Be Zorch, disco-haters!

I finally got the call for papers for the Experience Music Project pop conference before the deadline (somehow I never seem to see it or think of it until too late).  I'm going to submit a proposal, and my idea is down to two choices:

Nervous Norvus or Disco Demolition.

The conference theme is "Get Ur Freak on: Music, weirdness and transgression," and the very first bullet-point in the call is for "histories of strangeness" in popular music.  I don't know how they can get by without Nervous Norvus in that history . . . so far, all I've found on him are (slightly) contradictory biographies and an album collecting some of his demos and singles (including Ape Call and Transfusion, of course).  Be zorch, daddio: present on the Nervous one.

Aside from marking his place in musical history, this is kind of open slate . . .  not sure up-front what angle to take on this . .







Meanwhile, Disco Demolition doesn't fit the essence of the theme so well, but it certainly is connected enough to matter.  My focus would be pretty clear if this is what I presented on . . . the coded and internalized homophobia and racism of the anti-disco movement.  This really fits the current underlying much of my research and thinking on music:  that we use music to play out our personal struggles over "how the world is ordered" and vice-versa.

And since this conference emphasizes the visual in their presentations, there would be many visuals for this one -- Steve Dahl in his army helmet, Harry Caray and Bill Veeck pleading for sanity, all the smoke and burnouts on the field . . .







. . . . come to think of it, "that blowed up real good" doesn't sound unlike a Nervous Norvus song title . . .