Mark Dery
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. He writes about new media, visual culture, emerging trends, subcultural style, and fringe thought.
Dery is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999) and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996).
About the decade (or so) he spent in the golden ghetto of rock-journo hackdom, Dery has this to say:
"As a freelance music journalist in the ‘80s, I wrestled with the cognitive dissonance of writing critical essays for art magazines on highbrow subjects such as the video artist Nam June Paik, on one hand, and on the other grinding out music-journo hackwork like "Hellbangers! Some Call It Black Metal; By Any Name, It’s The Hard, Dark Underbelly Of Rock," a story I wrote for the late, utterly unlamented Hard Rock Video magazine.
Through my interviews with artists and New Music composers in what was then called New York’s ‘downtown’ scene, I discovered British cultural studies and French postmodern theory. Media theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and scholars of fan cultures such as Dick Hebdige offered object lessons in the intellectual rewards of trespassing in the forbidden zone between high and low culture, academic theorizing and pop-culture headbanging. My interest in this sort of philosophical and stylistic gene-splicing had already been piqued by intellectually omnivorous music writers such as Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs, and by the genre-hopping, quotation-crazy East Village composers, hip-hop deejays, and 'appropriation' artists I was writing about. Why couldn’t I do, in rockcrit, what Laurie Anderson and John Zorn were doing in music? Nothing remained, I decided, but to attempt the experiment in gene-splicing cultural criticism I’d been inching toward.
Regrettably, most rock magazines, especially the gear-porn, guy-ocentric trade rags I was writing for, were deeply hostile to such post-disciplinary promiscuity. Which is why I abandoned music journalism for the arts-and-culture beat.
The articles archived here are early, misbegotten attempts at a post-Bangsian, gonzo-theory rockcrit – fossil specimens of evolutionary dead-ends. But most have some obscure charm that makes them worth a glance, at least: insights into the artistic unconscious of artists seldom covered by the mainstream press; stylistic loop-the-loops and theoretical bungee-jumps that actually work, on occasion; or, absent other merits, comic relief – not always intentional, to be sure, but isn’t that the best kind?"
List of articles in the library by artist
Laurie Anderson Goes For The Throat
Interview by Mark Dery, High Performance, 1984
FORGET the Pippi Longstocking coyness that led Newsweek to dub her "a cybernetic Lily Tomlin." Forget the dimples and the I-had-an-argument-with-10,000-volts-and-lost hairstyle. When Laurie Anderson ...
Laurie Anderson: Home Of The Brave
Review by Mark Dery, International Musician, 1985
A GARBAGE disposal with indigestion, glub-glubbing on a smooshed Jiffy Pop foil bubble or a gluish wad of Captain Crunch, is not a pretty sight. ...
Laurie Anderson: On The Jagged Edge
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, October 1989
"I'LL BET you think I'm making this up," says Laurie Anderson, her voice taut, edgy. A dramatic pause, then a grave shake of the head. ...
Captain Beefheart, Gods and Monsters: Gary Lucas' Gods and Monsters
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Guitar Player, September 1990
"THE MUSICAL landscape is completely moribund," says Gary Lucas. "It's one of the worst periods in memory, worse than the mid '70s. My music is ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, September 1989
"MOST MUSIC criticism," griped Leonard Cohen in a recent Musician interview, "is...so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. Nobody is identifying our popular singers ...
Leonard Cohen's Impeccable Chop
Interview by Mark Dery, Frets, November 1988
FROM HIS 1967 debut, The Songs Of Leonard Cohen, to his tenth and latest release, I'm Your Man, Canadian singer-guitarist Leonard Cohen has traveled to ...
Coil: The Darker Side Of Sampling
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, July 1987
LONG BEFORE the verb was coined, Coil keyboardist Peter Christopherson started sampling. ...
Coldcut, De La Soul, Digital Underground: Digital Underground, Coldcut and De La Soul Jam The Beat
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, March 1991
DIGITAL UNDERGROUND, De La Soul, and Coldcut make musique concrete for boomboxes. These three bands, all on the Tommy Boy label, have achieved, perhaps unwittingly, ...
Cure, The: The Cure's Lol Tolhurst: A Dose Of Keyboard Fever
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, August 1987
EVER SINCE schoolmates Robert Smith, Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst, and Michael Dempsey formed Easy Cure in 1976 – the name was eventually shortened to the Cure ...
Robert Fripp, King Crimson: Robert Fripp: The 21st Century Man Sounds Off
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Record Magazine, November 1985
HE BEGAN, by his own admission, tone deaf and with "no sense of rhythm." He is a spit-shined, manicured man whose "best subjects at school ...
Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, October 1988
WHEN DIAMANDA Galás opens her mouth, dark things come flapping out in a pandemonium of caws, screeches, and beating wings. "I feel as if I'm ...
Diamanda Galás: Diamanda Galas: Hymns Of Empathy
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, August 1992
IF MARIA Calas had sizzled at the stake, she might have sung 'The Litanies of Satan', by Diamanda Galas, as her final, fiery aria. ...
Robyn Hitchcock's Colossal Mutations
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, International Musician, July 1986
WHAT DO you get when you cross nursery crimes, rump-bumping beats, hooky melodies that are bittersweet as a bite of watermelon pickle, and batty lyrics ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Creem, June 1987
"In Switzerland they kept slammin' the microphone into my face and throwing beer cans at us all night. So the next person that did it, ...
Rickie Lee Jones: Flying Cowgirl
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, September 1989
RICKIE LEE Jones's first album in five years, Flying Cowboys, offers a ride on one of those coin-operated broncos most of us rode when we ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, New York Times, June 1991
WHEN VOLUNTEERS are needed for the first brain chips – surgically inserted microcircuits that, the theory goes, will boost brainpower – Kraftwerk will be first ...
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, October 1991
Keyboard: THIS IS your first tour in almost a decade. Why now? ...
Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd
Interview by Mark Dery, Guitar Player, January 1988
RICHARD LLOYD would like to wring his guitar's neck. And he tries, throttling it bluefaced on the Television records Marquee Moon and Adventure, and damned ...
Overview by Mark Dery, Elle, September 1989
MAYBE IT all began in 1917 with the harmless-looking urinal "R. Mutt" entered in the Society of Independent Artists New York show. ...
Psychedelic Furs, The: The Psychedelic Furs: The Butler Did It
Interview by Mark Dery, Winner, November 1986
THERE'S A scene in David Cronenburg's The Fly where a baboon gets zapped, beamed from Point A to Point B, and reassembled as simian upsidedown ...
Report and Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, September 1990
"Elvis was a hero to most But he never meant shit to me you seeStraight up racist that sucker wasSimple and plain ...
David Lee Roth, Van Halen: David Lee Roth Takes Off His Warpaint
Interview by Mark Dery, Winner, November 1986
LOS ANGELES has a mess of atavistic attractions most tourists never get hip to: Chili Cheese Fritos, Dodger Dogs, Fatburger ("The Last Great Hamburger Stand"), ...
Run DMC, Stetsasonic, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: Rap: Rock Is Dead
Special Feature by Mark Dery, Keyboard, November 1988
THE RAW POWER OF CHEAP TECH CRASHES HEAD-ON INTO INNER-CITY DEFIANCE AND DESPAIR ...
Shamen, The, T99, Third Eye, L.F.O., Orbital, Orb, The: Techno
Overview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, April 1993
TECHNO. THE name sounds at once monolithic and impersonal, the acronym of a multinational conglomerate, and toylike, as in brightly colored plastic Lego blocks. ...
Sonny Sharrock: A Musician With Lightning In His Hands
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, New York Times, May 1991
Sonny Sharrock knew his route would be rocky. ...
Shriekback Blasts the Top Off The College Charts
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, January 1989
Nice Monsters Go Bang ...
Shriekback: The Piercing Sounds Of Shriekback
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Rockbill, March 1987
STARTING WITH the mini-LP Trench in '81, and continuing through Care ('82), Jam Science ('83), Oil and Gold ('85), and now, Big Night Music, Shriekback ...
Shriekback: Things That Go Blorp In The Night
Interview by Mark Dery, Pulse!, December 1985
SHRIEKBACK LIKE things that go blorp in the night. Their latest disk, Oil and Gold (Island/8.98 list), has the slippery feel of a jellied eel's ...
Shriekback's Barry Andrews: Painting Landscapes, Abusing Pianos
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, June 1987
'BLACK LIGHT Trap' on Shriekback's latest album, Big Night Music [Island, 90552-1], is about a device used "for snaring unwary insects," keyboardist Barry Andrews explains. ...
Sonic Youth And The Great Cosmic Blender
Interview by Mark Dery, RIP, August 1987
SKATEBOARDS, ELVIS Presley, Wrestlemania and trashy sexploitation flicks-eventually everything goes into the battered black cauldron called modern pop culture. And like the spumy, molten soup ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Spin, December 1985
THEY MIGHT be Eddie Haskell and Lumpy Rutherford 10 years after, rigged out respectively with pearl-inlaid accordion and Japanese Strat. ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Rock Scene, September 1986
"It's like if you're an artist and they say, 'I'm sorry but you can't have your paintings displayed in public anymore.' The radio's really awful, ...
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