Heya,

Just a quick post. Here is a link to my latest playlist. Ooh, last week's, I am punctual. Oh and look: I also tidied up the webpage for my show.
I've been searching around the course website for info on the research proposal & while I've found the course guide and the assessment criteria, the info on what exactly we're supposed to target as a topic for the proposal and assignment is frustratingly vague.
I'm supposed to be putting together an honours thesis proposal regarding what makes underground music underground. I've been hoping I could do some small aspect of that for MSTU 3000 - maybe research what different opinions have been put forward in the literature. I hope I can find out soon.
I was caught up in the explosive excitement (read irritating irritation) of Riverfire trying to get to work at Southbank. As is fine and appropriate on occasions of mass-public action public-transport was reduced rather than increased. When I did find a bus to take me, it was a trip of some one and a half hourse from UQ to town...but all was not lost. I ran into a bloke I knew and we chatted all the way there about the nature of underground music.
The focus was mainly on noise-music & the its 'sub-cultural compitencies'. We agreed on the importance of intention (this is underground 'coz I say it is) & also of sub-cultural capital: The career arcs of many noise artists seeming to be based on the reputation of the artist within the community rather over factors like musical skill. Yet there is obviously more to it than this. Noise artists are still, clearly & objectively 'underground' in an aesthetic sense (something which can't be applied to all underground musicians). This is the case because no noise music has ever been mainstream (with the possible exception of Kraftwerk).
There is much more, also & I've been scrabbling to find the time to do reading on it. The task is made especially difficult because the canon of cultural studies, which I have the most ability to draw on is interested in 'the popular' not the underground. It's like you have to read against the grain. It is also the case that a lot of cultural studies theorists have blurred the definition between popular and underground (not to mention that the genres they are talking about have often blurred their own status). I've just started reading a Larry Grossberg book 'Dancing in spite of myself' which seems to be trying to set up a more robust definition of 'the popular'. All very interesting, but time consuming, difficult...

Speaking of time consuming,

Have to go and do other work.

Cya.