heavy post. I mentioned on Sunday that I went to see them at the Powerhouse LiveSpark! gig in the afternoon, and I thought the best way to plug them again is by way of video. This tune is their excursion into country - called “Country” (they’re being a tad, but not entirely, ironic). You can read more about them here and here and download some tunes, if you like.
Usual apologies for video and sound quality - taken with my camera!
There are some photos over the fold. Oh, and apologies too to those of my friends who found the drummer the cutest for missing him out in the shots. I stuck to the traditional bass player preference. Note, though, the nautical theme in their stage clothes. They’re big on themed outfits, and Naomi is big on innovative headgear…
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
I went to the Powerhouse today for LiveSpark! featuring that excellent band Coda. I’m uploading a video and will post some photos when it finally makes it on to google, so more about that later.
But here’s to you all! And may your t-shirts carry obscure situationist mottos…
the argument (at least as framed by Walker) is really one about intellectual turf.
[Go read the rest of the comment too, cos it’s all relevant to this.]
Disciplinary boundary policing often reflects two things (at least) - firstly, the fact that the academy (and society more broadly) is characterised by division of labour. No one can really be a polymath - and that clashes with the whole fiction of the cultured individual. Stuffing opera arias or Shakespeare quotes into heads doesn’t really do anything if it doesn’t inspire a love of genre and works. Secondly, it reflects some sort of dumb-assed alpha (usually) male desire to pretend to know everything about everything, and to appear to do so. Either as a defensive reaction to being too narrow an expert, or out of a condition of general ignorance masquerading as a renaissance individual with a patina of learning standing in metonymically for polymathery (polymathematics? polymathishness?). Not that I have anyone particular in mind (heh!), but that seems to be a thing in the blogosphere as well.
RollingStone, the magazine that’s known for treating female performers, ahem, seriously, is currently featuring an article about the travails of Britney Spears on its website (my print-out of the article has the by-line saying, “Ho lost it all” rather than “How she lost it all”). In charting the rise and fall of Britney, the piece seems to be suggesting that she is suffering from a severe case of arrested development and a desperate need to rebel against the image of wholesomeness others forced her to adopt. Britney apparently also needs to surround herself with folks who won’t challenge her take on her plight, which reminds of another famous singer from the South who was equally ill-equipped to deal with fame, or at least the unhealthy aspects of it.
Among the gems which fall from the Professorial pen:
It has to be said that what Bahnisch calls high art does require a certain amount of knowledge and training, and discipline in listening and hearing. The same cannot be said for much of the pop music scene he seems to espouse and that is precisely why it is popular. It demands little of the listening audience except enjoyment.
Or is he saying that there is as much emotional, intellectual, musical and aesthetic content in a three-minute pop song as in the Beethoven symphony? There are two words for this, if he is saying it: philistine and rubbish.
You can leave a comment, if you like, over at the Higher Ed’s website. I have.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
I suspect they’re dead and gone now as uni courses (cos’ Madonna is a very Gen X phenomenon), but one of the staples of the anti-pomo anti-cultural studies culture wars used to be claims that Universities were teaching subjects about the Detroit diva rather than, you know, Shakespeare.
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