Academia Is Messed Up

Here’s one handy chart to illustrate why, courtesy of the AAUP:

This figure tells us a few things, none of which are particularly great.

1) The myth of grad-student overproduction is mostly a myth. See that column on the far right? It’s pretty much steady. So the rate of grad-student overproduction is the same as it was in 1975, perhaps not even as bad.

2) The column to the left of grad students is far more telling, and really bad news.  Part-time faculty have no benefits. They have no guarantee of a job from semester to semester. In most places, they make less than half what a full-time employee makes. To give an example from my own life, this year I worked as a full-time, non-tenure-track lecturer at a place where I adjuncted. That full-time job paid exactly twice per credit hour what I earned an adjunct.

Here’s what adjuncts do: they teach high-enrollment, entry-level courses. They often provide the initial experience a student has with a particular department. And they get paid very little to do it–some as little as $2500 per class. Since adjuncts generally have to teach at multiple institutions to make ends meet, they have less time per class than a full-time faculty member. Out of necessity, most adjuncts make easier and easier-to-grade exams. They also spend less time prepping for class, or are reluctant to integrate the latest materials into coursework. Why? They aren’t lazy. They just don’t have time.

For the students, this has multiple implications. They might learn old information. They might have an easy time with easy questions, and not learn anything. They might have an adjunct professor who is so focused on his or her research — the only thing that he or she might get recognized for, though once you have the adjunct stink on you it never comes off — that he or she ignores student emails at conferences or around important deadlines. Or that adjunct may just tune out altogether as he or she realizes that the job doesn’t pay enough to worry about students’ futures. And, sometimes, they might get an instructor who loves teaching, and doesn’t yet know that adjuncting is a dead end. And the kicker? If a student really loves an adjunct, he or she will likely not be able to take another course with them, since in many places they are relegated to intro courses only.

Adjuncting is bad for both students and departments, since it often means fewer students are taking advanced classes in departments, whether because they have a crap teacher or a good one they can never take again. It means less tuition money for those departments, and that they have less value to the university. And so the cycle gets worse, because there’s no justifying a tenure-track line to a dying department.  (And I don’t have any time to go into it here, but for full-time faculty, you should really think about how adjuncts teaching high-enrollment courses get the tuition dollars to pay for YOUR salary to teach classes with ten kids in them. Because I have.)

3) At 7.6 percent of university jobs, getting a tenure-track job is less likely than winning a scratch-off ticket.  A lot of NY State Lotto tickets have at least one in seven odds. This is much worse.

Would you spend eight to ten years in school for any field if someone told you that only 7.6 percent of the jobs* had a future or a guarantee of more than four months, or, at most, a year? Would you do it if someone told you there would be over 200 applicants for each job, always and forever? Would you do it knowing that if you took one of those part-time jobs where you gain experience teaching, most of the time they’ll pass you over for someone ABD (all but dissertation, for my non-academic readers) who “shows potential” because teaching as an adjunct part-time holds a stigma for many in the profession?

A lot of faculty members are now saying that they warn grad students that it’s a tough market. However, most people still go with the adage, “There’s always room for people who do good work. You do good work.” With those odds, however, “good work” doesn’t cut it. Most people who get through grad school do “good work.” Hell, many do “great work.” And not all of them have jobs, because there aren’t enough jobs to go around.

(Aaaaaaand, finally, that would assume that all jobs went to good people. But as this article in the Chronicle attests, that isn’t the case.)

*Outside those with tenure, but you aren’t eligible for those straight out of grad school. Still, the total of tenure and tenure-track jobs is 24.4 percent. That’s pretty terrible.

So, yeah. I’m working on a YA novel. I’m still an academic. And I’m probably a better one for it.

I’ve been working on a novel for a while now, and I’m nearing the end of a solid (though flawed) first draft. But in my academic and public life, I haven’t told that many people about it.  In fact, I only mentioned it on Twitter a few days ago, and I still feel reluctance at claiming the fiction-writer status, since I’m unpublished. Mostly, though, I’ve been afraid to “come out” as a fiction writer because I’m an academic.

I was afraid that being open about writing fiction would hurt my chances on the job market. (Silly me! I should’ve known that being a feminist pop music scholar was enough of a barrier toward getting a tenure-track job!) Academic employers could see my blog and say, “Well, if she’s working on this fiction thing, will she be able to keep up a steady stream of publications toward tenure? Won’t she be distracted?” The only way to counter that is to point to my record of publication, which continues to grow, and to note that I’ve been doing a lot of research in the past six months on a new project. But would a committee think my commitment to academia was strong enough?

This imagined search committee’s doubt about my potential to publish represents an attitude that pervades academia, and it leads to its own line of fears and stresses. In academia, you must always work, work, work, the dominant discourse asserts, so you can secure tenure and never have to work again. The big secret of academia, though, is that most people spend far more time worrying about their work instead of actually doing it. They/you/I fret over every deadline, rue every conference paper, freak out about sending things off to journals. Worry leads to procrastination leads to rushed deadlines leads to more worry.

In short, being an academic is an exercise in perfectionism gone wrong. It isn’t productive. It isn’t helpful. It isn’t sane. Writing fiction has been my way out of this cycle.

Last spring, I started research on a project about feminism and popular music since 1990. I won’t go into it much here, but I love it. The first chapter focuses on Riot Grrrl, nostalgia, and historiography, and I spent a lot of my summer interviewing women about their relationship with feminism and popular music. But my focus on actually writing that chapter kept being interrupted by, well, more research. I didn’t feel like I could sit down and write something deeply analytical until I had some perspective on the material. And because I was finding more research material, getting more interviews, and branching out to more interlocutors than I originally thought (what a problem to have, right?), that day kept getting postponed.

Just in case you think this is another form of procrastination, I have done a lot of work on the actual writing of this chapter recently. But back in October, when I felt overwhelmed by research, I also felt the compulsion to write something else. I needed a break from the intensity of research proposals, book reviews, and conference papers. And so I turned to fiction.

Writing fiction frees up my brain. When I sit down to work on academic prose, I feel the pressure of perfection, as though every paragraph, every sentence, every phrase must emerge fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.  I leave myself no room for error. But when I write fiction, I’m OK with the knowledge that I can, should, will have to revise. And that revising is not only OK, but expected. And so I can, and do, write about three times more quickly when I’m writing fiction. Is it any good? Probably not! But I can and will make it better.

I’d forgotten this aspect of fiction writing in my sojourn away from it. But it’s a valuable lesson for an academic to remember. It’s helped me so much over this past semester. When I had to do a series of research proposals over the winter break, I wrote in a much more organized fashion than I’ve experienced in years. It’s still to early to know if they’ll bring me any funding, but the feedback I got from my mentors, who can be blunt and pointed with their critiques, was shockingly positive.

In the end, whatever happens in either my fiction or academic career will happen. But I think that both are mutually beneficial. And for how my academic writing helps my fiction… well, that’s another blog post.

Why The Shirelles Still Matter, or It’s All About Voice

Over the past few months, I’ve been obsessively working on a YA novel in my spare time. I’ve also started obsessively reading YA literary agents’ blogs and tweets, and noticed a surprising consistency on pop culture: Don’t use it, as it will make you seem ooooooooooold, because by the time you get to print somewhere in 2015, the Biebz will no longer be famous, or Lady Gaga will seem soooo 2009. And I get that.

But what if you use pop culture to fill out a setting, or to create a sense of time and place?

Unfortunately, the consensus still seems to be, “It’ll make you sound oooooooooooooooold.”

Here’s where I, a pop music scholar in my day job, disagree. And where I finally get to the story that gives us the title for today’s blog post.

I started teaching pop music history in the spring of 2008, shortly before I finished my PhD. In the first few classes, I felt like I was struggling to connect with the students, especially the few girls (9 of 31 students). They sat quietly and respectfully in class, but none of them said anything. I started to blame my teaching, and maybe the fact that the music was really oooooold. Hell, most of it was from over 20 years before I was born. How could students born in 1990 relate to it?

And then came the Girl Group class. Or, rather, the day before the Girl Group class. I was, at the time, also teaching a music history intro at another university on alternating days. I often put on music from non-classical artists before class, and that day, before my 8:30 class, I chose the Shirelles. What happened next surprised me, mostly because it was very loud for 8:25.

“Oh my god! I love this song.”

“Yeah, it was in Dirty Dancing!”

“I love that movie!”

“I have the soundtrack!”

So, here we have a movie from 1987 about the early 1960s, and the girls are going CRAZY about both. It gave me an idea about how I could approach the Girl Group class.

When I went in to class the next day, I took a cue from Dirty Dancing and Susan Douglas’s essay “Why the Shirelles Mattered.” Instead of giving a history of girl groups, or the Brill Building, I started by asking them to imagine themselves as girls in 1958, when some of the first “Girl Group” songs started to chart. What could they do after school? Where were they allowed to go? What kind of jobs could they hold? What kind of dates would they go on? What weren’t they allowed to do? What were the differences between “bad” girls and “good” girls?

And then, after we listened to the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” I asked the students what the song is about.

“It’s a one-night stand,” a girl answered. She’d never spoken before in class.

“Will he love her tomorrow?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“How do you know, from the music or lyrics?” I asked.

“It’s not in the lyrics,” another girl answered. “You just know.”

“How do you know?” I asked again. I wasn’t letting them off the hook.

“Because of her voice,” yet another girl said. “She’s sad.”

And so we had a discussion about voice and performance and sexuality, and from there we moved on to how other Girl Groups negotiated these treacherous shoals in the early 1960s. It became an enormously successful class and a moment of clarity for me about the importance of getting the class to relate to the music in a genuine way. The Shirelles resonated with the girls because, well, what teen girl doesn’t at some point or another fear that the person she just made out with (or went “all the way” with, as the song seems to imply) won’t love her tomorrow?

So, what does teaching a pop music class have to do with writing YA fiction with pop culture? In short, it’s all about voice. Writing a YA novel is about getting teens to relate to your characters and plots in a genuine way, just as I try to get students to relate to teen girls of the pre-women’s rights, pre-pill, pre-Title IX era. Pop culture can absolutely be a genuine part of your writing, as long as it fits the voice of your characters, their plot, and their times.

Most problems with writers sounding ooooooooold when they use pop culture arise from issues of voice.  Their characters won’t seem filled out and real because they used pop culture as shorthand to create reference points that the readers won’t get because they weren’t even born yet. Or they don’t sound authentic because the pop culture isn’t an integral part of the characters’ lives, and so a toss-away reference to Soundgarden just seems stupid and out of place and very, very dated. But I’m guessing that writers who treat pop culture this way probably have other problems with voice, too, like saying someone was “going with” a boy instead of dating or hooking up or whatever.

All of these are huge pitfalls, and it’s easy to blame pop culture. But pop culture isn’t the cause of bad writing. When it’s used well, it can help to open up a whole new world, like Roddy Doyle’s almost-YA The Commitments or Judy Blume’s overlooked classic MG novel, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. Without the references that date these books, neither would create a fully realized world.

I get a lot out of the agent blogs and Twittering I read, and I appreciate them all. But as a pop music scholar and aspiring YA writer, please do me a favor. Stop blaming pop culture and start pointing out the real culprit: lazy, sloppy writing.

A Quick Update for the New Year

Part I:  Blog plans

I’m going to try to write a lot more this year.  I know I said that last year, but somehow planning a wedding, running a marathon, researching hipsters and teaching about rock and roll and music history got in the way.  It’s as though I’ve been working four jobs, because I was! I’m going to be doing some new classes this semester, though, so I think I should have plenty to write about.  Let’s find out what I end up leaving out about hip-hop!   I can tell you one thing–I won’t give short shrift to Run-D.M.C. like Jeff Chang did!

(I do like Can’t Stop Won’t Stop quite a bit, but I’m sad that there’s such little room given to Run-D.M.C.)

Part II: New Commenting Rules

I have not approved many comments recently, since they violate the very rule I set down in my classroom: the “It’s awesome/It sucks” rule.  This rule is very simple in the classroom.  You can disagree with me about the importance of a band.  You can hate what I play in class.  You can love it.  But if your only comment is, “It’s awesome” or “It sucks,” you are not being particularly insightful or revealing any sort of engagement.

Want to disagree with me about Damon Albarn?  Okey doke.  But do it in a way that indicates you at least read my critique of him, rather than tell me I don’t know anything about world music.  I love his music, but I still believe that we can critique music and musicians we love, acknowledge problems with them, and still enjoy them.

Part III:  Lost in Translation

Soooo, despite being a delinquent blogger for about a year now, I keep getting lots of comments regarding one particular post, “Anton Corbijn and the Curse of Death.”  I’m not posting these comments, because they should be embarrassing to the posters.  Why?  Because they took it seriously.  It is a joke.  It reads, “Of course, this entry is tongue in cheek.  I don’t really think that Anton Corbijn is a curse.”  I realize I am not a standup comic, and maybe you don’t think it’s funny, and that is fine.   But it is absolutely not meant as “conspiracy theory” as one idiot noted (who then continued, “I didn’t read any of your examples.”  Well, then you also didn’t read the part where I note it’s not serious.).

I do understand that some of the people reading and commenting on this post are, in fact, from the Netherlands and may not get idiomatic U.S. English or my sense of humor.  Maybe they are some of Corbijn’s relatives or view him as the pride of Groningen, but what about the sentence “I don’t really think that Anton Corbijn is a curse” indicates that I do think that?

Here’s what I really do believe about Anton Corbijn:  His work is a fairly distinctive body of photography, yet his portrayal of different artists includes strikingly similar lighting, filters, and imagery.   In his photography, U2 looks like Depeche Mode looks like Echo & the Bunnymen looks like Control.   This reveals a strikingly limited and static visual vocabulary, as well as a restricted vision of his subjects, who become Corbijn’s ciphers of the moment.   In terms of dynamism and individuality, he is no Annie Leibovitz, or Richard Avedon, or even Charles Peterson.

I also view his depiction of women in his film Control and in his videos and photography to be troubling at best.  Control featured cardboard characterizations of Deborah Curtis and Annik Honore, who become stereotypical poles of responsibility and passion between which our troubled hero Ian Curtis cannot choose.  In much of his late 1980s and early 1990s work with Depeche Mode, naked women frequently appeared as vacant sexual objects along with the band.  Perhaps Corbijn viewed this as some sort of ironic commentary on gender relations, but mostly it just seems like Depeche Mode wanted to reinforce an idea of their heterosexuality in the quickest, cheapest way possible after their gender-bending dressing in the 1980s.

At any rate, if you still think that I believe Anton Corbijn is a curse, you are not reading.  If you think my post was unfunny, that’s fine.  We don’t all have the same sense of humor.  If you lurve his work and disagree with me, that’s fine, too.  Just don’t violate the “It’s awesome/It sucks” rule, and we’ll all be OK.

Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change Part 2

I started writing this post last night, but really couldn’t find the words. I was in that middle realm, waiting for the end of Bush’s regime and the excited for the something bigger, something brighter. So this playlist is half “We’ve had eight years of crap and I’d really like this to be over with, thankyouverymuch” and half “Things can get better…things WILL get better.” So yeah, it’s probably not as cohesive as Elizabeth’s playlist and I didn’t give thorough descriptions of each song, but I pulled a quote from each song that hammers home why I chose that song.

Crime in Stereo – “I, Stateside”
God please save these troubled states.

Embrace – “No More Pain”
No more petty love/No more petty hate/No more pettiness/No more pain

Against Me! – “From Her Lips To God’s Ears (The Energizer)”
After all this death and destruction/Do you really think your actions advocate freedom?

Black Flag – “Rise Above”
We’re gonna rise above

Comeback Kid – “Wake the Dead”
Don’t lose hope/Don’t let it happen to you/Which side are you gonna choose?/Because I believe, I believe it’s in you.

The Decemberists – “Sons & Daughters”
Here all the bombs fade away

Also, I made an imeem playlist of the songs but couldn’t embed it into the blog. So, yeah, get with the clicky here to listen to the songs: Ryan’s Songs of Change and Hope.
So, what’s on your Inauguration Day playlist?

Inauguration Special! Songs of Hope & Change

For today’s very special event, Ryan and I thought we’d post some songs that would apply to the grand changing of the guard.  Some time ago, when it looked less likely that Obama would make it this far, I posted a list of songs that gave me hope.

Here are the songs I’m feelin’ for this moment:

First, some change (i.e. songs that were not blasted at President Bush as he left the building, but were on my internal playlist):

1. “Hit the Road, Jack,” Ray Charles.  While, overall, it’s about an unfaithful dude, I think it can easily apply to our dear ex-President (Oh, how it warms my heart to write that prefix!).  Regardless of one’s political position in general, it’s impossible to think he left the country in better shape than when he found it.  It’s like he was a louche who was unfaithful to the entire country by ignoring things at home in favor of messing around abroad, and then screwing it up with both ladies.  Er, I mean countries.

2. “Valerie Plame,” The Decemberists.  It’s a great song.  And also a great reminder at just how low the Bush administration stooped during its tenure.  Your husband lets the world know that there was no validity to the claim that Niger was selling uranium cake to Iraq?  Well, kiss your cover goodbye!  And your career!  And perhaps your safety!  Oh, what a class act, that Bush team!  Still, it’s a catchy little tune.

And now for some hope:

1.  “This Land Is Your Land,” the version with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the pre-Inauguration concert on MLK Day.  OK, there’s just something heart-warming about an 89-year-old man in a silly ski cap, jeans, and workshirt singing his heart out in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  There’s something awesome about seeing a man who has given his life to folk music and politics look so darned happy.  He could have been just another Harvard dropout, but instead he dedicated his life to promoting progressive politics, from the 1930s labor movement to the Civil Rights movement to protests against the Vietnam War.  Remember, Pete Seeger loves this country, even if he was blacklisted as a dirty commie pinko in the 1950s.

2. Aretha Franklin, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Inauguration.  Soul music was integrally tied to the Civil Rights movement.  Though Aretha sang songs of a more personal nature than, say, James Brown, she and her family were heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement (her father, preacher C.L. Franklin, brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to Detroit).  Aretha’s voice may not be the divine instrument it was 40 years ago, but I love seeing her there, with her giant felt bow on her hat, singing about letting freedom ring.  This song gives me hope that we can look back in 40 more years and see that today is both a culmination of one struggle and a starting point for another push toward equality for all people.

P.S. Oh noes!  Why did John Williams do an arrangement of “Simple Gifts”?  Ain’t that the job of Aaron Copland?  I guess that would be “change,” but JOHN WILLIAMS?  I love Star Wars as much as the next person, but Copland is synonymous with American music.  Sigh.

Stay tuned for Ryan’s additions to this list!

What Is Up with Damon Albarn? The New David Byrne or Just a World-Music Lovin,’ Appropriatin’ Jerk?

Once upon a time, Damon Albarn had a little English band called Blur.  This band made its fame in the 1990s through an keenly timed synthesis of British pop history, from the Beatles and the Kinks to the Jam to the Smiths.  When Blur chose to imitate a style, it wasn’t because they weren’t original, but because they had a thorough mastery of each of the styles: sharp, biting, Ray Davies-esque lyrics in “Country House” or “Ballad of a Charmless Man;” the Beatles in the heroin-slow-yet-completely-apropos “Beatlebum;” Johnny Marr-inspired guitar licks…well, in a lot of places.

In image, too, the band explored and exploited the visual stylings of British subcultures past: check out the rolled-up skinhead pants and slightly dirty mod jackets (No mod would be dressed in a dirty jacket, mind you) in the band’s infamous “British Image #1″ promo shot:

Blur, pimping out subcultures British

I won’t get into what Blur, and Britpop more generally, did for reinvigorating a sense of “Cool Britannia,” or setting up a path to make it OK to wear the English flag across your boobies a la Geri Halliwell, or how they were middle-class kids slumming it and made it OK for middle-class kids to be slumming it until Oasis came along, or anything like that.  Really, that’s not the point of this post.  The example to the left serves just to remind us that Damon Albarn was willing to use his own people before he got to the present day, when he generally likes to collaborate with world music stars and force them into his own stylistic world.

In recent years, Albarn has worked with hip-hop fiends on his Gorillaz albums, wherein Jamie Hewlitt’s simian cartoon characters problematically replace real people; recorded musicians in Mali on a project called Mali Music (2002); added superawesome Nigerian funky drummer Tony Allen to The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007); and collaborated with Hewlitt again on the Chinese opera, Monkey: Journey to the West (2008), based on a 16th-century folktale; and produced Amadou and Mariam’s well regarded single, “Sambali” (2008).

As a fan of Blur, I kind of want to say, “Well, as long as the music is good…” and dismiss my hesitation about these projects.   As a fan of music more generally, I tend to think that collaboration is a good thing, and that exposing audiences to really great music from other cultures is a definite plus.  As an ethnomusicologist, though, something about these collaborations really bugs me.  In the courses I’ve taken on world music, I’ve read articles that have gone over the problems of appropriation, inequality in production, and difficulties in collaboration in these kinds of projects.  I’ve read David Byrne talk about how he “hates world music” as a term for good reasons and then contradict himself in his practices.  I’ve read numerous ethnomusicologists take on Paul Simon’s rather inappropriate appropriation of various musical styles on Graceland, where he gets sole songwriting credit on songs that clearly are much more the product of other people’s labor.

And so, listening to Damon Albarn’s post-Blur work certainly troubles me.  Below, a list of a few of those things and why they bug me:

1. Mali Music (2002).  Albarn went to Mali, hung out with good musicians, recorded them, edited it down, and came up with an album that many people called “authentic.”  Aside from the strange issue of some English pop musician determining authenticity in Malian music, I have heard that his own collaborators thought he was a bit of a joke.  That, at least, makes me feel better.

I haven’t really listened to this album that much, but I will say this: the thing that bugs me the most is the sticker on the cover.  Among other quotes, Paul Weller extolls, “Brilliant… a perfect way in to the music of Mali.”  OK, so I love Paul Weller, but I don’t really care if he thinks its a great intro to the music of Mali because I doubt he knows anything about said music.  It reminds me of a quote in John Harris’s Britpop Bible, The Last Party, regarding Weller’s involvement in Labour Party politics via the Red Wedge: “You would have Paul Weller waxing lyrical about Labour’s employment policy.  Well, franky, who cares what Paul Weller thinks?”

2. The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (2007).  Aside from being the most boring album I purchased in 2007, the entire project seemed a waste of Tony Allen’s talents.  A paean to London, it once again called on the musical styles of Albarn’s native land.  As a collaboration, though, it had a lot of promise, pulling in Paul Simonon and Simon Tong, as well as the aforementioned Tony Allen.  The other two worked quite well in the English milieu, but Allen became a regular, dull four-on-the-floor kind of drummer.  So, you go and recruit the best Nigerian funk drummer ever, and you make him play really boring beats?  What is the point of that?

3. Monkey: Journey to the East (2008).  Albarn went to China, recorded the sounds of the streets, and then had an instrument built that he calls a “klaxophone,” which reproduces said sounds.  He uses pentatonic scales.  And this, my friends, is China.  (I say sarcastically.)  At first, when I listened to it, I thought, “This isn’t as bad as it could be.”  And some of it is, in fact, great pop music.  It’s when Albarn tries to ape (sorry for the pun) the Chinese musical styles that it becomes a sigh-worthy production.

4. “Sambali,” Amadou and Mariam (2008).  When I first heard this song, I thought, “How does anyone who’s heard ‘Monkey Bee’ not recognize that this is the same thing?” OK, that’s a little facile.  Here’s what I mean: both songs employ Victrola-esque female vocals somewhat divorced from any other musical context.  Each song then employs a variety of synthesized sounds recalling the minimalist stylings of Philip Glass, as well as string sections that are inserted into the song to greater or lesser degree.  The only thing separating them is that “Sambali” features a sparser texture and no interacting male voice.  It’s as though Mariam Doumbia’s voice is an isolated, disembodied departure point, rather than a source of collaboration.

And, that, I think is what bothers me the most.  Collaboration implies equal footing, and that simply isn’t here in any of this music.  It’s especially galling to hear Mariam Doumbia as a heavily electronified, distant voice, essentially unengaged with the musical setting below, since this is the extreme version of the way that many women are presented in “world music”: disembodied voices, signifying the “Other.”

What It Means to Be a Diva: Patti LuPone in Gypsy

For those of you who expect this blog to deliver on topics of pop music, today’s post marks a short diversion into Broadway show tunes, without which the popular music industry would not exist.*

I love live music.  I love live theater.  I even love live musical theater.  Within that genre, I especially love Sondheim; among performers, I love Patti LuPone.   That’s why, when I heard that Gypsy was closing–in less than a week!–I had to get tickets.  I called up Agent Taco, asked if we had plans for Saturday, and then bought the cheapest available tickets (I *don’t* love Broadway pricing.)

Patti LuPone is a diva, in every sense of the word, and she was my real motivation for attending the show.  As I explain to my students in my music history class, the term “diva” was not new when VH1 applied it to “Divas LIVE” in the mid-1990s. Before we get to the divine Patti, a little background on the diva.

Surprisingly, the word’s implications have remained somewhat consistent throughout its history.  Starting in the early 1800s, with the rise of bel canto opera in Italy, women singers received a new emphasis: most often, a soprano would perform the lead role, sometimes inserting her signature songs from other operas into each performance, and always, always demonstrating a virtuosity that would overwhelm and enchant the audience.

On the flip side, the diva often makes more demands than your average female performer.  She is not known for quietly settling into a role, or for taking affronts from the audience or other performers in stride and unruffled.  No, a diva makes demands.  And she can make demands because she is just that good.

Of course, we have added a lot of gendered aspects to the diva (no one really talks about “il divo” anymore, though he did exist in bel canto), but the two important sides remain: she has a lot of talent, and, because of that talent, she can be demanding.

Patti Lupone’s show-stopping performance on Saturday night brought that out.  As Mama Rose, her brassy, wide-ranging, full-chested voice finds a perfect characterization.  And I could definitely call her a diva for that alone, since the character herself is also somewhat of a diva, a pushy stage mother who desperately wants her children to succeed in vaudeville.

But LuPone’s performance was more than this.  It was, in fact, show stopping.  As in, the show stopped.  In the second to last scene, a tense scene between Gypsy (Laure Benanti)  and Mama Rose, a cell phone rang. Both performers visibly cringed, and a piece of the drama of the moment disappeared.

This tense scene leads directly into “Rose’s Turn,” Mama Rose’s “I-coulda-been-great” moment.  The performer, whether LuPone or anyone else, has to put everything into this moment.  In the New York Times review of the show in March 2008, Ben Brantley wrote of this scene: “In “Rose’s Turn,” in particular, Ms. LuPone takes you on a guided tour of all Rose’s inner demons, from sexual succubus to shivering infant. (Be warned: they will live in your head for a while.)”

Nothing, however, prepared me or anyone else for what did happen.  LuPone entered the stage, began the song, took off the grubby smock, revealing her more form-fitting red dress, and then…

“STOP!  Stop the music!”  The orchestra stopped.  “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”  A pause, confusion.  “I saw you take a photo THREE TIMES!  You heard the announcement before the show and at intermission.  Who do you think you are?”  LuPone stood stubbornly on the stage, refusing to continue until the offending party had been removed.

By now, most of the audience was in LuPone’s court.  I certainly was–who did that person think he/she was?

Finally, after a tense minute or so, a voice came over the loudspeaker, saying that the offending party was no longer in the theater; cheers erupted throughout the theater.  LuPone addressed the audience, stating that there had been an erosion of manners in the country, but that she would do the song from the top.

… And it was amazing, filled with the swirl of emotions that someone truly angry (as Mama Rose is with Gypsy/Louise at that point in the show) and disappointed and egotistical and regretful would bring to it.  I’m sure it would have been wonderful to see uninterrupted, but, you know, I wouldn’t trade what I saw for a run-of-the-mill, paint-by-numbers Broadway show. Instead of being perfection, it was an unforgettable experience.

Cheers to you, Patti LuPone, for demanding what you do deserve.

*One could argue that the constituent elements of rock n roll were more “of the people,”  i.e. hillbilly and race records.  However, the music industry prior to the advent of rock n roll largely depended upon the popularization of Tin Pan Alley novelty songs and show tunes.  The structure that this industry created later allowed for the genre of rock n roll to flourish.

Record Collecting for Fun and Profit: The Compact Disc Store

Okay, well, maybe not for profit, but hitting a kickass record shop to rifle through their bins of vinyl records? That’s some A-plus fun, folks. We recently went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Elizabeth took me to The Compact Disc Store, a local record shop she’s quite fond of. In fact, she wrote about the store back in August, more or less proclaiming it dead!

Luckily enough for us, the store’s still alive and kickin’ and we gave it a healthy cash injection. She picked up some cool import CDs, but I made out like a bandit and scored an armful of magnificent vinyl. Sure the music’ll be good, but these 12″ sleeves must be displayed like the works of art they really are.

The Decemberists "Picaresque" LP

Chic "Le Freak" 7" Single

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP back

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP back

Roberta Sherwood "Country Songs for City People" LP

Steve Perry "Street Talk" LP

Neil Diamond "Headed for the Future" 12" LP

As you can see, it was like finding sunken treasure.

Hopefully Elizabeth will jump back into the fray soon and raise the IQ of this blog back to where it belongs.

Ryan’s Favorite Records of 2008

Every music blog needs to have a Best Of list, right? Well dangit, then that’s what my first post here is gonna be!

They’re in alphabetical order by artist because I’m not sure I could easily rank them. I also have about a dozen records I picked up along the way this year, but either haven’t listened to them enough or simply haven’t listened to them at all. So they’re not on here. Sorry, Of Montreal.

Able Baker Fox “Voices” A low-fi post-hardcore project from members of Small Brown Bike and the Casket Lottery. The band’s pedigree doesn’t really mean much to me, I just really dig their sound. But I wish the recording was a little louder.

Anathallo “Canopy Glow” This was one of my most-anticipated records of ’08 and it didn’t disappoint. While it doesn’t quite capture the sound, energy or vibe of the band’s absolutely magnificent live show, it’s a beautiful, layered indie pop (more indie than pop) gem.

The Decemberists “Always the Bridesmaid” Singles 1-3 The Decemberists get better with each release, and their handful of new songs and covers in 2008 simply reinforced their indie rock dominance.

The Drift “Memory Drawings” Like my expanded interest in instrumental funk and soul, my love of instrumental post-rock really took hold this year. While Mogwai’s “The Hawk is Howling” was great, “Memory Drawings” just has more presence, soul and atmosphere.

The Gaslight Anthem “Señor and the Queen” and “The ’59 Sound” 2008 was definitely a huge year for the Jersey crew, with the band gaining massive amounts of attention for their second LP–even before it came out. I remember the SideOneDummy website crashing the day pre-orders started for “The ’59 Sound.” By the end of the year, they were playing late night TV shows and racking up the Best Of noms. And it’s a great record, but the “Señor and the Queen” EP released early in ’08 between their full-lengths is, in my mind, just about perfect. In just four songs, they masterfully execute their Clash-meets-Springsteen-in-a-New-Jersey-basement hardcore show sound.

Giants “Old Stories” Another amazing post-rock record. I almost missed it, but found it on a random Best Of list and it quickly rocked my world.

Hot Chip “Made in the Dark” I didn’t think I’d dig British electropop (I hate genre names), but I do. Dance-y, funny and tons of fun.

Menahan Street Band “Make The Road By Walking” I found myself listening to more funk/soul/instrumental hip hop this past year and this easily sits with the best of the best alongside El Michels Affair, The Budos Band and The Dap-Kings . Coincidentally enough, Menahan Street Band is a big collaborative project featuring members from all those bands and more. Truly, an all-star lineup producing all-star level music.

MGMT “Oracular Spectacular” Just as dancey as Hot Chip, but somehow even catchier.

Murder by Death “Red of Tooth and Claw” While not quite as epic as their concept record of Dante’s Inferno meets the Old West, this is a pretty badass record and makes me want to drink and take revenge on someone.

Shai Hulud “Misanthropy Pure” More metal than ever before, the hardcore heroes from New York-cum-Florida signed to Metal Blade Records and killed. Most metal doesn’t do it for me anymore, but this was great. Plus, who doesn’t love a band named after a giant worm from a classic sci-fi novel?

Verse “Agression” I’m way out of touch with the hardcore scene these days, but hot damn, this is one awesome album. It makes me want to point my fingers, sing along and run. Very far and very fast.

So, what were your favorite records of 2008? We always want suggestions for great music!