Every Memorial Day Weekend from 1989-2009, and from 2023 until who knows when, the Cincinnati-area independent (internet) radio stations WOXY and Inhailer broadcast a countdown of the top 500 songs in their library. Dubbed “The Modern Rock 500” in 1989 and renamed “The Indie 500” in 2024, the chart’s contents can tell us a lot about what “modern rock” is and how it differs from alternative and indie.
Join Robin James as she deep dives into each of the yearly countdowns, showing how the countdown shifts from a pluralistic and “modern” approach to genre to a more guitar-oriented one that views the influence of non-rock genres like electronic dance music and reggae/dub as relics from the 20th century. She’ll discuss how The Modern Rock 500 both reveals the challenges indie media faces in an increasingly financialized industry, and models some successful tactics one indie media institution has used to survive amid those challenges.
About the Presenter
Robin James is a writer, editor, and former associate professor of philosophy at UNC Charlotte. Her fifth book, Good Vibes Only: Phenomenology and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation, is under contract with Duke University Press. Her previous four books include: The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence (UNC Press, 2023), The Sonic Episteme: acoustic resonance, neoliberalism, & biopolitics (Duke University Press, 2019), Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, and neoliberalism (Zero, 2015), and The Conjectural Body: gender, race and the philosophy of music (Lexington Books, 2010). Her writing has appeared in venues such as Jezebel, The Guardian, LARB, Real Life, BELT Magazine, The New Inquiry, SoundingOut!, Hypatia, differences, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and elsewhere across the internet. She’s an expert in feminism/gender/race and popular music, pop music and politics, sound studies, electronic dance music studies, and contemporary continental philosophy (especially critical theories of neoliberalism and biopolitics). She is also working on a sixth book project about the alt-rock-to-alt-right pipeline.
The American Musicological Society exists to expand understanding of music and sound through research, teaching, learning, and advocacy. To realize its mission, the Society fosters new work through a range of grants, fellowships, publication subventions, and awards; encourages exchange through publications, meetings, performances, lectures, and other public programs; and supports the professional lives of its members and constituents through workshops, mentoring, discussion forums, and other resources. As a guiding principle, the AMS promotes equity, access, and inclusion.
The American Musicological Society and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in Cleveland, Ohio, collaborate on a lecture series that brings scholarly work to a broader audience and showcases the musicological work of the top scholars in the field. The AMS / Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lectures provide a public forum that brings music research to a broader audience.
Our September lecture will feature a presentation by Robin James, writer, editor, & former associate professor of philosophy at UNC Charlotte on Thursday, September 19th, 2024.