I Know It's Over; Or, hey hey, my my (into the black)

This blog is now officially CLOSED. I will post a link to my new blog, which opens for "business" in the next week or so, after I work out the kinks while @ SXSW 2011. It was fun while it lasted. For everybody who has ever dropped by, thanks. I hope it was a pleasant experience!

The south's gonna do it again.

Yesterday in The Arizona Republic, Ed Masley published a list article called "Six Pillars of Southern Rock," which purported to pick out the most significant Southern Rock albums without ever stating so explicitly. Here's his list

1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, (pronounced 'leh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) (1973)
3. The Allman Brothers, At the Fillmore East (1971)
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors (1977)
5. The Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera (2001)
6. The Black Crowes, Shake Your Money Maker (1990)

In fact Masley's weasel words descriptive qualifier for his list is "six essential albums that are probably more Southern Rock than ZZ Top." Putting aside the obvious comment on the timorous adverb. This is clearly a definition that defines nothing. From the list we can in fer that Masley is looking for some kind of traditionalist notion of Southern Rock as a guitar driven entity, coming out of the wedding of blues and country traditions, which focuses on some notionally Southern version of manhood. Thus we get such a conservative list that misses at least two bands best album and has the throwaway sixth entry, which really doesn't belong despite all Masley's protestations otherwise!



There are many ways to redo and improve this list. I will simply offer two: a better traditionalist list followed by a better list which has a much broader definition of Southern Rock. Also I fail to see why there are six pillars? Sikhism has three, the Dominican order has four, Islam has five. But wisdom (Proverbs 9:1) has seven! and surely what said list is offering is wisdom.

Seven Pillars of [Traditional] Southern Rock
1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Second Helping (1974)
3. The Allman Brothers, At the Fillmore East (1971)
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd, One More For From the Road (1976)
5. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors (1977)
6. The Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South (2004)
7. Molly Hatchett, Flirtin' With Disaster (1979)

Honorable Mention:
The Outlaws, Outlaws (1975)
.38 Special Wild-Eyed Southern Boys (1981)
Derek & The Dominoes,Layla and Assorted Other Love Songs (1970)
Little Feat, Dixie Chicken (1973)
The Band, The Band (1969)
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bayou Country (1969)

This list is temporally bound as Southern Rock's great era came to a close with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, with only the Drive-By Truckers as a unique outlier. The Allmans were the originators but Skynyrd was clearly THE BAND, thus they merit 3 slots. Their second album is better than the first, plus everyone knows the version of "Free Bird" you wanna hear is on the live double LP with Cameron Crowe's famous liner notes. Molly Hatchett stands in for all the other lesser Southern bands, some of them listed in the honorable mention section. This section is provided not as a cheat on the 7, but rather to give readers a wider range of listening/investigating options. It also points to some precursors.

Seven Pillars of [Non-Traditional] Southern Rock
1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Second Helping (1974)
3. Big Star, Radio City (1974)
4. Pylon, Gyrate (1980)
5. Archers of Loaf, Icky Mettle (1993)
6. OutKast, Stankonia (2000)
7. The Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South (2004)

Honorable Mention:
Dusty Springfield, Dusty In Memphis (1969)
The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers (1971)
The B-52s, Wild Planet (1980)
REM, Murmur (1983) or Reconstruction of the Fables (1985)
Superchunk, Tossing Seeds: Singles 89-91 (1992)
The dBs, Stands for deciBels/Repercussion (2001)

The list veers away from strictly guitar driven rock venturing into rap and the new wave. I chose the B-52s second album because the red one is more "Southern" than the yellow one. I also, against the critical grain, like it better. Both Fame in Muscle Shoals and Stax in Memphis needed to be noticed in this list, thus the Dusty and Rolling Stones' honorable mentions.

Medley.

Sam Cooke presents a classic medley.



Seems appropriate that this blog's 350th entry is a mishmash.

Tonight I'm heading West Point way for this. With any luck some photos up in the future. And don't forget this other local festival, which will have some major news re: headliners for 2009 the Tuesday after Labor Day.

This medley by The Bishop of Soul Solomon Burke pays homage to his fellow travelers.



Looking forward to a historic opener for the Mississippi State Bulldogs as they become the first SEC team to host a SWAC HBCU team, the Jackson State Tigers. More specifically, I'm really looking forward to the halftime performance of the visiting team's band, The Sonic Boom of the South!



A few other famous show band performances with better sound:







And let's close with a classic medley from "the Hardest Working Man in Show Business . . . Mr. Dynomite . . . Mr. Please Please . . . Soul Brother #1 . . . Are you ready for Star Time?"

Dixie Chicken.

The most recent issue of the Oxford American is an extravaganza for lovers of Southern writing. They list not only the Best Southern Novels of All Time but also the Best Southern Nonfiction.

Here's the Novels Top 10

1. Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1938)
2. Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men (1946)
3. William Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury (1929)
4. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
5. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (1950)
6. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (1961)
7. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
8. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
9. Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (1952)
10. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

As I've commented elsewhere, this list is surprisingly conservative in providing a narrowly focused view of one particular version of The South. Sure;y there has been a great novel or two in the last 30 years or even longer since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964! Later this week the online OA will publish the longer list from 11-50 and that's probably where the more interesting action will be. For now my thoughts. 3 Faulkner's is too much, but he's important enough I don't mind seeing him twice. I'd lose The Sound and the Fury Myself. Penn Warren's mess of about four different novels shoved together is really overrated at 2 here. I'm not convinced Invisible Man really belongs on a list of great Southern novels although I do realize it has the "Tuskegee" section. Personally I'd replace it with another forgotten Harlem Renaissance classic, Jean Toomer's Cane (1923). I'd put something modern in the place of the third Faulkner and perhaps something urban. Maybe a Florida noir by John D. MacDonald—say The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)—or something Appalachian like Ron Rash, Serena (2008) or Sharyn McCrumb, She Walks These Hills (1994). For a quirkier old school selection I'd go with George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes (1880).


Here's the Nonfiction Top 5

1. Agee & Evans, Let US Now Praise Famous Men(1941)
2. Richard Wright, Black Boy(1945)
3. W.J. Cash, The Mind of The South (1941)
4. Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings (1984)
5. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974)

Sure this list avoids the former's time-boundedness, but it is still pretty conservative and presents a kind if old fashioned monolithic view of the South. Agee & Evans at number one is a well-earned given as was Absalom, Absalom! I'm glad to see W.J.Cash gte his due rather than being trashed as some kind of racist by ex post facto. holier than thou academics. I'd jettison both 4 and 5 from my top 5. I was at the Harvard lectures which became One Writer's Beginnings. Professor Costello is right that this book represents an idealized and nicer little old lady version of Welty. It was also Harvard University Press's first NY Times bestseller but I'm not sure it rises to the level of greatness. Similarly I think Foote owes his prestige more to his appearance on Ken Burns' miniseries than he does for the impact of his extended history. What do I put in their place? My Mississippi book would be Willie Morris, The Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983), discussed more here. Food being so important to the South, I'd think long and hard about a food book and perhaps go with a book about food rather than one of numerous cookbooks, so John T.Edge, Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South (2000).

A few other serious contenders would include something by C. Vann Woodward from the list The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955), The Burden of Southern History (1968), Origins of The New South (1951), or Mary Chestnut's Civil War (1982) any of which could be seen as a corrective to Cash. For reportage and because it became even more relevant after Katrina, John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1998). Barry's book really helped me understand the area I had moved to when took my job at Mississippi State. Penn Warren shows up either in I'll Take My Stand: The South and The Agrarian Tradition (1930) or with Cleanth Brooks, Understanding Poetry (1938). Finally one personal quirky favorite would be Gloria Jahoda, The Other Florida (1967). The essay, "Two Hundred Miles from Anywhere Else," remains the best explanation of why my hometown Tallahassee, FL is unlike any other "city in Florida, or in the South" (128).



Little Feat at the Rainbow Theatre London 1977

UPDATE [Saturday, September 5 9:37 AM]

The full Oxford American Lists were released yesterday for Underrated, Novels and Nonfiction. As I expected this is where the real interest in this categorizing/listing project lay. I was pleased to see many of my alternate suggestions there and some just outside the Top 5 or 10. For example if you collate the split votes for C. Vann Woodward across the 4 works I mentioned he gets to 22 and is 6th on that list. I was also leaed that one novel and one nonfiction pick of mine were unique (MacDonald and Edge).

Something and nothing.

As fans of this blog know by now, I spent 1985-6 in York on a Rotary Post-graduate Fellowship. There I first heard the second Reception single, "Once More," by the Wedding Present whilst working as a staffer at URY. They rapidly became one of my favorite bands. Here's a little something I wrote about their early best phase for PopMatters.

What was and what shall never be

Little whirl: GBV (iii).

Bob is everywhere with helicopter at Memphis' Last Place on Earth.



2/3 of the rockin' rhythm section.




"Smothered in Hugs" at the New Years's Eve 2004 Final Show in Chicago

"Game of Pricks" Amoeba in-store in Hollywood 2002



The club is open for the Final Show!



"Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy" Live in Dayton 1994 (The classic line up)



Cut-Out Witch at the GbV reunion show (AKA Bob's 50th Bday party)



Tobin Sprout "Awful Bliss" from Bee Thousand Live in Chicago



Tobin Sprout "Dayton Oh 19 Something and 5" reunited with GbV at Final Columbus, OH show



2 from a 40 Watt show.




A band of seemingly endless line ups, whose like we'll surely not see or hear again!

Fin.

Picture me big time: GBV (ii)

A random collection of my favorite GBV videos through the years.

"Bulldog Skin" This one has played on the JumboTron at Davis Wade Stadium Scott Field right here in Mississippi. To which I say, "More Cowbell!"




"Weed King"



"Glad Girls"



"I Am A Scientist"



"My Kind of Soldier"



An Old School Interview from 1996



The famous Family Feud send-up. Incidentally Guided by Voices won the game!

The last part of our trilogy will highlight live performances; here's a foretaste.

"Teeange FBI" Live on The 10:30 Slot

Man called aerodynamics: GBV (i).

Anybody who really knows me understands it was only a matter of time before the GBV You Tube entry sprung up. They also probably realized it would be a multiple parter. I dedicate Part 1 to my Facebook friend Doug Gillard: he of the endless riffs!

Doug was in a lot of bands before GBV, lastly Cobra Verde, for whom he wrote a little ditty made famous by Pollard & co.
"I am A Tree"



Tallahassee native that I am this clip, filmed at the Cow Haus as it was in 2002, gives me great joy! At a 40 Watt show, Doug accepted my copy of Mag Earwhig! to get signed by the entire band to send to my friend who had just moved to Dayton, OH to be a Department Chair. Ask yourself one question: why was the lead guitarist for international "rock stars" wandering around a club freely available to his fans? Yeah, Doug is a mensch!

"Redmen and Their Wives"



Speaking of the 40 Watt, I only ever heard this track live once on the Electrifying Conclusion tour in Athens, GA.

"Back to the Lake"


Amoeba in-houses rule whether Hollywood or Haight!

Speak Kindly of Bob's best solo album, the one with Doug Gillard!



GBV is done, but occasionally this will happen:



I haven't done nearly full justice really to the genius of Doug Gillard, but you get a real taste of him here. All I can say is the club will always be open, when DG is in town!

I close with 2 rare pictures I took myself.

The first features DG in full flight at the legendary Last Place on Earth show in Memphis.



We shall never forget the other guys: Farley and Tobias. They were way cool too. Here they hang out at The Nick after Ice Storm 2000 with Gordon before GBV's set!



More Pollard madness tomorrow . . .

Field day for the sundays.

A short sharp shock from the irrepressible Pink Flag! 1977 collides 2009.

Wanted to do a video essay for Wire like I did for the Buzzcocks last week and am finding it harder to get interesting footage for Wire. No luck yet with any live stuff. And Wire do put on memorable live gigs, however rare-ish they might be.

A beautiful Wire original followed by an equally impressive Flying Saucer Attack cover:





And then I remembered the Wire, Live on the Box (1979) DVD, and lo and behold . . . "Map Ref 43°N 110°W" from the famous Rockpalast gig:



Wire introduced by Suzanne Somers?!!?



"In the Art of Stopping"



"Lowdown" live at South Street Seaport, NYC 5/30/2008

Airwaves dream.

Did you know that song? No, not you J.G. Norman; I'm sure YOU did. Well I didn't! I know The Buzzcocks' Singles Making Steady-era extremely well and also on vinyl have a new-ish 7" discussed here.



"Airwaves Dream" helps to make my point about the essential genius of the songwriting team of Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle. Well O.K., Pete writes most of the songs. But it's their interplay on guitars that makes the whole thing tick and why the band has survived through a variety of 3rd and 4th players.

1 short one and 2 long(er) ones to fill your aural feast.

"Why She's A Girl From A Chain Store"



"Moving Away From The Pulsebeat"



"I Believe"



They still put on a great show as Buzzcocks MK IIIb! Investigate Manchester's Likely Lads for yourselves then. And watch for the tour where they play their first two albums in their entirety coming to North America perhaps later this fall. The Publican's Secret is out.

Reverbation.

So I went to Rocky Erickson's Birthday Bash at Antone's with "No Expectations." These kind of affairs, not unlike the classic record release party, are usually about enjoyment and not music, and full of sloppy, schlocky sentimentality and not much in the way of worthwhile live performances. Apparently Texas didn't get that memo. I state categorically that last night's show at Antone's was one of the 10 best I've been at in my life and that includes stuff like The Smiths at the Manchester Club Academy in 1986 on their The Queen is Dead tour, Wire at the Double Door in Chicago (2003), the Buzzcocks at House of Blues, NOLA (2003), The Drive-By Truckers at the Old Main Music Festival (2006), My Bloody Valentine at Slim's opening the US portion of the Loveless tour (1992), and Mission of Burma's farewell show at the Bradford Hotel in 1983. In other words, I'm not a neophyte easily moved to raptures of positivity. 3 bands each very good and two great in different ways. And each band in a slightly different genre. Now that's what I call a killer show.




Starting us off at 8:30 was The Golden Boys, a classic Austin-style psychobilly country outfit down to the Nord keyboard. They were energetic and also had a lot of fun with guest stars, especially at the end of the night by which time they had added a mandolin, a fiddle, harmonica, and a sax amongst other instruments. The mandolin was apparently played by the manager of Antone's Record Shop. The whole night was about family really: fans of Roky and fans of Antone's as this the club's on-going 34th anniversary.







Next up was The Riverboat Gamblers, an Austin-based band who originally hail from Denton, TX home to UNT or North Texas State for us old timers. And probably home to more great unheard bands than any other city in America by population, due I suspect to UNT's famous music school. No number crunching here, but my two exemplars make my point. The Peel Favorite, Lift to Experience, and Starkvegas' favorite son Chapman Welch, excuse me . . . Dr. Chapman Welch . . . Oh yeah and someone named Norah Jones! Anyway I haven't seen a better live performance anywhere anytime any place in the last decade. These guys were incendiary and on it from the get go. Kinda like having been in LA ca. 1978 or DC ca. 1981. You're getting the vibe. The frontman had an Ian Curtis-kinda look but backed with an Iggy swivvely-hipped spirit and the mike twirling skills of either Daltrey or Pollard. The lead guitarist was either Southeast Asian or from the Middle East and he just shredded everyting in sight. Do yourself a favor run and out and get a disc by the Riverboat Gamblers. I was "singing" or at least "Hey Hey Hey"-ing along to songs I'ver never heard before.











Here's their actual setlist!



And then at 10:35 the main event, the legend in his own time Roky Erickson took the stage with a hot new as yet unnamed backing band (14th Floor Escalators anyone or maybe the Psychedelic Segways!). Anyway they immediately launched into a version of "Reverbation" that would have made the Reid brothers bow down. 12 songs later we got the double ending punch of "Two Headed Dog" followed by "You're Gonna Miss Me" and then it was done. The performance ran about 90 minutes and was astonishing. Not so much for stage presence or showmanship but for the glorious sounds produced by the pounding drummer, the bass player straight off a Surfari's record, and the lead guitarist, who reminded me of a younger Doug Gillard: that professional, that many riffs to spare, and frankly that nice a guy. He soloed so intensely on "Click your Fingers" he basically tore the skin off three fingers and bled the rest of the set, but he soldiered on as the great ones do.

Roky's Mom in her 80s here celebrating her son's 62nd birthday!



Antone's co-founder does the introduction



Roky unleashes "Reverbation" as an opener.







The crowd was into it.



Roky's Mom dances with some fans.





Roky looking for that "Two Headed Dog"



Roky unleashes the 13th Floor Elevators' "You're Gonna Miss Me"!




For the Roky fan's and any psycho completists, here's the official setlist:




Reverbation
Don't shake me
Splash 1
Creature with atom brain
The wind and more
Starry eyes
Bloody hammer
Stand for the fire demon
The beast
Click your fingers
night of the vampire
cold night for alligators
and now we fly
two headed dog
Your gonna miss me

Not played were the extras: "Splash 1" (originally scheduled 3rd on setlist)" and "I walked with a zombie." Substituted extra was "Don't slander me."

Amazing footage from a fizzygeek, who was basically right behind me and about two people closer to center stage.



He also took some beautiful stills.

It says here.

I promised some news of note pre-July 4th and I like to deliver on such assertions. As of today I am a blogger doing the Sound Affects column for PopMatters. My first piece can be found here.

What does this mean for TNA?

Very little, except I might blog slightly less frequently here. Some but not all longer blogs on musical topics will head to PopMatters, but I will note their publication here.

One step beyond.

My take on step-by-step cooking demonstrations.

Class 1: The Clear the Fridge & Make a Great Sandwich Lunch: Step-By-Step-Style

Start with your basic ingredients. Especially thick and wide (preferably from a boule) slices of sandwich bread. On one side layer main ingredients on top of say coarse ground mustard. Here we have thinly sliced Vidalia Onion, slabs of slicing tomatoes, and shave deli sliced garlic roasted Turkey. On the other slab deconstructed avocado slices plus some mayonaise with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.



Top the avocado half with cheese, in this case Jalapeño Cheddar slices and Crumbled Feta with Garlic and Herbs. Place under broiler until cheese is melted then remove.



Assemble sandwich, slice, and plate. Serve with any side. Here simply a few grape clusters. Chips or potato salad are other solid choices.




Remember whatever happens, ENJOY YOURSELF!



Class 2: Step-By-Step Steak on the Patio Meal

O.K. we're moving up several weight categories t a more elaborate dinner preparation. And that's the key: preparation. Thinking things out in advance and organizing ingredients and tools makes the cooking process ever so much easier. Here's what a professional chef would call his/her mise en place.



Tonight, we're attempting to grill and hickory smoke Marinated Bacon-wrapped Center Cut Sirloins and serve them with Caramelized Vidalia Onions and Sour Cream, Curry, and Chive Mashed Potatoes.



Set your stove on medium heat and put some olive oil in a skillet and onion slices. Saute for a minute or so and reduce heat to low. The key here is multitasking. Grill should already have been heated. I cheat and use gas for speed.



Place smoking cup on hot end of grill and two steaks on cooler end. Will cook with top closed for best smoking effects. Note setup of high temp and low temp on each end trying to set up a convection current inside grill as well. You cook steak about 8 minutes per side. For best grill marks at the 3:30 to 4:00 mark on each side spin steak 90 degrees to get nice crosshatching.



At the same time make sure your dining area is ready to go. If it's nice enough to grill outside, it's nice enough to dine al fresco as well.



Don't forget your main mantra: always be multi-taskin'. Check the brownness of the onions. Make sure to turn them to get them evenly cooked. When done remove from stove and if need be put in a pre-warmed oven below 175 degrees to keep warm until plating time.



One advantage of grillin' for guys is the elaboration of tools: charcoal rakes, tongs, flippers, grill mitts et cetera. But don't forget also the essential indoor tools that might be useful outdoors as well. Here a Santoku (Viking 7")—kinda for show really— and the workhorse implement, an offset serrated knife for cutting through the crisp bacon and neither scalding your knuckles nor mashing your sirloin in the process (F. Dick 8"—just ask Bourdain!) a timer for keeping track of when to turn and when to flip your steaks and a spatula for close in work as opposed to standard grill flipper.

As Neil Young once opined, "When I get big I'm gonna get an electric guitar. When I get real big." To which I respond, "when I get rich I'm gonna get a Global G2 Chef's Knife. When I get real rich."

for more on the art of grilling, check out this guy's book and ETV TV series.



When done, let the steaks sit at least 5 minutes to finish cooking and cool down.



I'm eating alone and this is, after all, a how-to, s we slice one steak to see if its medium rare: charred on the edges but pink in the center. Looks about right.



The we plate our steak, onions, and mashed potatoes up and bon apetit.



Improve your mood and dining ambiance with some music. "Music for evenings" from Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth sounds good place to start streaming on iTunes to some remote wireless speakers outside. Ahhh . . . dinner time. Just because you're single and maybe live alone is absolutely no excuse not to live and eat well.



This has been another Rat in mi Kitchen joint!

Party out of bounds.

T-minus 11 hours and say 3 minutes until The Three Estates Do: Town/Gown/FPCS Handbells & Choir kicks it here at 119 Edgey. It's all brought to you by us:



Still got a few last items to set up for cooking this afternoon. Have to sweep the patio and carport again. But otherwise, we're good to go. A big photo album of the event will mount sometime Sunday.

Our Party Music

Hour 1 Music from 1909 (honoring Elizabeth Gwinn who turned 100 last month)

"The Whiffenpoof Song" and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" both written in 1909 plus performances by artists born in 1909 like Benny Goodman, Ruby Keeler, Victor Borge, Carmen Miranda, and Gene Krupa.

Hour 2 Reich Re-Mixed

Hour 3 My 1980s v. 4.1.a

Hour 4 Son[y]a's Sisters Solidarity Mix v 2.0.a Getting to Happiness

After that who knows? Maybe Sonic Youth, The Eternal, Japandroids, Post-Nothing, Telekinesis, Telekinesis!, or The Thermals, Now We Can See

and so it goes . . .

I call out her name.

In the toughest title battle yet, The Thermals emerge champs as usually happens: 'cuz when you're hot, you're smokin'. They took down an extremely quality field: The Clash, "What's My Name," Guided by Voices, "Your Name Is Wild," The Kinks, "Did You See His Name","Lynyrd Skynyrd, "What's Your Name", Terence Trent D'Arby, "Sign Your Name," The Velvet Underground, "I Heard Her Call My Name," and The White Stripes, "Sister, Do You Know My Name?"

Q: What's this all about then?
A: My "second" book was to have been called “WHAT’S IN A NAME?”: IDENTITY, PROPERTY, AND THE EARLY MODERN NAMING FUNCTION 1485–1832 and should have been entering post-production about now. This book project modeled on David Cressy's magisterial Birth, Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England was at once much more focused in topic while also diachronically much wider in scope. The book concept spun out of an unpublished essay entitled “Tom, Dick, and Francis”; or, The Trouble with Harry: Status Anxiety amongst the Gentry in Early Modern England. This essay itself served as a bridge away from dissertation work on alehouses and theaters. We still visit the world of the Boar's Head Tavern in the second tetralogy but more with an eye to Hal and his many concerns about class, status, and patrilineage. Following from a seemingly toss-away neologism, "Tom, Dick and Francis" we ask the Hitchcockian question of Hal just what is The Trouble with Harry?

Central to the answer was my theorization after Foucault of an early modern naming function. And that's why this post exists at all. My "first" book is still in the works. My own academic status is rather ambiguous, but I continue to be a publishing scholar.



My latest work in collaboration with Bryan Reynolds is a melding of my "naming function" with his transversal poetics providing we hope through "investigative-expansive modes"

to show that certain signature theoretical contributions of structuralism and poststructuralism have definite precursors in the early modern English understanding of the proper name with respect both to semiotic-semantic systems and subject formation. Moreover, another aim of this book is to establish more explicitly the historical trajectory of this book . . . between the premodern and the modern . . . to graph the various lines of critical inquiry into subjects, subjectivity, and subject matters. (51)

So we pursue a basic question, "What's in a name?"

One of my very smartest friends asked "what is your naming function?" And he is not alone, though many of my grad school buddies already hipped to the Foucaultplay at work in my neologism. In short from our "Glossary of Transversal Terms":

the naming-function replaces the problematic term "name" to emphasize the many uses of proper naming. . . . The naming-function reveals that proper naming need not operate simply in one direction, from sociopolitical conductors of state power to subjects, but also in reverse, differently, multi-directionally, and multi-dimensionally. (280)

Focusing on a class bias "the naming-function encodes, eludes, and scrambles power relationships among the aristocracy, much as the the author-function admits ownership of texts, yet obscures the state's punishment of their transgressions" (61). For more, read the book. Thanks!

Thus we come to my Declaration of Scholarly Principles (with a wink of the eye to CFK and JL).

1) I promise never to follow a trend out of a desire for publication or advancement. In fact, I steadfastly promise to actively ignore trends in my own work regardless of the affects on my so-called career.

2) I vow to continue doing cutting edge interdisciplinary work in both the fields of early modern studies and popular culture of the twentieth century. I shall follow the questions and interesting bugaboos wherever they lead me: be it to the creation of 90s noise rock as a non-generic cultural phenomenon, the role of hops in the production of English national identity, a minor neologism which tinkers with a common adage but plainly hides deeper cultural anxieties about status, a re-reading and re-reading of the phrase "Out of sack" until every possible meaning has been parsed and squeezed from the literary shepherd's bag or The Mekon's interest in traditional country, disavowal of Alt-Country, and creation of a more politicized "Insurgent Country."

3) I vow to use theory as it was intended as a useful explanatory tool not as a system for living or some kind of ideological purity test.

4) I vow to write in clear and concise modern English that attempts to be both witty and wise.

5) I vow to live the life of the mind to the full, joyously and with all the vigor I can produce.

Desunt nonulla.

Works Cited

Bryan Reynolds et al., Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.