And Rage Against Machines.

I suppose that I should probably do some good ol' Blue Jays blogging, considering all the stuff that happened this week (Tulo and Price, oh my!), but I will save that for later because of what is on my mind right now.

I have been interested in examining popular culture in a not-quite-scholarly, but still critical sense for a while now. I owe this mostly to reading Chuck Klosterman when I was in high school. I know that now he's a well-known commodity and his writing is generally written off as male "special snowflake" kind of stuff, if that makes sense, but when I first read him it was brand new to me and it made think in new ways. For those unfamiliar, Klosterman books are mainly collections of smaller essays which examine popular culture in a variety of ways. He touches on a broad variety of artists, personalities and issues and while he doesn't really specialize in any one topic (save for the entirely hair metal-focused Fargo Rock City, which had a pretty big impact on me*), the breadth of his scope of knowledge is pretty great. Klosterman's books are also what inspired me to understand as much as I can about every type of culture. Even if I don't like a band or subculture and probably never will, I like to understand what draws people to it in the first place and understand its merit, even if it doesn't necessarily apply to me.

Anyways, Klosterman's books are really what introduced me to thinking critically about pop culture which is seriously one of my biggest passions now. It still interests me and I think there is a lot to learn and a lot to be said in criticizing and analyzing pop culture. Even in academia, I've noticed that the introduction of pop culture generally leads to a better response from your audience than more straight-ahead scholarship.

With all this in mind, I think that this article about "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals is a great pop culture essay. Groups like this interest me because there is always more to them than it seems on the surface. They name Harvey Danger and Fountains of Wayne in this article as something similar and I think they are great comparisons. Obviously I knew them first as the bands behind "Flagpole Sitta" and "Stacey's Mom", respectively, but upon looking a little further into them became two of my most-listened to bands of the last few years.

As an accompaniment to the above article, here are the lyrics to "You Get What You Give". JUST DOING TO THE GOOGLE SEARCH FOR YOU.

Cool stuff!

P.S.
Another great thing that examines pop culture, specifically punk, is Damien Abraham's podcast Turned Out a Punk. I've been listening to a bunch lately!


*One of my paternal uncles moved to British Columbia when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I've never been especially close to them, but for a while our families would still exchange gifts. They would always send me books, which I was of course fine with. I never recognized the books I got from them and would generally write them off, thinking "What is this? I'm never going to read this." But then I would inevitably get around to reading the book and it would be amazing. Every fucking time. Not just good books, but books that blew my mind and were incredibly enjoyable. It was uncanny. I didn't even talk to them, but they would somehow pick these perfect books for me. The first one was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone right after it came out, well before it became a "thing". Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov was another one. Fargo Rock City by Klosterman was one of these books as well. Uncle Bob, you are fucking sick.