'Pigeon Detectives - Why?'

"All historic time periods", "these phenonomenon", "I came home raging about The Beach Boys", "I'm actually a big proponent on what can happen when you're bored"....

If that's the professor, can you imagine how her students must talk?

(Disclaimer: My views this morning may be somewhat skewed by my task for the day being to translate a 6,000-word sociology research paper on "situated cognition".)

You didn't mention Professor Griff of Public Enemy. His entry in Who's Who records that he held the honourable positions of being the group's Minister of Information and head of The Security of the First World.

Loved the pod. But Schutz's Stranger theory didnt get a mention, tut tut! Nice picture referencing Loaded and Finding Nemo perhaps? BUT 4 WEEKS WITHOUT ANY PODS? Going to have dig into the archives

occasional visiting professor in applied narcotics from the University of Please Yourself California

some sort of astrology Professor?. Apologies if that was covered - have only listened to the first 20 mins of the podcast so far.

professor of clogs, sixpences and the guitar\fireplace paradox

The good professor talked about arriving early at gigs and people, specifically music industry folks, coming up to her and asking her what she was doing and that way gaining a lot of contacts. It struck me at the time that in my experience you turn up early at gigs and you get studiously ignored by all except teh merchendicers. And then I saw the photo above...

We sent you a case of Brewer's Gold and you still didn't put us on the free CD....

...was like a week in the jail. Every week I burn the podcast to a CD and listen to it in my car. This week I was sorely tempted to eject said CD and launch it out the sunroof.

It's probably just me, but I'm not a fan of microscopic over analysis of music in any genre. Granted, the part about how to check you're on the guest list made me chuckle a few times, but the word 'Phe-nom-e-non' is rattling about my head in much the same way as 'Manah Manah' by the muppets.

Please watch this and every time the repeated line comes up, replace with 'phe-nom-e-non'.

Still love the Word Podcast though. Even though we'll all have to wait another four weeks for the next episode. Stay tuned!

Have we had our legs pulled here? Surely a Ricky Gervais scripted wind-up - the "Professor of Indie" certainly sounded like David Brent.

Her theory on what is "Indie" - well, "it's whatever you think it is, if you think it's a system of distribution, musical style etc etc that's what it is" - well thanks very much! Aren't YOU meant to tell us?

How you can seriously analyze the correct way to wear you backstage pass for god's sake...!?
And as for the different "zones" at a gig...I have a theory and it's called "getting old", sorry should that be "advancement of molecular dna to a state of decomposition"...

I can't see many of the Word massive rushing out to buy the book after that, especially as David sheepishly confessed that it was a bit "academic" or words to that effect.

Anyway, The Word blogs and previous Podcast chats on gig behaviour, Festival rules etc offer far, far more insight and humour.

Ha ha! Well I loved Professor Wendy's over-analysis of the anthropology of indie, especially once she riffed on the Protestant reformation. Best podcast guest so far.

Of the guest podcast's I have enjoyed Chris Difford and Martin Fry the most. Professor Wendy was interesting enough and why not study anthropology within the context of a group that you inhabit and enjoy. Only wish I could link my work to music and arts.

My only quibble would be the focus of Indie means that the work is going to be based on some stereotypcasting of what is and what isn't Indie. Which is necessary for the findings to be supported by the sample.

This is a very good point, and a particular bugbear of mine for a while now. We live in a culture that purports to celebrate art(ifice), but is increasingly hung up on notions of reality. Whilst crucially and disturbingly saying that art cannot be credible unless it's realistic, it also forces upon our children the highly suspect notion that nothing is worth our attention unless we believe it to be lifelike. In which case we can forget about El Greco, Powell and Pressburger, Phil Spector and anyone else that tried to throw a sense of style at their audience. The important difference here, as far as I'm concerned, is between realism and truth. We respond to music, drama and other forms of art because they ignite a truth in us, and we witness the same truth in them. We hear something that we identify with, and if we're lucky we're too busy enjoying it to ask why. It doesn't need to be realistic, but it helps to be truthful.

I've just found a clip on the FX website of David Simon quoting Picasso: "Art is the lie that tells us the truth".

Enjoy the break, guys. See you in September.

I usually love the podcast, but, for the very first time, I stopped listening to this one before it had finished. What happened to that usually infallible instrument, the Word bullshit detector?

that i disliked (although I'm not sure any american can truly understand northern miserabilism until you lived a once every 2 hours bus ride from a dump of town where it rains all the time!) it was the toss about guest lists put me off, that as a punter who pays to go to gigs has never impinged on my life, the lads were getting strangely excited about laminates.

Having said that linking british radical thought and culture to protestant/non-conformist origins is hardly new. Although it's more complex than that as many of the movers and shakers from the northwest music scene come from a catholic background (which adds a further twist).

ps. aren't all american academics Professors if they teach classes.

was once vital, inventive and varied, in my view. Since the mid 90s it's become the opposite. Just felt this podcast discussion assumed indie was always a narrow, conservative area of music, and so it was based on a rather unfair, generalised stereotype. Indie used to just mean lots of different acts who happened to be on independent record labels.

you were sniggering like naughty schoolboys up your sleeves whilst she was pontificating away?

Anyway - I did the three layers of gig-goers weeks before she did. Can I have a professorship?