cry baby pod

Show Notes Today’s show focuses on queer and leftist americana music, as well as associated fandoms across the broader Appalachian region of the United States. Dr. Jacob Kopcienski, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Appalachian State University, is our guide through the complexities of place, politics, and identity across this cultural and geographic zone. Their work engages ethnographic and ar...

Hello cry babies! Today’s episode is all about the role of popular music in a capitalist hellscape! How has our situation changed since the postmodern turn? What are we to make of popular music in the era of capitalist realism and depressive hedonia? What if it turns out we’re all watching Infinite Jest in small chunks without realizing it? How can we meet enough of our needs to be able to launch...

Show Notes My guest today is Dr. Amy Skjerseth, Assistant Professor of Popular Music at UC Riverside. Amy is one of the most prolific and prodigious thinkers I know, and she provides us with an entire reading list throughout the course of this episode. From Tina Turner to anti-ICE whistles, we’re talking sound, media, technology, and disciplinarity. Get hip! Timestamps : 00:00: Intro 1:13: Guest I...

Show Notes Welcome back! I said I was gonna do a solo episode but I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Instead we’re jumping back in with a wonderful episode about Cuban Reparto music with my guest Dr. Mike Levine , Assistant Professor of Musicology at Christopher Newport University. From production to consumption to distribution, we cover many of the most pertinent characteristics of this kind o...

Show Notes On this episode I speak with Varun Chandrasekhar about all things emo, but perhaps most pertinently, the academic conference he’s organized around the music, to take place at Washington University in St. Louis on April 10th and 11th. Varun is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at WashU, where his dissertation focuses on reading Charles Mingus through the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul...

Show Notes For this special episode I’m sharing my conversation with Raechel Anne Jolie , who joined me to discuss Big Feelings back in October. If you’re a regular reader of cry baby, you’ll already know that Raechel is one of my favorite writers and people period; their award-winning memoir Rust Belt Femme and popular newsletter radical love letters are both required reading (so get on it). 😊Th...

Show Notes On this episode I speak with with the one and only Robin James , scholar, editor, author of five books so far , including several we talk about today—like The Future of Rock and Roll, The Sonic Episteme, as well as the forthcoming Good Vibes Only , 33 ⅓ on book The Breeders’ Last Splash and a second edition of Resilience and Melancholy , under contract with the University of Michigan Pr...

Show Notes Today’s ultra special guest is Dr. Morgan Bimm , Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish NS and very dear friend. We talk about her dissertation on indie rock and girl cultures; her new project on playlists-as-method; the work of making friends in academia; and moooorrreeee. Timestamps 0:00 intro 4:00 dissertation project and orig...

Show Notes For the second episode in our unofficial “uhh is this even popular music” series, I speak with Dr. Patrick Nickleson about (early) minimalism, the damage musicology can do, and music’s role in consolidating property relations via copyright law—among other things! Patrick’s first book is The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute (University of Michigan...

Show Notes On this episode my guest is Dr. Evan Martin-Casler, a Lecturer of Business Communication at the University of Arizona and lifelong punk practitioner. I asked him to share their expertise on all matters of contemporary hardcore, as well as to walk listeners through his analysis of metal subgenres like doom and sludge. Along the way we cover moshing, the disappearance of subcultures, fric...

Show Notes I talk with Dr. AJ Kluth about the vibrant LA jazz scene, the Jazz is Dead phenomenon, and how this music helps us think about—and calls into question—the distinction between “jazz” and “popular music.”  Timestamps 00: Intro 5:00: Jazz is Dead and White Zombie , Dr. Kluth’s book project 7:06: Musical genre in the scene 14:00 Race, necropolitics, genre play 20:30: Historical precedents f...

Dr. Alyx Vesey stops by to chat about her training in media studies, her life in popular music, and her two major monograph projects, one on feminized music merchandise and another on the history VH1. We talk about what it means to study popular music from a media perspective, how books are like houses, and how to research a TV show that no one seems to remember.  :,) Alyx’s book is Extending Play...

Hey pals, I’m doing this on my own so will you let me know if the levels sound shit thank yoouuuu :,) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com