“The City”

Well, I’m back from a wonderful trip to NYU. My hosts were outstanding, the students were a lot of fun, and I always find it gratifying to give talks in music departments. I presented a section on the history of psychacoustics and people seem to really be getting it. I also find that presenting something 2-3 times really solidifies it in my mind.

Cliche time: while I wouldn’t want to live in New York, it sure is a nice place to visit. One of the things I noticed on this trip is the way that people refer to NY, especially to Manhatten as simply “The City.” No further designation is needed. This is classic NY parochialism, but it’s so effortless as to be kind of charming.

NYU is right in Greenwich Village, which means that there is an amazing amount of stuff going on there. I had several stupendous vegetarian meals, and also revelled in the book shopping. Not surprisingly, almost all the faculty I spoke with went on at great length about their love for the place. The NYU buildings I entered somehow fit with the mental image of “a building in New York” that I developed as a child when we’d visit my grandparents. Not too brightly lit but not exactly dark, smallish rooms, but also with a mild labyrinthine quality to them. The hotel was in the finance district and kind of lame, but it wasn’t NYU’s fault — the place was undergoing renovations so I’m sure the troubles were temporary.

In addition to book shopping at Shakespeare and St. Marc’s (I love Labyrinth most, but not on this trip), I went over Williamsburg, which I gather is a part of Brooklyn. There’s a store there called Main Drag Music. I was on a quest to experience this item:

which is a bizarre signal processor unlike any other ever heard. Unfortunately, the guy who makes them is burnt out and there’s a 6-9 month waiting list. On the phone, I was told I could come play with the floor model. When I got there, it turns out that this was a bigger issue than they originally let on. So no PLL for me on this trip. I did get to try some other pedals that the same guy made, and some other wonderful flavors of bass distortion. I am especially fond of this pedal:

which basically takes an already fuzzed-out sound and uses crossover distortion to make it sound like the world is slowly being ripped in half. On bass, anyway. The full explanation is here. Schumann and ZVex are IMO two of the most creative outfits in the business when it comes to designing new signal processors. They’re like luthiers who find whole new ways to build an instrument.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get swept up in gear fetishism, but rather to tell you a bit about my walk through Williamsburg, which conveniently isn’t on any of the tourist maps of New York. It’s the kind of place that’s doing well enough for a bustling business district, but every single window has bars over it. And it also has the highest concentration of Hasidic Jews that I’ve ever seen. I actually felt like I was in some kind of video game — every time I came around a corner, Hasidic Jews would be stationed on one or another part of the street. Except I didn’t really want to shoot any of them. Anyway, I began to wonder if in some strange cosmic loop, I’d happened upon the geographical source of the crazy little boxes we’d get once a year in the Talmud Torah from the Lubavichers. I don’t even remember what was in them except that they were supposed to be a big deal and were always a disappointment. But hey, I was a kid.

Tucked away amongst signs of Hasidic life and working class commerce are the signs of gentrification — a “luxury condo” unit going up here, a boutique used furniture store there. It’s still more tacqueria and barber shop than fashion boutique and bistro, but it is definitely changing. I wish I’d had time to stick around and see more, but I had to get back to NYU for an afternoon lunch appointment.

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I am giddy with excitement about the Super Bowl tomorrow. It is an official holiday in our house. Though I’d better get that French homework done in the AM.

Two Links

First, to a brilliant post by Dave Noon.

Second, to a History of the GEO. I was working on my opening lines for NYU this morning and went looking for my own grad union’s history and there is was. It took us 10 years from start to recognition, and I was involved Fall of 1993-Spring of 1999. So I left not Illinois not knowing whether our efforts would ever come to fruition. I should write something about that whole project, but for now, the official history will have to do.

With No Further Delay,

(Charlie Bertsch and) I give you Bad Subjects #74: Intermedia, which features contributions from a few familiar faces and some new ones. It’s also got some of my favorite features of Bad Subjects issues in years past — “open” contributions, interviews, and of course, an article on the Christian right.

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Fred’s visit was outstanding. His talk was animated, the room was packed, the dinner was lovely, etc. etc. Except that the first night he was here, our sick cat puked on his coat, which had fallen to the floor in the middle of the night. So I had to lend him one of my old winter coats, which was comically large on him, but since he’s so tall he could pull it off. I should have taken a picture. Anyway, he said that he felt like me walking around Montreal. I replied that he was simply taking up all the space to which he is entitled.

This week will be another light one for blogging. We’ve got another guest speaker coming in that HPS series I linked to in my last post, and I’m off too on Wednesday to NYU to give a talk in the Music Department’s lecture series entitled “Recalibrating the Sound of Music.” I’m planning to read a short statement in support of the striking students before I give the talk. I’ll post it here.

New Book Chapter + More

And now for an academic entry.

Another one-off piece has appeared: “Transportation and Communication: Together as You’ve Always Wanted Them,” in Thinking With James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History, eds. Jeremy Packer and Craig Robertson, 117-35. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. I haven’t done a run-through for typos but I will say that the layout is beautifully done and the book as a whole looks great. So nice job, Peter Lang. Especially interesting is a 2-part interview of Carey by Larry Grossberg, which has Carey laying some interesting things out in public for the first time — his relationship with other faculty at the Institute of Communications Research (hint — he has unkind things to say about Herb Schiller), the emergence of “cultural studies” as a term and concept in the 60s US, long before it was known in humanities departments, and his reading of McLuhan’s Understanding Media while it was still a report to the Department of Education, to name three. I would say it’s a “must read” for people interested in the intellectual history of Communication Studies in North America.

Today and tomorrow, I have the pleasure of hosting Fred Turner, who’s here to give a lecture to a combined HPS and AHCS audience. His new book on the roots of the digerati in the Whole Earth Catalog, is forthcoming from U of Chicago Press.