“I’m Your Fan”: Fandom and Popular Music Studies

May 4 – 6, 2001
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Click on a paper title to see the abstract.

FRIDAY MAY 4th

3:00-4:30 Race Ethnicity, and Fandom

Karen Pegley (York University)
"A Process of Advocacy": Race, Multiculturalism, and Constructions of Whiteness on MuchMusic (Canada) and MTV (US)
Brígido Galván (York University)
What Difference Does Difference Make? Toronto's Racial Soundscape
Viny Hui (University of North Texas)
The Music and Non-Music Media Involvement of Hong Kong Adolescents

SATURDAY MAY 5

10:00-12:00 Fandom and Cultural Authority

William Echard (Carleton University)
Ways of Knowing, Kinds of Knowledge, and the Scholar-Fan
Gordon Ross (University of Calgary)
"Can I Have Your Autograph Please?": Country Music Fans and Scholars
Chantal Savoie (Université Laval)
"I'm My Own Fan": fanatisme et autorité culturelle
Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University)
"Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans": Understanding Eminem

1:30-3:00 Alternative to What?

Alexander Carpenter (University of Toronto)
The Pop Song and its Double: Bauhaus, Cover Songs, and the Deconstruction of Glam
Shannon Carter (University of Western Ontario) The Magazine Culture of Alternative Rock: Coherence and Paradox
Mark Percival (Queen Margaret University College)
Chemikal Underground: "post-independent" rock and pop in Scotland?

3:30-5:00 (De)Constructing Genres

Durrell Bowman (UCLA)
Cast In This Unlikely Role: Genre, Demographics, and the Music of the Canadian Rock Band Rush
Simon Wood (York University)
It Rocks - It Sucks: Listening to the "Live Album"
Heather Sparling & Chris McDonald (York University)
Interpretations of Tradition: Transforming Gaelic Song Into Celtic Pop

SUNDAY MAY 6th

10:00-12:00 Approaching Textual Analysis

Craig Morrison (Concordia University)
California Folk Rock as a Cultural Diagnostic
Robert Toft (University of Western Ontario)
A Grammatical/Rhetorical Model of Phrasing in Singing: Holly Cole's "My Foolish Heart"
Francine Fledderus (UBC)
Genre and Meaning in 'la jalouse' by Jane Siberry
Scott Henderson (Brock University)
Textual Healing: Pop Culture Methodologies and the Musical Text (Or How I Stopped Worrying About Having No Musical Ability and Learned How To Love The Songs)

Abstracts

Karen Pegley (York University)
"A Process of Advocacy": Race, Multiculturalism, and Constructions of Whiteness on MuchMusic (Canada) and MTV (US)

It is indisputable that since MTV's premiere as a venue for (primarily) white rock acts, the station-albeit sometimes reluctantly-has expanded its range of musical genres as well as its racial inclusivity. During the 1980s for instance, the success of rap in the video flow and on programmes like "Yo! MTV Raps" alongside crossover music that combines historically black and white musical genres, rendered black artists an essential demographic on that station. Indeed, in 1992 Andrew Goodwin suggested that because of these and other important strides "the question of racism [on MTV] has been resolved" (1992, p. 137). Since its launch in 1984, MuchMusic has gone even further to incorporate diversity by showcasing in their video repertoire a variety of languages and musical genres, a wide range of musical artists (many of whom are not aired on MTV), and "world music" video shows, the combination of which far exceed CRTC regulations on multiculturalism. As Homi Bhabha has observed, however, "multicultural" practices that encourage diversity should also be examined for simultaneous modes of containment and control (1990, p. 208). Indeed, an analysis of both stations' video programming and rotation schedules from late 1995 suggests that as they expanded their repertories they established unique, carefully controlled, nationally-inflected relationships between dominant and marginalized musical traditions. In this paper I explore how multiculturalism appears to be "celebrated" on MuchMusic and MTV while Western and non-Western representations are negotiated such that ethnocentric norms, which pervade North American cultural media, are never contested.

Brígido Galván (York University)
What Difference Does Difference Make? Toronto's Racial Soundscapes

In the 'West,' -a term that begs serious review- it is 'eco-everything'; music included. Increasingly available are eco-conscious compositions, eco-performances and eco-recordings with the sounds of the rainforest and the jungle; and so are' Third World' octogenarian musicians rescued from 'oblivion' and destitution, marketed in the European and North American World Music concert circuit with its record sales machine, as would exotic handcrafted and hand-woven artifacts attesting to the virtues of the austere rural life of 'distant societies' unfettered by the technological contamination and 'noise' of industrial and urban life. Welcome to politics of difference. And how are 'peripheral' societies to respond to this drastic 'change of heart' on the part of the 'West' on the values of modernity and modernization? How to deal with ironic ‘postmodern’ misrepresentations when the great majority of Latin Americans, for example, now live in urban areas, most struggling to survive and fleeing the burgeoning disparity and ecological violence which has ensued under neoliberal regimes, their enchantment with free trade blocks and the vacuum of political accountability left by the anonymity of transnational capital? My paper is an incipient incursion into these questions. I invoke a handful of distinct local music practices in the city of Toronto in order to explore how the articulation of musical values are important expressive means by which groups and individuals stake their physical and political presence. With its ever expanding urban sprawl and multicultural population the city of Toronto presents ideal as well as unique opportunities to look at how the contradicting political tensions between homogenization and difference of a globalized cultural economy are played out (Appadurai 1990). Consumption channels may not only facilitate but often embody the, sometimes conflictive and violent, ritualization of physical spaces into culturally and historically specific places. More generally, I explore how sound and music may play a role in the negotiations and struggles over cultural authority and, by extension, in the construction the Other .

Viny Hui (University of North Texas)
The Music and Non-Music Media Involvement of Hong Kong Adolescents

The study was to investigate Hong Kong adolescents' music preferences and their involvement in music and non-music media during leisure time. Volunteered subjects, from two schools, included 79 sixth through ninth graders. For the first part of the questionnaire, the students listened to 24 music excerpts and rated their degree of preference and familiarity on 5-point Likert scales. Information from the second part was used to portray different groups' (grade levels and genders) media use pattern including leisure time, activities, and music media involvement. Effects of such factors in addition to music training and was also analyzed. The coefficient of internal consistency of each style was acceptable (Cronbach's a ranged from .60 to .77). The most preferred style, surprisingly, was Western pop/rock (Mean = 3.61) rather than Cantopop/ rock (3.36). The next liked styles ranked as Western classical (3.17), jazz (2.81), Chinese (2.37), and non-Western/ non-Chinese (2.11), in descending order. Excerpt familiarity was positively correlated to preference for all styles, with the top three being more powerful (r = .63 - .51) than the rest. Significant main effect on age was found in Cantopop/rock and Western classical. For gender, significant main effect showed only in jazz. Music training by grade level yielded significant indication but not so for gender. Preference was also positively correlated to the corresponding style of recorded music bought. Students of higher grades pursued more hours of leisure than lower graders (Mean hour ranged from 3.5 daily for the ninth graders to 2.22 for the sixth graders). Girls spent more time daily (Mean hour = 3) than boys did (2.64). Three most participated leisure activities were television viewing (Mean hour = 3), chatting (2.28), recorded music listening (2.09). Regarding music media involvement, girls spent slightly more than boys did on radio music, recorded music, and karaoke/MTV while boys spent a little more than girls did on music websites.

William Echard (Carleton University)
Ways of Knowing, Kinds of Knowledge, and the Scholar-Fan

In recent years, popular music scholars such as Frith, Lipsitz, McClary, Middleton, and Walser have combined the traditional role of the musicologist with other kinds of social position. Among the many strategies explored in this connection, Richard Middleton has advocated the role of ‘scholar-fan'. The scholar-fan as described by Middleton is in many ways similar to the participant observer of traditional ethnomusicology, and also the dialogic researcher as described by Stephen Feld, and in this sense engages with long-standing and still-crucial debates in branches several branches of musical scholarship. In this paper, proceeding from a grounding in social semiotic theory and the neo- pragmatic philosophy of Richard Rorty, I will explore basic questions of the production and control of knowledge within popular music studies, and assess the opportunities and dangers afforded by the role of the scholar fan. What kinds of knowledge can be produced from this position? In what senses does this way of knowing reinforce existing institutional structures? In what ways does it challenge them? And finally, how can it best be employed in the further development of a pluralist, dialogic popular musicology?

Gordon Ross (University of Calgary)
"Can I Have Your Autograph Please": Country Music Fans and Scholars

The relationship between the country music fan and performers is one of the closest relationships in popular music. Historically, the country music fan identifies with the performer and the subject matter of the songs. More so than fans of other popular musics, the country fan can relate to the songs, impose their own experience, and remain loyal to the performer often staying a fan for decades. Country music speaks to its audience on a level that they understand and mainstream country music along with the sub-cultures of bluegrass, country rock, cow punk, and other country hybrids all display similar markers that the fans readily subscribe to. A country music fan must accept the stereotype that accompanies the music and in turn adopt that stereotype if he or she desires to proclaim their fondness for the music. In some ways, the country music scholar is painted with the same brush as the fan and only by research is the stereotype is chipped away making the music "legit." Academic study of country music reveals its intrinsic values and at the same time validates the fandom of the scholar and the audience. The scholar, however, runs the risk of being prejudicial in his or her analysis if personal taste is allowed to bias the research. This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to country music, in order to adequately study any type of music, personal bias must be set aside. Academic study of country music, like other music, canonizes its genres, composers, and performers, and by undertaking research, in some ways, the scholar will perpetuate the mythology of the great artist as viewed by the fan. The canon of the fan becomes intertwined with the canon of academic study, both feeding off each other.

Chantal Savoie (Université Laval)
« I’m My Own Fan » : fanatisme et autorité culturelle

La question des conséquences d'être à la fois juges et parties de nos objets d'études respectifs n'est pas nouvelle. Toutefois, l'accroissement du nombre de recherches portant sur des pratiques culturelles populaires (musicales ou autres), de même que l'augmentation de l'intérêt, de la pertinence et/ou de la visibilité que l'on accorde à ces travaux, incitent à poursuivre la réflexion sur ce terrain. Plutôt que de tenter un bilan des conséquences pratiques du double rôle des intellectuels aux prises avec le dilemme plaisir/connaissance (effets sur les méthodologies, les stratégies discursives, etc.) je souhaite, dans cette communication, poser quelques jalons d'une réflexion qui aurait pour but de situer le problème du fan/chercheur dans une perspective historique, de même que tenter de saisir les conséquences de cette "nouvelle" posture académique sur la notion d'autorité culturelle.

Cette communication s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une réflexion sur l'autorité culturelle et le rôle des intellectuels dans la sphère publique qui constitue l'amorce d'une recherche postdoctorale en préparation. Pour la réaliser, nous puiserons à l'histoire et à la sociologie des intellectuels (Hoggart 1957, Bourdieu 1984, Michael 2000), de même qu'aux recherches sur la valeur culturelle (Eagleton 2000 ; Frow 1995).

Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University)
Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans": Understanding Eminem

"You can melt in my mouth anytime." --Eminem fan's sign, outside the studio on TRL

You gotta call me man, I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose. Sincerely yours, Stan -- P.S. We should be together too. --Eminem, "Stan"

Since he hit the mainstream two years ago, Eminem has been raising a ruckus. Of late, it's hard to find a U.S. media outlet that hasn't addressed the "problem" of Eminem, from his strutting misogyny to his homophobic lyrics, from his young fans' devotion to their parents' outrage. As an icon of more or less business-as-usual "youthful rebellion," Em is not particularly alarming, and he certainly isn't saying much that's new -- many straight white male performers and black hiphoppers have derided women, queers, adults, and various institutions. Where Em does pose a dilemma, however, is in his widespread popularity: his fans include hardcore hiphop heads, 12-year-old Total Request Live viewers, white boys sporting baggy jeans and Slim Shady haircuts, and girls who keep posters of Britney Spears and 'N Synch in their bedrooms.

A pop star and a spokesperson for hiphop rage and interrogation, Em's far-reaching fanbase makes him something of a paradox, combining a threat to pop music's generally romantic and idealistic values, an aggressive challenge to those values (his attacks on Britney, Christina, and the boy bands are infamous, or Valerie Smith's legal efforts to bar him from entering Canada, based on his commitment of "hate crimes" against women), and a full-on marketing miracle -- the kid moves enormous amounts of product, from t-shirts to posters, records to hair bleach. For every MTV special decrying the hatefulness represented by Eminem ("When Lyrics Attack" or the Matthew Shepherd docudrama, followed by a panel discussion about hate crimes and hate speech), there are a thousand airings of the videos, "The Way I Am," "Forgot About Dre," or "The Real Slim Shady."

This paper looks at the Eminem paradox in particular relation to his fans, not only their representations in fan magazines (matching strategies of address in those geared to Backstreet Boys' or Christina Aguilera fans, with stories on his homelife, his childhood, his likes and dislikes) or on tv shows, but also in Eminem's own understanding of his fans, in songs from "The Real Slim Shady" to "Stan." I explore the ways that Eminem's work interrogates his own relationship to his fans while imagining theirs to him, an unusual instance of an artist so self-conscious about his function as object and subject.

Craig Morrison (Concordia University)
California Folk Rock as a Cultural Diagnostic

In Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook's Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative (1990), the authors treat their subjects (a scientific theory, a style of painting, and a technique of fiction writing) as cultural diagnostics, defined as "advanced intellectual activities that serve to reveal the underlying values of the period" (p.4). Values are identifiable characteristics which are "pervasive, almost ubiquitous at a certain level of culture during a certain period" (p.7). They are not necessarily new, but become dominant themes or qualities.

Folk rock, the kind that was based in Los Angeles and had a brief but successful heyday in the mid-1960s, can serve as a cultural diagnostic. Folk rock mixed the ideologies and sounds of the folk revival with those of the British Invasion and was announced by two number one hits by the Byrds: "Mr. Tambourine Man," a Bob Dylan composition, and "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)," a biblical text adapted by Pete Seeger. Other Los Angeles acts that recorded folk rock include the Mamas and the Papas, the Turtles, the Leaves, the Grass Roots, Sonny and Cher, Love, and Buffalo Springfield.

To decode the style's themes, I make use of the matrix concept advanced by musicologist Peter Van der Merwe in Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music (1992). The term matrix refers to "a unit of musical communication" (p. 96), such as a regular beat, a fixed musical note, or an individual chord. Matrices are found grouped together in concrete ways (songs, styles), and conceptual ones (sonata form, or the keynote with its feeling of home base). All seem to depend on truisms and come with implications (like a major scale with its diatonic triads), and can carry embedded meanings (like the bright mood of the major scale). This paper will present, through the analysis of a sample repertoire, the stylistic vocabulary of folk rock and an interpretation of its cultural meaning.

Shannon Carter (University of Western Ontario)
The Magazine Culture of Alternative Rock: Generic Coherence and Paradox

Alternative rock began life on the fringe, as the negative space surrounding the mainstream or 'corporate' rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is exclusive and riddled with notions of authenticity including fervent claims to non-commercialism. Today it is marketed as a mainstream genre by the industry press and the distribution machines of major recording labels, yet continues to maintain the illusion of the noncommercialism essential to its identity. Alternative should not cohere as a genre but somehow continues to do so, otherwise the industry could make no use of it as a marketing tool. The magazines Spin, The Alternative Press, CMJ New Music Monthly, and Chart are a force in consumers' sense of alternative rock and present us with a multifaceted view of how the industry instructs and reacts to its audience in terms of this genre. All four periodicals publish charts and reviews that are consulted regularly by rock, alternative, and campus radio stations to develop play lists, widening the magazines' sphere of influence beyond their readers. This paper offers an examination of the musical, material, and ideological elements used to bind this paradoxical genre from the perspective of these four magazines through an analysis of their musical content, graphic design, advertisements, ownership, and rhetoric. There are few studies on alternative rock at present. Of these, most have examined the cultural identities of fringe or underground alternative while the mass-marketed form has received little attention. This examination of the mainstream-alternative press, part of a larger study of alternative rock mass-reception, begins to redress this imbalance and adds to the literature surrounding the notion of genre as the negotiated space between music, industry, and consumer.

Mark Percival (Queen Margaret University College)
Chemikal Underground: "post-independent" rock and pop in Scotland?

Glasgow-based Chemikal Underground is one of Scotland's most successful independent record labels, staring out in 1995 with the debut 7" single release from label founders, The Delgados (originally a guitar-based alternative pop/rock band). In 1999 the Delgados released their critically acclaimed third studio album on Chemikal Underground, whilst still running the label, and having released significant albums by Mogwai (post-rock), Arab Strap (down-tempo alt-ballads) and The Radar Brothers (LA-based alt-pop guitars). However, it was the Delgados album, The Great Eastern, which was nominated for the Technics Mercury Music Prize 2000, awarded by a panel on journalists, media people and musicians to the best UK album of the year. In September 2000, the award was won by Badly Drawn Boy, but the Delgados album was rumoured to have been very close to winning, on a split vote.

This paper investigates notions of independence, alternativeness and the mainstream from the perspective of a band that started an indie label with a militantly anti-corporate approach and finds itself not only engaging directly with the global music industry, but also up against mainstream major label albums and records by folk and classical artists. The Delgados have always claimed they didn't want to be seen as 'lo-fi' or 'indie', but how has this mainstream validation affected their approach to their business and to their music? To what extent is Chemikal Underground representative of a new generation of business-savvy, artist-run independent labels in the UK and North America? And where does Chemikal Underground position itself in relation to a 'mainstream' music industry?

Alexander Carpenter (University of Toronto)
The Pop Song and its Double: Bauhaus, Cover Songs, and the Deconstruction of Glam

The British post-punk band Bauhaus (1979-1983) is often credited with the founding of the genre known as "gothic rock," so-called for its tendency towards dark, dreary music and eschatological lyrics. The band's true roots, however, actually lie in the British "glam rock" movement of the early 1970s, spearheaded by performers like David Bowie and T.Rex. Bauhaus was in fact vilified by the musical press in England in the early 1980s for resurrecting the theatrics and pomposity of glam, a musical aesthetic thought dead and buried by the raw, stripped down aesthetic of the Sex Pistols and punk rock (ca.1976-77). I argue in this paper that Bauhaus' resurrection of glam was not simply derivative-a cheap copy of the original, as British music critics would have it-but rather represented a new, critically deconstructed version of glam, one that combined seemingly disparate elements punk and glam to create the group's post-punk identity.

This deconstruction of glam was accomplished through the medium of the cover song, a song composed and recorded by one performer that has been re-recorded by another. The concept of the cover song brings to the fore questions about originality, identity, and reproduction, questions that are central to the critical practice of the philosophy of deconstruction. With the principles of deconstruction in mind, I will examine two songs "covered" by Bauhaus, David Bowie's Glam anthem "Ziggy Stardust," and T. Rex's "Telegram Sam." My paper will show how the idea of a cover song and the processes of deconstruction are inter-implicated, how Bauhaus' cover versions of two glam songs amount to a deconstructive critique of the musical aesthetic of glam rock, and how these covers-as-critique ironically challenge the characterization of the group as mere imitators of David Bowie and T. Rex.

Heather Sparling & Chris McDonald (York University)
Interpretations of Tradition: Transforming Gaelic Song Into Celtic Pop

What transformation does a traditional song undergo in order to become part of the World Music phenomenon? Using a field recording of a Scots Gaelic dance song, "Seallaibh Curraigh Eoghainn" ("Owen's Corracle"), we consider how it is altered by two Canadian pop artists from the Gaelic region of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia: The Barra MacNeils and Mary Jane Lamond. Celtic music has recently enjoyed considerable popularity in the World Music scene. In the popular mind, the notion of "Celtic culture" often conjures images of bagpipes, kilts, knotwork, druids, standing stones and Celtic crosses. The Barra MacNeils draw upon the aural equivalents of these images in order to identify to the world market that their musical heritage is Celtic whereas Mary Jane Lamond explores a broader range of contemporary pop styles.

Informed by Heather's ethnographic work on Canadian Gaelic musical culture, we define and contextualize the song genre of which "Seallaibh Curraigh Eoghainn" is an example, focusing on issues of authenticity. Although such a traditional Gaelic song may fit the World Music definition of "authentic," there are issues on a more local level, such as the fact that this particular song is not indigenous to Cape Breton but was, instead, learned by Lamond and The Barra MacNeils from Scottish singers. Moreover, the song genre to which this particular example belongs is not generally considered representative of Gaelic culture by native Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton. We discuss how each artist maneuvers through these issues, based on their positions within Cape Breton Gaelic culture and the aims of their recordings.

Drawing on Chris's specialization in Canadian popular music and musical analysis, we consider how each artist utilizes instrumentation, harmony, vocal style, studio effects, and rhythmic and melodic variation to represent "Seallaibh Curraigh Eoghainn" in two very different modern recordings. The two representations each serve very different cultural needs. Lamond takes a more didactic approach, highlighting the lyrics through clarity of diction and tempo change, thereby using her recording to teach listeners about Gaelic culture. Primarily a folk-country band that only records the occasional traditional Gaelic song, the Barra MacNeils use Celtic music stereotypes such as drones, echo effects, head voice and atmospheric synthesizer pads to create a version that is intended more for entertainment.

Bringing the issues of authenticity and representation together within a framework of cultural context and performance style, we discuss how and why this particular Gaelic song is transformed into two different Celtic pop recordings.

Simon Wood (York University)
It Rocks - It Sucks: Listening to the 'Live Album'

While discussions of studio recordings and concerts have become commonplace in the literature of popular music, the intersection of the two - the "live album" - has attracted little attention. In many popular music genres these recording (along with the so-called "greatest hits" collection), are viewed as a contractual necessity consisting primarily of previously released material, and thus, of secondary importance for fans and scholars alike. However, for genres which lie on the margins of acceptance by commercial media, such as heavy metal and hard rock, these documents serve a much more important function. As Robert Walser states: "Because heavy metal threatened to antagonize demographically targeted audiences, metal bands received virtually no radio airplay, and they had to support their album releases by constant touring." This emphasis on the concert in the practice of rock fan communities has engendered a similar level of interest in the "live album." This paper will draw on examples from four live recordings produced between 1975 and 1981 by the rock groups KISS (ALIVE! and ALIVE II ) and Rush (All The World's A Stage and Exit...Stage Left) . In a discussion integrating numerous comments from members of the two fan communities, it will consider aspects of the performances, sound quality, and cover design found on the four recordings. Drawing on the work of Christopher Small and his notion of "Musicking," as well as that of Robert Walser, Simon Frith, and William H. McNeill, it will place these fan comments into a theoretical framework, suggesting that the recordings allow the listener to recreate the collective process of the rock concert, but that the success of this recreation is based on distinct criteria - criteria which are under constant discussion and renegotiation within the fan communities.

Durrell Bowman (UCLA)
Cast In This Unlikely Role: Genre, Demographics, and the Music of the Canadian Rock Band Rush

My dissertation, "Permanent Change: Culture, Ideology, Genre, and the Music of the Rock Band Rush," concerns the music of a progressive hard rock band from Toronto, Canada. As I am a musicology Ph.D. candidate and popular music scholar who was once a teenaged Rush fan, my intellectual work in this area presents a number of challenges.

First, rock music historians and encyclopedia editors routinely leave Rush out of their publications. For example, despite my advice and the efforts of my dissertation advisor, the recent web-based New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians‹although considerably expanded in its materials on popular music‹does not include an article on Rush. This is partly due to "genre issues" involving the band's difficult fusion of British progressive rock and American hard rock and partly due to the fact that the band is Canadian. In fact, Rush has had a longer string of gold-selling albums in the United States (22) than any rock group except the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and KISS.

Second, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, rock critics and fans of other types of music often suggest that Rush's music could not have been meaningful outside of Canada. In fact, the band has been commercially successful throughout North America and Europe for at least twenty years. Although Rush has never had a Top 20 hit in the United States, every major market has at least one radio station that programmes some of the band's songs, either as examples of "classic rock" or of "album rock." The band has sold about 35 million albums (most of these in the United States), and it was also the top-grossing annual U.S. concert act for several years in the 1980s and early 1990s. I have encountered and surveyed Rush fans ranging from their teens to their forties and including many women and non-whites. Part of my dissertation explores the ethnographic dimensions of Rush fandom in Southern California and Southern Ontario.

Third, mainstream popular music publications, especially Rolling Stone, have derided Rush's music for reasons such as the band's supposed pretentiousness and staunch individualist lyrics. In fact, Rush incorporates a much wider variety of musical styles and lyrics than do most popular music artists. These styles have included blues-rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, new wave, synth pop, world beat, alternative, and mainstream rock. The band's lyrics have included extended Ayn Rand-derived individualist narratives and sociologically-informed critiques of society and politics. However, they have also included mini-narratives about freedom, war, suicide, religion, the media, the environment, and numerous other topics. Although the band recorded and released about 130 songs on various albums between 1974 and 1998, Rush's critics mainly emphasize the band's most politically difficult works of the mid to late 1970s. My detailed readings of some those works serve to explain their ideological and musical meaning in a much more complete manner than would be possible if I had never been a fan of this music in the first place.

Should my work as a musicologist primarily function to convince other scholars that the ideological, cultural, genre, musical, and lyrical contexts for "invisible mainstreams" (such as Rush's fans) deserve to be written into the history of popular music? Or should my work more directly address such fans themselves, many of whom are well-educated, well-read, amateur musicians? (For example, those of my friends who have also been Rush fans include professional physicists, computer programmers, architects, and many others.) Is it possible for popular music studies to contribute not only to a community of scholars but also to a much wider community of enlightened fans? This paper explores these issues.

Robert Toft (University of Western Ontario)
A Grammatical/Rhetorical Model of Phrasing in Singing: Holly Cole's 'My foolish heart'

In recent years, many approaches to the analysis of popular music have been suggested and debated in the scholarly community. One area which has not received sufficient attention, however, is the analysis of phrasing in singing, and it warrants further investigation. In this paper, I will discuss the techniques of phrasing Holly Cole employs to establish the sense of the text in her recording of 'My foolish heart' (Washington/Young).

The art of phrasing in singing has been closely aligned to the role of pauses in speaking for at least the past 300 years, and Cole's method of articulating the ideas presented in songs is identical to the principles traditionally used by speakers. Indeed, when a reconstruction of the grammatical/rhetorical method of delivery employed in the 18th century, the golden age of elocution in the English language, is applied to Cole's version of 'My foolish heart', a model emerges that not only elucidates her approach to phrasing but also serves to help us describe one facet of the intuitive emotional responses singers have to the texts they sing.

My grammatical/rhetorical model has been derived from the works of Joseph Robertson (1785), John Walker (1785), and Lindley Murray (1795) and is based upon their discussions of grammatical and rhetorical pauses. The two ways in which orators and singers articulated the structure of their sentences were through the observance of notated punctuation (the grammatical pause) and the application of a pause in a place where, although a stop was not indicated, the sense of the sentence called for one (the rhetorical pause). By introducing grammatical and rhetorical pauses of varying lengths (a hierarchy of commas, colons, and full stops existed), singers and speakers were able to clearly establish the sense of a text. Like her counterparts in the 18th century, Holly Cole places pauses (that is, inserts rests into the vocal line) after nominatives and before accusatives, prepositional phrases, conjunctions, and relative pronouns, as well as in other places where she chooses to emphasize certain ideas in the text.

Through her highly articulated style of delivery, Cole establishes the sense of the text for the listener in a way that demonstrates the expressive nature of the pause. Her approach belongs to a tradition that dates back hundreds of years, a tradition that once served both the 'classical' and 'popular' styles of singing but now remains firmly established only in the world of popular music. As Richard Middleton predicted a number of years ago, studies such as this one may help to bridge the ideological barriers that exist between art and popular music.

Francine Fledderus (UBC)
Genre and Meaning in "la jalouse" by Jane Siberry

Because the study of popular music is a relatively new field, it has not yet established a standardized analytical methodology. Far from it. In practice the discipline is divided between two camps: those such as Wilder, Hamm, and Mellers who apply the analytical techniques of art music theory to popular song, and those such as Keil, Tagg, and Hennion who do not. The rationalte of the latter group is that they believe that the analytical tools themselves prioritize the parameters emphasized in art music aesthetics. For example, in art music theory harmony, tonality, counterpoint, and form are prioritized above rhythm, timbre, and pitch nuance to the detriment of popular music. Because the latter faction has eliminated the tools of the former, neither school has come up with an ideal approach to the analysis of popular music. To combat this lack, this paper offers a potential framework for the analysis of popular music, by way of an example of a song by Jane Siberry. Siberry (b. 1955) is a Canadian singer-songwriter whose experimental pop songs present an original voice in popular music. Her oeuvre spans from the 1980s to the present, which is no small feat in light of Siberry's avoidance of formulaic songwriting and her negotiation of contrasting genres(including folk reivival, electro pop, jazz, country, funk, etc.). In this paper, "La jalouse" from Siberry's 1989 album, BOUND BY THE BEAUTY, will be discussed within the generic parameters of folk revival. First of all, an analysis of folk revival as a genre prototype will reveal which parameters are most distictive in this genre, as well as the meanings associated with folk revival. Secondly, "la jalouse" itself (its lyrics and music) will be analyzed from a transcription in terms of both its consonant fits with the conventions of the folk revival genre and its dissonances from generic conventions. Finally, conclusions (intimately bound up with issues of meaning) will be drawn as to why Sibery might find it necessary to depart from certain folk revival conventions in the composition of "la jalouse."

Scott Henderson (Brock University)
Textual Healing: Pop Culture Methodologies and the Musical Text (Or How I Stopped Worrying About Having No Musical Ability and Learned How To Love The Songs)

The aim of this paper is to analyze my own responses to discussing, and critically interpreting music texts using a background in Film and Popular Culture studies. My main concern is in looking at how the meaning of some songs lies outside of their musical structures and is more closely related through intertextual references. At the same time I want to remain aware of the pleasure this brings in 'making sense' of songs, especially as someone with little musicological sense who nonetheless derives great pleasure in music. The focus will be on two pairs of cover versions, 'Superstar', originally by The Carpenters and covered by Sonic Youth, and 'Come as you Are', originally by Nirvana and covered by The King, an Elvis impersonator. In the paper I will examine how the interpretations of the cover versions rely on aspects of musical style and additionally rely on popular culture references that exist outside the texts (musical and lyrical) of the songs themselves. At the same time, the process opens up other issues and avenues for the study of music (industry structures, gender, authorship, genre, stardom/personas etc.). While these are not necessarily new, the approach here is about assessing why they may provide a 'mastery' of the text in such a way as to give this musically inept music junkie some form of pleasure. These songs are not necessarily favourites of mine, but in teaching popular culture and popular music this method of analysis has proven fruitful and enjoyable.