"I've Got a Dick for a Brain"

I am a member of the American Musicological Society, and this past Saturday I spent the morning and early afternoon at the fall meeting (.PDF file) of that organization's Capital Chapter. These meetings are always fun, mostly as an excuse to see one's colleagues in the area and find out what people are researching. However, occasionally there is research that is better left unheard, at least for me. The highlight of the meeting, in my opinion, was an excellent paper by Professor Richard Wexler of the University of Maryland, about an interesting parody Mass by minor Renaissance composer Antoine Bruhier. His theory was that this polyphonic Mass ordinary was composed in Ferrara in the wake of the competition between superstar composers Heinrich Isaac and Josquin des Prez for the post of maestro di capella. It was a well-documented, brilliantly argued work of musicological research, tracing the origins and associations of various motifs in the vocal parts of Bruhier's Mass, mostly in works by Josquin and Isaac.

Unfortunately, we were also subjected to a paper on a pop song, "My Curse" by the Afghan Whigs. I don't have any problem with people researching popular/vernacular music, but I do resent having to listen to boring scholarship passed off as something interesting simply because it's about popular music. Worst of all, the presenter spent about ten minutes making us listen to the complete song, without any commentary on it. The Afghan Whigs are just fine as these groups go, but using such a long example instead of a salient excerpt, whether it's Bach or Björk, is usually a sign of someone with a weak thesis filling time. We also had to listen to excerpts of a couple other Whigs' songs, purportedly as an example of the dark, cynical mood of the band's lyrics, including a long section of "Be Sweet," which features the line used as this post's subject line ("Ladies, let me introduce myself/I've got a dick for a brain/and my brain/is going to sell my ass to you"). Ugh, that's 15 minutes of my life I can never get back. Also, the picture of serious musicological minds actually listening to an argument (of exactly what I still cannot tell you) about "My Curse" and especially these gross lyrics just made me laugh. Don't get me wrong, because we are all adults, and we discuss some pretty racy stuff in all kinds of music. However, I cannot help but believe that these particular songs were chosen mostly for their shock value, which compounded my boredom.

As you'll be hearing more about later, the AMS National Meeting will be held here in Washington at the end of October, for which I have been working on the Local Arrangements Committee. Popular music, of course, is represented appropriately by a few papers in that program. I know Alex Ross may take issue with my inclinations, but I am not going to miss "Anonymous IV as an Informant on the Craft of Writing Music" to hear a paper on "U2's Compositional Process: Sketching Achtung Baby in Sound," which is scheduled in the same time slot. Call me old-fashioned.