Listen Again

Eric Weisbard is the organizer of the annual Experience Music Project Pop Conference. He was a curator and senior manager of the Experience Music Project from 2001 until 2005. Before that, he worked as an editor and contributing writer at Spin and The Village Voice. He is the author of Use Your Illusion I and II and the editor of This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project and the Spin Alternative Record Guide.

• Introduction / Eric Wesibard 11. Whittling on Dynamite: The Difference Bert Williams Makes / W.T. Lhamon, Jr. 72. Searching for the Blues: James McKune, Collectors, and a Different Crossroads / Marybeth Hamilton 263. Abie the Fishman: On Masks, Birthmarks, and Hunchbacks / Josh Kun 504. The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Cha / Ned Sublette 695. Ghoulardi: Lessons in Mayhem from the First Age of Punk / David Thomas 956. Magic Moments, the Ghost of Folk-Rock, and the Ring of E Major / David Brackett 1037. Mystery Girl: The Forgotten Artistry of Bobbie Gentry / Holly George-Warren 1208. “Is That All There Is?” and the Uses of Disenchantment / Franklin Bruno 1379. Ghetto Brother Power: The Bronx Gangs, the Beatles, the Aguinaldo, and Pre-history of Hip-Hop / Benjamin Melendez, as told to Henry Chalfant and Jeff Chang 15010. Grand Funk Live! Staging Rock in the Age of the Arena / Steve Waksman 15711. The Sound of Velvet Melting: The Power of “Vibe” in the Music of Roberta Flack / Jason King 17212. All Roads Lead to “Apache” / Michaelangelo Matos 20013. On Punk Rock and Not Being a Girl / Lavinia Greenlaw 21014. The Buddy Holocaust Story: A Necromusicology / Eric Weisbard 21915. ORCH5, or the Classical Ghost in the Hip-Hop Machine / Robert Fink 23116. White Chocolate Soul: Teena Marie and Lewis Taylor / Marc Anthony Neal 25617. Dancing, Democracy, and Kitsch: Poland’s Disco Polo / Daphne Carr 27218. How to Act Like Darby Crash / Drew Daniel 28619. Death Letters / Greil Marcus 296Acknowledgments 307Contributors 309Index 313

“The EMP papers are a text radio, spilling out evidence of so many strange brilliant forays into the starry night of our common culture. Here’s where my American history-and yours-goes to find itself.”-Jonathan Lethem, author of You Don’t Love Me Yet “[T]he papers featured in this volume are typically eclectic, eccentric and unorthodox while remaining highly readable and sometimes quite brilliant. . . . As original as it is refreshing and engaging, Listen Again and, by implication, the work of the EMP Pop Conference, represents an important contribution to the serious consideration of pop music-essential reading in an era in which our experience and understanding of music is fragmenting, mixing and morphing at a bewildering pace. “ - Alex Seago (American Studies) “This collection of essays on subjects ranging from ORCH5, a Stravinsky phrase turned synthesizer blip that helped forge the sound of early hip-hop, to James McKune, a record collector who single-handedly invented the Delta-blues genre, deftly analyzes marginal and telling moments in pop history. Listen Again is a brilliant reimagining of last century’s most accessible art form.” - Nick Moore (LA Weekly) "Listen Again has the guiding vision and rigorous analysis that so much current journalistic and scholarly writing on popular music lacks. . . . The eclecticism on display here isn’t distracting; the book benefits by drawing on many perspectives. Instead of reading as a throwback to music criticism’s glory days, Listen Again maps a future for the field." - Geeta Dayal (Bookforum) "Time and again, I found myself putting down the book to download a song or to search YouTube for a dimly recalled performer evocatively discussed here. But this isn't a book of pop trivia, a scholarly version of TV nostalgia shows. Anyone who wants to revisit the pop past will find enjoyment in Listen Again, but learning and scholarship too." - David Hesmondhalgh (Times Higher Education)