Andrew Flory | Carleton College (original) (raw)
Books by Andrew Flory
Papers by Andrew Flory
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2020
![Research paper thumbnail of Motown Unreleased: 1969 [Various Artists]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/89716487/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
American Music, 2019
The Grateful Dead are very much alive. often considered relics of a formative era in the history ... more The Grateful Dead are very much alive. often considered relics of a formative era in the history of rock, the Dead have always been known as a band in the flesh, a group to see in a live environment. “There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert,” goes the adage among devotees of the group who often followed the band around, sometimes seeing multiple concerts in a single season and creating a largescale cultural following that was unlike anything that came before in rock music. The group was well aware of its own liveness. members often cited live shows as the central statements of their work, and the band played with aspects of performativity in album titles like Live/Dead and Go to Heaven, revealing ironic connections between ontologically fixed, carefully crafted rock albums and the concerts that made them famous. unlike many of the group’s counterparts that formed in the mid1960s, the Dead’s performance practice helped to form the basis for the live rock concert as we know it, and the band’s music continues to be received in a manner that accounts for a complex and nuanced history of performance practice. The scene surrounding the Grateful Dead was segregated from mainstream rock. Although the band’s tours were among the highest grossing in the business for about ten years during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Jul 12, 2014
he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. O... more he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. Once at the vanguard of youth culture in the wake of a devastating World War, rock occupies a very different place in modern life. Rock is at once historic and contemporary, and its artists and fans are grandparents and pre-teens alike. Rock's impact is global, felt substantially in often-cited places like Tennessee, California, and New York, but also in locales that receive much less attention from English-speaking populations such as Russia, Brazil, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. For academics working in fields pertaining to music, the place of rock has also changed. Rock music became important in the 1970s and 1980s for helping to challenge the centrality of Western art music in scholarly discourse and teaching. Paralleling widespread interest in rock as a musical form, however, student and faculty engagement with rock as a subject of study has grown dramatically during the last several decades. Now rock is so prominent in college teaching that we need to question its place. Isn't it fitting that a style of music once associated with transgression might later play the role of oppressor? Once revolutionary, rock is now hegemonic. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. David Blake's essay raises powerful ideas about the place and content of rock courses in the modern academic environment. His argument hinges on three interrelated claims that merit further discussion: (1) rock courses are problematically at the core of contemporary efforts to teach "popular music, " (2) critical issues derived from the study of rock are not wholly applicable to genres that emerged after 1980 such as hip-hop and EDM, and (3) a frame of technology can be helpful in shifting away from an out-of-step rock-centered approach to teaching courses in popular music. In the spirit of this Journal, Blake should be lauded for calling to task our perspective on pedagogical approaches to popular music. The "why" and the "how" of rock pedagogy are worthy topics for debate, and the role of rock history within studies of popular music, broader music-related disciplines, and fields outside of music should be ongoing topics of critical
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2019
This article focuses on Marvin Gaye's involvement with music related to the “middle of the ro... more This article focuses on Marvin Gaye's involvement with music related to the “middle of the road” (MOR) market within the American music business between 1961 and 1979. From 1961 to 1966, in addition to his work as a teen idol, Gaye performed regularly in supper clubs, released four albums of standards material, and recorded dozens of other related songs that were eventually shelved. In a fascinating turn, he worked extensively on a series of unreleased tracks between 1967 and 1979, using experimental techniques to revise, reinterpret, and recompose melodies over already completed backing music. Gaye's interest in ballads connects to a different tradition of American music from his soul hits, drawing on the legacy of 1920s crooning, mainstream swing vocalists like Frank Sinatra, and African American forebears such as Nat “King” Cole and Sam Cooke. This article makes a number of new claims about Gaye's career trajectory: that his method of composing with his voice in the s...
Journal of the Society for American Music, 2008
Composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, who work individually but also use collect... more Composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, who work individually but also use collectively the name Bang on a Can, are best known for blending the sounds and traditions of art and popular music. In addition to their compositional bodies of work, Wolfe, Gordon, and Lang have created an infrastructure that supports the work of many other composers by sponsoring an annual festival in New York, various “marathon” performances, and the Cantaloupe Music record label. Through their use of contrasting styles of postwar music, nonconventional instrumentation, and savvy cover art and promotional materials, these composers have been pioneers in the trend of postminimalist new music collectives that approach art music with a vernacular flair. A good example of this mixture can be found in The Carbon Copy Building, a work for the stage created by graphic novelist Ben Katchor and Bang on a Can. Although Gordon, Wolfe, and Lang have long collaborated in their business affairs, The Carbon Copy Building is the first large-scale musical project they have composed together. Cantaloupe Music’s recent release of The Carbon Copy Building collects the images and texts used in the original live version of the piece into a short graphic novel and includes a compact disc of studio recordings of the musical works, offering this piece for the first time in mass-market form.1 The innovative mix of media in this package raises interesting questions of genre. I tend to think of The Carbon Copy Building as opera, which may seem obvious since the package bears the label “A Comic-Strip Opera,” the libretto identifies itself as “experimental opera,” and the package uses the normative proportions of a compact disc (with the illustrations appearing in the place of liner notes). Yet it would not be out of the question for listeners to experience this package as a graphic novel first, with a secondary focus on the accompanying music. In this way, and in many others that became more apparent as I delved deeper into the world of this piece, the aural and visual elements of The Carbon Copy Building form a cohesive multimedia unit. The story of the opera offers commentary on two contrasting groups in the modern city, neither of which is seen in a particularly flattering light. On the one
T he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years.... more T he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. Once at the vanguard of youth culture in the wake of a devastating World War, rock occupies a very different place in modern life. Rock is at once historic and contemporary, and its artists and fans are grandparents and pre-teens alike. Rock's impact is global, felt substantially in often-cited places like Tennessee, California, and New York, but also in locales that receive much less attention from English-speaking populations such as Russia, Brazil, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2020
Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
American Music, 2019
The Grateful Dead are very much alive. often considered relics of a formative era in the history ... more The Grateful Dead are very much alive. often considered relics of a formative era in the history of rock, the Dead have always been known as a band in the flesh, a group to see in a live environment. “There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert,” goes the adage among devotees of the group who often followed the band around, sometimes seeing multiple concerts in a single season and creating a largescale cultural following that was unlike anything that came before in rock music. The group was well aware of its own liveness. members often cited live shows as the central statements of their work, and the band played with aspects of performativity in album titles like Live/Dead and Go to Heaven, revealing ironic connections between ontologically fixed, carefully crafted rock albums and the concerts that made them famous. unlike many of the group’s counterparts that formed in the mid1960s, the Dead’s performance practice helped to form the basis for the live rock concert as we know it, and the band’s music continues to be received in a manner that accounts for a complex and nuanced history of performance practice. The scene surrounding the Grateful Dead was segregated from mainstream rock. Although the band’s tours were among the highest grossing in the business for about ten years during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Jul 12, 2014
he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. O... more he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. Once at the vanguard of youth culture in the wake of a devastating World War, rock occupies a very different place in modern life. Rock is at once historic and contemporary, and its artists and fans are grandparents and pre-teens alike. Rock's impact is global, felt substantially in often-cited places like Tennessee, California, and New York, but also in locales that receive much less attention from English-speaking populations such as Russia, Brazil, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. For academics working in fields pertaining to music, the place of rock has also changed. Rock music became important in the 1970s and 1980s for helping to challenge the centrality of Western art music in scholarly discourse and teaching. Paralleling widespread interest in rock as a musical form, however, student and faculty engagement with rock as a subject of study has grown dramatically during the last several decades. Now rock is so prominent in college teaching that we need to question its place. Isn't it fitting that a style of music once associated with transgression might later play the role of oppressor? Once revolutionary, rock is now hegemonic. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. David Blake's essay raises powerful ideas about the place and content of rock courses in the modern academic environment. His argument hinges on three interrelated claims that merit further discussion: (1) rock courses are problematically at the core of contemporary efforts to teach "popular music, " (2) critical issues derived from the study of rock are not wholly applicable to genres that emerged after 1980 such as hip-hop and EDM, and (3) a frame of technology can be helpful in shifting away from an out-of-step rock-centered approach to teaching courses in popular music. In the spirit of this Journal, Blake should be lauded for calling to task our perspective on pedagogical approaches to popular music. The "why" and the "how" of rock pedagogy are worthy topics for debate, and the role of rock history within studies of popular music, broader music-related disciplines, and fields outside of music should be ongoing topics of critical
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2019
This article focuses on Marvin Gaye's involvement with music related to the “middle of the ro... more This article focuses on Marvin Gaye's involvement with music related to the “middle of the road” (MOR) market within the American music business between 1961 and 1979. From 1961 to 1966, in addition to his work as a teen idol, Gaye performed regularly in supper clubs, released four albums of standards material, and recorded dozens of other related songs that were eventually shelved. In a fascinating turn, he worked extensively on a series of unreleased tracks between 1967 and 1979, using experimental techniques to revise, reinterpret, and recompose melodies over already completed backing music. Gaye's interest in ballads connects to a different tradition of American music from his soul hits, drawing on the legacy of 1920s crooning, mainstream swing vocalists like Frank Sinatra, and African American forebears such as Nat “King” Cole and Sam Cooke. This article makes a number of new claims about Gaye's career trajectory: that his method of composing with his voice in the s...
Journal of the Society for American Music, 2008
Composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, who work individually but also use collect... more Composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, who work individually but also use collectively the name Bang on a Can, are best known for blending the sounds and traditions of art and popular music. In addition to their compositional bodies of work, Wolfe, Gordon, and Lang have created an infrastructure that supports the work of many other composers by sponsoring an annual festival in New York, various “marathon” performances, and the Cantaloupe Music record label. Through their use of contrasting styles of postwar music, nonconventional instrumentation, and savvy cover art and promotional materials, these composers have been pioneers in the trend of postminimalist new music collectives that approach art music with a vernacular flair. A good example of this mixture can be found in The Carbon Copy Building, a work for the stage created by graphic novelist Ben Katchor and Bang on a Can. Although Gordon, Wolfe, and Lang have long collaborated in their business affairs, The Carbon Copy Building is the first large-scale musical project they have composed together. Cantaloupe Music’s recent release of The Carbon Copy Building collects the images and texts used in the original live version of the piece into a short graphic novel and includes a compact disc of studio recordings of the musical works, offering this piece for the first time in mass-market form.1 The innovative mix of media in this package raises interesting questions of genre. I tend to think of The Carbon Copy Building as opera, which may seem obvious since the package bears the label “A Comic-Strip Opera,” the libretto identifies itself as “experimental opera,” and the package uses the normative proportions of a compact disc (with the illustrations appearing in the place of liner notes). Yet it would not be out of the question for listeners to experience this package as a graphic novel first, with a secondary focus on the accompanying music. In this way, and in many others that became more apparent as I delved deeper into the world of this piece, the aural and visual elements of The Carbon Copy Building form a cohesive multimedia unit. The story of the opera offers commentary on two contrasting groups in the modern city, neither of which is seen in a particularly flattering light. On the one
T he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years.... more T he role of rock in musical and cultural life has changed drastically over the last sixty years. Once at the vanguard of youth culture in the wake of a devastating World War, rock occupies a very different place in modern life. Rock is at once historic and contemporary, and its artists and fans are grandparents and pre-teens alike. Rock's impact is global, felt substantially in often-cited places like Tennessee, California, and New York, but also in locales that receive much less attention from English-speaking populations such as Russia, Brazil, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia.