#doc stodden

Name:  Doc Stodden

Website:  The New Haberdasher

Credentials:  I love talking and thinking about music, but otherwise, I am an academic by profession.

Blurb about me:  Without writing too much about myself, my co-editor and I recently became interested in the project of classifying and describing the evolution of music that we listen to in the US.  We take an essentially structural approach to the project:  no music is new, and it is not the music itself, but the music which influences that music, and then the music that that music influences which is far more interesting.  As I told Mike, I like punk because I liked some loud rock and roll before that, and I like loud rock and roll because I enjoyed stuff like Queen when I was a kid, and so forth.  If my earliest tastes had been in a different direction, I would probably like different kinds of music.  So there is nothing inherently good in the music itself.  We prefer music because our music tastes have evolved over the course of our lives to lead us into those preferences today.  In short, Jimmy Page and Brian May have more to do with my appreciation for Nirvana than Kurt Cobain ever did.  And the fact that I liked Kurt Cobain's music in the early 1990's explains a lot more about why I liked the White Stripes than any sort of affinity for Jack or Meg White.  That conceptualization of music will be my guiding light in my efforts on this site.

I Made it onto Radio Havana Cuba's Mailbag Show, with host Ed Newman.  Newman read my email on the show, and even correctly pronounced my name.  I am such a geek:  I feel like a teenager who heard their request played on the radio back in the day.

Writers, take note!

From the creative mind of @docstodden comes Project Dyszombie:

The project is open to all serious writers who want to contribute to the milieu.  When enough quality content is generated, we will compile the work into a single, standalone volume.  There is a catch:  The dyszombie is NOT the same as your classic Zombie...