I lived in Atlanta, GA from 1985 to 1994, about an hour’s drive from Athens. It was sort of the tail end of the heyday of the Athens music scene, but there was a strong sense of place associated with acts such as REM, B-52s, Pylon, Bar-b-que Killers, Killkenny Cats. It’s been a long time, and I may be forgetting certain acts, or misremembering names, or I might never have known certain acts. They made a movie about the Athens scene. Atlanta had its own scene: Follow For Now, Hollyfaith, Michelle Malone, Mr. Crow’s Garden (later the Black Crowes), Mary My Hope (who made a big splash in England but imploded stateside), Train Black.

I was listening to some New Order MP3s last night when I realized, “Hey, this band is from Manchester!” Then I began to think of bands that are from here (or that I’ve been told are from here): Elvis Costello, Joy Division > New Order, Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, Badly Drawn Boy, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream. Hmm. There are a lot more, but my brain is blanking right now. Must go get caffeine of some kind. Yeah, I know, “Zen Wisdom” blah blah blah.

Anyone remember other bands from these places? Anyone have a sense of why certain cities seem to explode with musical (or other artistic) talent at certain times? Can you think of other examples?

I’ve heard that Omaha, Nebraska is currently the hot music city.

No, really. I’m serious.

As current and former American smokers know, the side (or top or bottom or whatever) of every pack says something like “The surgeon general has determined that blah blah blah” in large block letters that, Edmund Tufte argues, are designed to be as un-reader friendly as possible. By contrast, the packs for sale here say “Smoking Kills” on the front in letters that are large enough and clear enough to read from six feet away. Another message is “Smoking seriously harms you and others around you.” No beating around the bush.

It has been argued, however, that such warnings are like catnip to a certain demographic that wants to be seen as rebellious and counter-cultural, i.e. young people. When was the last time young people turned something down simply because someone told them it was dangerous?

My room is in a working-class neighborhood, but the library is located in more of a business district, downtown. Most people dress pretty casually, but there is one look in particular that some young gents are sporting that I’ve been meaning to comment on:

• Close-fitting black or navy blue suit.

• Light colored, but colorful, shirt in something like blue or lavendar. May be solid color, may be window pane pattern.

• A fairly wide tie with a knot the size of a child’s fist. Stops about an inch or more short of the waist-line.

• Hair styled up with gel or wax into a sort of fin along the top of the head. A genteel descendant of the mohawk?

This might sound sort of weird, but it really looks pretty sharp. The tie is interesting because it’s sort of making fun of the whole idea of wearing a tie. It’s postmodern: it’s not a tie, it’s a “tie.” Even without all the other elements of the look I’m describing, there are a number of guys wearing their tie this way. It’s right on the border between goofy and cool, and I think it takes a certain panache to pull it off.

After posting the entry on D. F. McKenzie’s essay about the interwoven nature of these channels of communication, I spent the day tracing the connections between one preacher’s Bible, diary, and preaching practice. Fascinating stuff, but I’m exhausted.

“Speech-Manuscript-Print” is the name of a fantastic essay by D. F. McKenzie, originally published in Library Chronicle of the University of Texas (1990) and then recently reprinted in Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and other Essays (Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 2002).

Here, McKenzie works at complicating the usual, sequential narratives of one form of communication supplanting another. And while these sorts of narratives are not always so explicit in making this claim, the assumption always seems to be there. Once we’ve established that print technology flourishes in eighteenth-century England, for example, we will perhaps not pay so much attention to manuscript practices, or we will only do so in isolation from considerations of print. One of McKenzie’s central points is that different forms of communication often (usually?) work in complementary, not competitive ways.

It is this sort of multi-threaded approach that I am attempting to take with eighteenth-century Methodists and their fellow travelers, and this is why I am paying attention not only to materials that tell me more about their publishing habits, but also their preaching and letter-writing and diary-keeping. I’m being relatively tight-lipped (metaphorically speaking) simply because I’m unsure of the liability of putting too much of my work-in-progress out there on the web before it’s made its way into the currently-valued-more-than-blogging medium of print.

For more on what McKenzie has published, have a look at this “unofficial” bibliography or find the (complementary) printed bibliography at the back of “Making Meaning”.