PopConference deadline is October 22! It's a sanctuary from academic jargon, nobody there is boring, and everyone you meet loves music. Apply! www.popconference.org

Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere. Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself. Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj

Today in "Crritic!", reading Chandler Levack's Mile End Kicks in dialogue with the Lilith Fair documentary on indie-boy sexism, and other reviews & reflections. Plus a sad farewell to Kaleb Horton.

Oh yeah.

For sure we need this. I think Internet Archive people are working on the wayback machine search

Journal of Sonic Studies CFP on sound and radical organizing. www.researchcatalogue.net/view/558606/...

BREAKING: WE WON!!! 💥 💥 💥 Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment. Full ruling here:

@aaup.org won its case against the State Department's attempt to terrorize non-citizens and deprive them of their First Amendment rights

The next issue of WFMU’s program guide/magazine, LCD, will be out in late January, and we welcome submissions! The theme is THE SONG. We’re looking for comics, illustrations, or short essays on songs that are amazing, groundbreaking, or outstanding. Deadline is Nov. 1. More info here: wfmu.org/lcd

NOW on Inhailer.com you can hear me kick off this indie dance themed week with some angular guitars

ATTN Canadian govt: The case against Kneecap in the UK has been thrown out, not just on a technicality but because the judge said the charge was "as unjustified as it was flawed." Now let them come play here and express their opinions to their fans as freely as our Constitution mandates.

really fantastic liner note annotations by stampfel, too, at the foggy folky border of personal & scholarly. static1.squarespace.com/static/63e27...

not sure what knocks me out more: that 86-year-old peter stampfel's new album is weird/wise/heavy/fun & one of my fave things he's made or that he actually reinvents folk music (again), preserving '50/'60s ad jingles & setting aphorisms/prayers to music. peterstampfel.bandcamp.com/album/song-s...

Heading to DC today for @umaw your support means a lot these letters have real effect actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

i think tracks made fully using gen AI should be clearly labeled in ways that actually serve the avg user - giving labels/distributors the ability to opt-in to submit metadata disclosing use of AI to be added to credits is a start but still far away from what’s needed musically.com/2025/09/25/s...

Great piece. I have trouble not with what poptimism achieved (lots!), but with what it excludes, brackets, and is entirely bored by: the noncommercial sphere for music, where both disco and hip hop began. "One-step-removed ... focus on 'subculture' and 'subversion'" is a caricature of that sphere.

Once & for all, let's specify what "poptimism" was & wasn't, and why many people can't stop blaming it for every cultural change of the past 20 years. Most recently the esteemed Kelefa Sanneh, who's often (wrongly) said to have started it! Today in @slate.com slate.com/culture/2025...

Sadly tomorrow's scheduled Popular Music Books session with Wadada Leo Smith and Nina Sun Eidsheim has to be postponed due to illness. Nothing too severe, I hasten to say. A new date will be announced soon. Meanwhile please send healing vibrations WLS's way.

In 1947, Station WFOR in Hattiesburg cut off an NBC broadcast on civil rights 19 minutes into the half-hour show, “Our Civil Rights—Are They in Danger?,” because it “got off on the racial question” and “both sides were not represented.”

Duh. - When asked “How many Ds are in DEEPSEEK?” the DeepSeek-V3 model with 600 billion parameters “returned ‘2’ or ‘3’ in ten independent trials” while Meta AI and Claude 3.7 Sonnet performed similarly, “including answers as large as ‘6’ and ‘7.’” www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Great teaching material for my spring 2026 music history class, based entirely on @wfmu.bsky.social online audio archives (2001-present, DJ shows+live sets+interviews w musicians/producers/writers/archivists)+ @carlzoilus.bsky.social's Let’s Talk about Love, a winner with Montreal students

Why music writers shouldn’t use AI for research. Thanks Matthew.

Campus solidarity alert: Unions representing more than 100,000 UC employees file lawsuit charging that federal government's demands for money and policy changes violate workers' free speech rights and the separation of federal and state powers. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Great article from @columjournreview.bsky.social on the sorry state of eBook DRM monopolies. University presses are complicit in this trend. Independent music distributors abandoned DRM decades ago--that model could work for nonprofit/small publishers too. www.cjr.org/analysis/the...

Nice to see MAC's face smiling out of today's Times to share some deep knowledge about obscure, silly cultural artifacts! He collects all kinds of weird flexidiscs in addition to the cereal box records...often displaying them at the WFMU Record Fairs.

Can we have Bandcamp for books, please?

MAC (Mike Cumella), longtime host of WFMU's "Antique Phonograph Hour," was featured in this New York Times article on cereal-box records (gift link).

PDF books from @princetonupress.bsky.social are a scam. Not only are they DRMed, it is also impossible to search within the book. The app to view them is a joke--no functionality whatsoever. And of course returns a not possible. I wasted $30 on a book that I will now have to get from the library.

We’re reintroducing the Living Wage for Musicians Act, and to celebrate we’re throwing a show/happy hour in DC with Julia Holter, Alexia Roditis, and Dior Ashley Brown! Let’s get the LWMFA passed & get artists paid fairly from streaming 💪 RSVP here: actionnetwork.org/events/julia...

The online Popular Music Books series returns Wed (Sep 10) at 5:30 pm ET with a special five-author panel on musicals, on Broadway & beyond - w/ Joanna Dee Das, Ryan Donovan, Liza Gennaro, Jeff Magee, & Liz Wollman. Full info: iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Popular-Musi...

Freaking Out with Kendraplex Tuesdays 9 til midnight on @wfmu.bsky.social

In The Wire 500, Mattie Colquhoun argues that critics who seek to distance themselves from cultural pessimism too often fail to deal with the unresolved impasse at the heart of 21st century pop culture www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/c...

I generally don’t like to engage in own-horn tooting, but I’m very proud of the conversation I had with Lene Lovich that aired on my @wfmu.bsky.social radio show yesterday. You can listen back anytime at wfmu.org/playlists/sh... I think both casual and die-hard Lene fans will enjoy it.

Great article by @ryandombal.bsky.social about @umaw.bsky.social, with super quotes from a number of our members - join us!!

this Labor Day, become a UMAW member 💪 weareumaw.org/membership

Tomorrow I start as an Asst Prof in Communication, Media and Arts at Seton Hall. Last spring, news that this opportunity would pan out coincided very closely with the passing of my advisor, Jonathan Sterne. Some overdue reflections on that, mostly on Jonathan, here: akstuhl.net/blog/2025-08...

Popular Music Books in Process returns September 10! If you have not been added to the mailing list, please send me a note. iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Popular-Musi...

psst: new Pop Conference call. Repost please. www.popconference.org

Advance notice: WFMU's fall/winter schedule takes effect on September 8 (a week from this Monday). As usual, a few people are taking a break, some are moving, and a few new kids are joining. See it here: www.wfmu.org/table?period...

Join the musicians and music workers who support the Living Wage for Musicians Act (it’s a helluva list, take a look at some of the names on the site below). Sign on, and use our form to write your congressional reps! weareumaw.org/make-streami...

Speaking of music criticism, starting Sept 7 you can hear me on Inhailer.com/ WGUC HD3 Sundays 5-7 Eastern for ITS HER FACTORY. Each week I’ll play my favorite music and highlight one piece of music writing about the tunes & artists we love at Inhailer.

With Corporation for Public Broadcasting closing, hundreds of small community stations may go out of business. You might want to adopt a public station in your area, donate to a Native American Radio Network station, or a rural station: adoptastation.org

Mass Art Inc.: Philip Orenstein, Terry Riley and the Birth of Minimalism Now archived @wfmu.bsky.social STREAM ▶️ wfmu.org/playlists/sh...

www.patreon.com/posts/131331... Episode 2 of Critical Listening is now live for patrons and will be available on public platforms next week. In this episode, we’re talking all things @umaw.bsky.social with Steering Committee members Joey La Neve DeFrancesco and Spencer Peppet

L’historien Pierre Nora est mort

and it only just occurred to me that late '60s fugs bassist bill wolf (seen below) later worked with the dead, (mis)recording the grateful dead movie soundtrack at winterland in '74 & engineering various round records projects (& playing some bass on "keith & donna"). www.discogs.com/artist/41699...

hotcha! croon along with a tape of the fugs' set: doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/8280466...

The Fugs & the Hamilton Face Band performing at the @wfmu.bsky.social benefit at Café Au Go Go in November 1968. Photographer Danny Cornyetz worked for WBAI at the time. Haven't seen these until now.

Just renewed my subscription to The Wire--independent music journalism at its best, well beyond experimental music. You get access to the entire back run of the magazine for your subscription, by the way.