Thursday, January 4, 2007
Music / Crickets Authenticity is like porn . . .
Posted by Monica Kendrick on 01.04.07 at 05:30 PM
. . . in that one might think one knows it when one sees it.
Yuval Taylor, a Chicago Review Press editor I interviewed for the Reader's spring books issue regarding his interest in groupie memoirs, has another project he's been working on for a long time: Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, a collaboration with British writer Hugh Barker to be published February 1 by W.W. Norton.
For me the concepts of "authenticity" and "popular music" hit each other at a strange angle, "authenticity" being one of those slippery words that doesn't need too many repetitions to lose all meaning and "popular music," from creation to production to marketing to distribution, being a matter of infinitely many constantly changing calculations. Popular music's main claim to authenticity is the undeniable existence of its massive industry, which is "authentic" in much the same way Hollywood is. It's a self-perpetuating machine that works best when its "content providers" are acting at peak inspiration level but is perfectly capable of cranking merrily along when they're not.
Am I saying there shouldn't be a book about it? On the contrary--you sure can't talk about it in 25 words or less.
Comments (9)
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On this topic, though less specifically about music, I would recommend the book "Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City" which actually focuses its attention on Chicago's Wicker Park area during the 1990s. A fascinating article and great review of the book can be found here: http://www.monthlyreview.org/0906perry.htm
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for the record, Josh, we ran a long piece on Lloyd and his book in the spring 2005 books issue. (pdf, sorry) www.chicagoreader.com/pdf/051111/051111_wickerpark.pdf
der. did I say spring? I meant the, um, other spring: fall. Fall Books, 2005. Right.
Don't worry, I like Fall better. And I can't put together and read all of this magazine every week! Haha. But I will check out the PDF. And, for the record, I love PDFs, so don't ever apologize on behalf of PDFs. They are good people.
I looked up Hugh Barker, it says Brit. writer but there's no listing for anything by him; but you know, it's that sorta subject
Thanks for the plug! The book is now available, I believe--it should be at your local independent bookstore any day now. Hugh is indeed British--he works in publishing in the U.K., but he also fronted a terrific band, Animals that Swim, that unfortunately had no U.S. exposure whatsoever. Also please check out our MP3 blog, www.fakingit.typepad.com, which has some interesting posts on mystery in American song, bands that tell their stories in song, songs about local news, and, in the future, songs about writer's block, the authenticity of Jennifer Lopez, the earnestness of U.K. punk, blind blues singers who sang about being blind, etc.
