Summer Break 2024

We’re taking the rest of the week off to have a few days to relax and enjoy the summer. New posts will resume on Monday.

For me, a lot of this summer has been spent in cars, both a lengthy road trip and the joys of teaching a teenager to drive. Car time means listening to music, and though I’m not sure why, we’ve been listening to an awful lot of the relatively obscure 1980s/90s band Bongwater this summer. Bongwater sprang out of the New York performance art scene of the time, and was led by Ann Magnuson (most probably know her better for her acting roles) and Kramer (no, not that Kramer), founder of the still extant Shimmy Disc record label. Bongwater was ahead of its time in its sound collage approach and far too smart and funny for their own good. All of which led me to find something even more obscure and odd, the video below of the band covering the Roky Erickson song “You Don’t Love Me Yet” while accompanied by none other than legendary bluesman Screaming’ Jay Hawkins.

As I thought last week’s post was going to be far more niche than it turned out to be, perhaps this is an attempt to push the narrowcasting as far as it can go.

What obscure delights are you finding joy in this summer?

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.