The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
Nominate-best-2010

Pop gets schooled



Four years of my misspent youth were whiled away as an English major at a piney liberal arts college where, when not playing beer pong as it’s meant to be played, I was in the library muddling through abstruse academic texts like Julia Kristeva’s Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity,
Felix Guattari’s Psychoanalysis and Transversality.

It wasn’t always easy going. Trying to decipher word clusters like "the almost astrologically lush plurality of its overlapping taxonomies of physical zones" or “a narrowly and severely normative, difference-eradicating ethical programme has long-sheltered under developmental narratives and a metaphorics of health and pathology” — those are from Epistemology of the Closet, by pioneering queer theorist Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, who died earlier this month — can be challenging in the best of times, never mind when one has indulged in a few postprandial bong hits.

I don’t smoke pot anymore, and I also try very hard not to read much in the way of dense intertextual deconstruction. But San Francisco designer Nikolay Saveliev has made me wistful for those long-ago days.


With help from our neighbors down in Providence at Brown Student Radio, Saveliev’s Pop Matters project screen printed 140 vinyl record sleeves, each with a two-sided insert featuring “
faux-academic material on pop music and the state of the record industry, seeded with promotional material for indie radio stations.” These were then secreted into used & new record stores and sneaked onto the shelves.

And so, some unsuspecting platter flipper alighted surprisedly on Kanye West’s new auto-tuned glitch-trip Profit Margins in Coupling, or Nickelback’s self-recriminatory nu-MOR flagellation Relations: The Recursiveness of Professional Mediocrity. Or any of these
:



Even more so than those spot-on titles, I dig the album art. It reminds me a lot, of course, of Sonic Youth’s bone-dry SYR series.



Come to think of it, actually, the sleeve art was my favorite thing about those records too. I’ll confess I never really listened too much to the airy experimental jams contained within. With apologies to Thurston & Lee, I suppose I just wasn’t meant for egghead music or fancy book larnin’.

But, hey, If you’re so inclined, it is true: a little Lil Jon is a fine soundtrack for a re-reading of Alan Sokal’s “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”

BONUS FUN: Chomskybot!!!

  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article

Leave a Comment

Login | Not a member yet? Click here to Join
Follow the Phoenix
  • newsletter
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • youtube
  • rss
All Blogs
more by Mike Miliard
Obama's year two to-do's | January 22, 2010
Harvard's breathable chocolate | January 22, 2010
Flynn-terrogation | January 15, 2010
Remembering Joey Ramone | January 08, 2010
Joey Ramone remembered | January 08, 2010

 See all articles by: Mike Miliard

ADVERTISEMENT
Latest Video
OTD Categories
Out
VIDEO: Arctic Monkeys at the House of Blues
Rare Frequencies
Rare Frequencies: Trouble and treble
Playlists
Lady Lee's Lion's Den Playlist
MP3 of the Week
HOMEWORK: Assignment #2: D-Tension
Hot Tix
Ticket On-Sale Alert: Muse, Mariah Carey, Black Eyed...
Latest Comments
The Touching Tale Of Labor And Scott Brown - Blocking nominations is a time honored tradition that both parties partake in, most recently by Barry...

By Fake Name on 02-06-2010 in Talking Politics

MP3 of the Week: Vikesh Kapoor, "Newspress Scare" - stream the 7" here: vikeshkapoor.bandcamp.com/.../newspress-scare-7-2 tickets to the show here:...

By hootenanny on 02-05-2010 in On The Download

Dear Rush Limbaugh: Please Drop Dead. Love, Twitter - Shows the kind of exemplary trash that festers under the banner of the Democrat party. Wishing ANYONE...

By pirogue on 02-05-2010 in Phlog

The Touching Tale Of Labor And Scott Brown - Want a real conversation about the Massachusetts gubernatorial race? Watch Basic Black live TONIGHT ...

By saltzmas on 02-04-2010 in Talking Politics

Thugs and goons: Howie Carr explains--updated! - Oh, he got it from the comments! Nice job, Howie. So, according to Mr. Carr, it is the New York Times...

By Farnkoff on 02-04-2010 in Dont Quote Me

Latest Comments from On The Download
Most Viewed
Julian Casablancas on what's wrong with his solo record. Plus: the 76th bullshit Britney story of 2009
HOMEWORK: Assignment #4: Ryan Walsh of Hallelujah the Hills
MP3: Casey Dienel goes Gaga on White Hinterland's new Kairos
MP3 of the Week: Conservative Man, "The Heist"
Together at last: Amanda Palmer and Kay Hanley duet at Lizard Lounge [video]
Photos and Video: Julian Casablancas at the Paradise Rock Club, and live on WFNX
Ticket On-Sale Alert: The Thermals, Trey Anastasio, Spoon, Jay-Z, Xiu Xiu, and more
Most Viewed from On The Download
Search Blogs
 
Links
Bradley’s Almanac - Lower Allston blogging and bootlegging since 2001
Band in Boston -
Basstown -
Wayne&Wax -
Aurgasm -
Onward Charles -
Compound 440r -
Anti-Gravity Bunny -
Clicky Clicky -
Soul Clap -
Lemmingtrail -
WMBR -
WFNX -
Beginning To See the Light -
Jump the Turnstyle -
Heads Up Boston -
Loaded Gun -
Enough Cowbell -
Vanyaland -
On The Download Archives
Sunday, February 07, 2010  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
thePhoenix.com
Phoenix Media/Communications Group
Copyright © 2010 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group