Uuurrrg,
I am sooo sick, & feeling sorry for myself.
Slightly better than yesterday tho, so I thought I might try a post.
I'm posting from the computer labs in the SS&H library, where also I am with Renee - she, if it is possible - is even sicker than I am: So please, go easy on her in marking. Here is a link to her blog (non-course-related), which, because she has been so busy, she has not updated in a while - it's still pretty good tho.
I know that Marshall McLuhan cut a pretty wide swath in what he thought was media: You know - the lightbulb as medium for electric light. Still I'm afraid that some of the stuff I talk about may be getting a little outside of the realm of 'media-studies'. I guess I'm a culture junkie, not just a media junkie. Having said this, a nice girl pointed me to this website where one may indulge in all the hilarious unintentional/non-signification of the Japanese uses of English - known popularly as Engrish.
An excellent example of which, may be seen below:

Hello Hitty? What? Oh well.
Not only going off-topic, but once again trying to pass-off work I had to do anyway as course-work: I'm supposed to be having (at least one of) the Swollen Members on my show this Wednesday, after which they will be tearing it up at the Rev.
They hail from far-off Canada where they've been the mainstay of the trad.-underground hip hop scene for nearly ten years. Not least thru MC Mad Child's record label Battle Axe. A lot of hard-hitting, techy-sounding & (I think what drew me most to the label) politically-driven hip hop.
Actually, the Members have been heading toward a more West-Coast US sound - more sheen in production and more (syrupy) melodies - which may be a product of part-time members Rob the Viking (producer / DJ) & Moka Only (MC) coming on board full-time. They talk a bit about that in this inthemix feature. As well as their early induction into the legendary rocksteady crew. Although there's a ton of info on their homepage (linked above) - very professional. Actually, they may be getting a little too slick, for me, the way they talk about

the bridge between their underground beginnings and their future stardom...

They've just done a bunch of shows with the Black Eyed Peas who've also come over all West-Coast R'n'B sounding - which, despite the best efforts of N*E*R*D & especially those craaazy boys from Outkast I'm still not a huge fan of. I guess I'll just have to talk about their old stuff...So why aren't you guys any good any more?!
Hmm, I think I'll do some more research tomorrow when pumping on fewer parts vitriol to milk'o'kindness.

Back again,

I was hoping to be off the flu-meds by today, but that hasn't happened - so my head feels like a balloon. Better than the puddle of sludge it would otherwise be. Let's hope it's a balloon full of pertinent information, then (my one concession to optimism for today). I feel a bit silly asking about the reading for this week, (like I waz some kinda nagging overachiever or something - shyah!) - I just thought that 3 weeks of diary for 15% would have included that. Very happy that that isn't the case.
I've just been lumped with another interview to do, one that I really want but Steinski is touring in December, why is he giving interviews now? Anyhoo Who is this chubby, ageing, white guy? - I hear you ask. Your slightly hurtful remarks are more relevant than you know, because such a man is a key figure in the history of hip hop! Steinski is so old-skool that he can't even maintain a proper-website 'bout himself - I had to use his discogs listing (fantastic resource for finding every obscure, weird record any artist ever made - especially if they themselves are obscure and weird). Unfortunately the relevance of the guy would remain a little obscure without an accompanying bio (finally, there, barely adequate - but it gives you some idea). Let me flesh it out a little bit: Way back in the day, '83 in New York - Steve Stein & Douglas DiFranco, mild mannered ad. exec. & sound engineer (respectively) by day, or, um, in fact all the time until one weekend they locked themselves in a recording studio with a ton of Steinski's vinyl (he has a collecting fetish) and created the tape-editing-sensation that would come to be known as 'the lesson'. This sample-heavy, funky-as-hell tune they entered into a Tommy-boy records 'remix' contest & to their great surprise, won. Tommy Boy were also very surprised when they discovered the lucky winners were white. The original tapes sold out like nobodies business, as did the copies of two ensuing sequels. Discogs, mighty tho they may be, either don't list tape, or those earliest copies are very jealously guarded: Their earliest listing is for an '85 vinyl pressing of all three. Well anyway, since then, Doug DiFranco has departed the scene - but not before having helped to inspire all-sample-based-hip-hop and that's a lot. They are also hugely implicated in the ongoing copyright wars, heheh - checkout this link. Steinski himself has gone on (now a self-confessed dinosaur of hip hop) making records (quite political ones sometimes: See his Steinski and the mass-media releases)and representing the old-school.
Hmm, having said all this I realise that I probably don't need to research Steinski at all, & going on the net has proven that there's nothing astonishingly new going on with him.
I've been finding the reading for the assignment interesting. I'm beginning to believe that starting with Lawrence Grossberg was not great. There isn't a consensus on what pop music is or how it works - but broad (really broad) patterns are emerging: The decline of Anglo-American rock ( - hooray! um, sorry, where's my academic disinterest when I need it?), the so-called 'glocal' responses in endless niche genres. In the cracks I'm finding what I really want, which is talk about a 'resistant' underground. A great model appears as an afterthought in Bernard Gendron's book From Monmartre to the Mudd Club. A lot of academics don't seem able to make a distinction between what, for want of a better descriptor, here, can be called commercial-pop & underground-pop. Gendron, spending his book looking at meetings of the avant-garde and pop goes the same way, but at the last gasp outlines a new avant-garde that has arisen within pop, one that is economically very resistant - unwilling to trade artistic ideals for money. Economics is the missing-link to the aesthetics of this underground - which is what I was trying to understand in the first place, especially at my radio-station. The station takes on an informal, gate-keeping role in terms of taste, and when an artist is deemed to have breeched the conditions of entry (eg becoming very succesful) they are expelled (eg Powderfinger) and this is expressed (however unjustifiably) as a matter of aesthetic unsuitability. Well, that's still very rough - a lot of work to be done. Better go and do it. I think I'll call that a wrap for the blog, for the moment.

Ciao.

C.