- Friday, March 27, 2015
- 4:00 PM–5:15 PM
- CFAC 222
Piped in from Hell? Rock Music and Christian Anti-Rock Criticism During the Satanic Panic
Is rock really the devil's music? During the 1980s, Christian critics and documentarians accused such artists as Ozzy Osbourne, KISS, and Iron Maiden of literally worshiping Satan: backmasking secret messages on their records, converting teenage listeners to the occult, even sacrificing animals at arena concerts.This session will examine the complex, sometimes symbiotic relationship between music and criticism during this era, exploring the visual and rhetorical strategies used by each side and considering whether this skirmish in the American culture wars still shapes how we think about rock music in 2015.
Presenter bio:
A Tennessee native who was raised Southern Baptist but became obsessed with pop music as a teenager, Stephen M. Deusner grew up to be a freelance music critic and part-time record store clerk in Bloomington, Indiana. A long-time staff writer for Pitchfork Media, he has also contributed to Salon, American Songwriter, CMT/CMT Edge, the Village Voice, the Memphis Flyer, and Wondering Sound, among other print and online publications. His work has appeared in two books: an essay on Okkervil River and unreliable narrators in The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi, 2011) and The Pitchfork 500 (Touchstone, 2008).
