Dum Ditty Dum makes books and periodicals and blog posts that examine music and music ephemera. It finds connections between writing and music, taking off from Theodor Adorno’s statement that, with the invention of the vinyl disc, “music, previously conveyed by writing, suddenly itself turns into writing.” It aspires to fill the contemporary void of intelligent and experimental music writing.
Dum Ditty Dum’s Various Times series randomly generates a single day from the rock era (1950-2017, arguably), then discusses and makes connections between records that were released and circulating on that day, alongside other relevant events, in order to begin to draw a historical-materialist picture of the total set of forces operating on life and music in that single lucid complex moment.
Each issue is a brick, building a history of rock across a nonlinear trajectory that we want to eventually compile into a single volume, or just throw, one at a time, at the glass houses of rock-capital.
Upcoming book releases include The Idiot’s Guide to the Howling Hex, and The Prison-House of Rock.
Dum Ditty Dum zines are printed on a Risograph, a once-obsolete printing technology made newly fashionable for reasons of economy and aesthetics. DdD is written, designed, and printed by two people. Jack Henrie Fisher is a professor at the UIC School of Design. Gene Booth is a 7th grade Humanities teacher at a public school in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. Gene was the first Director of Publicity at Drag City Records and has written for music publications including The Village Voice and New York magazine. Jack previously imagined publishing two music-related zines: “Double Standard”, about North Carolina hardcore, and “Lost in the Game”, an mid-period Britany Spears fanzine.
There’s also a facebook page.
Send requests for copies, book proposals, and fan mail to one or both of these addresses: jack@dumdittydum.com, gene@dumdittydum.com