PYGMALION- Price of Performance: Corporate Control of Live Music

Featuring Dean Wareham, Bob Mould, Rose Marshack, Andre Perry, and Lisa Gottheil.

Dean Wareham was born in Wellington, New Zealand and moved to New York City as a teenager in 1977. In 1985 he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Social Studies. He then founded Galaxie 500 (as singer/guitarist and songwriter), recording three albums between 1988 and 1991. His next band, Luna, recorded seven studio albums between 1992 and 2004. Since then he has recorded several albums with his wife, Britta Phillips as Dean & Britta. The duo also compose music for film, including The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Mistress America (2015) for Noah Baumbach, the Irma Vep series by Olivier Assayas, and 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, which is a live multimedia commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Dean’s memoir, Black Postcards, published by Penguin Random House, is a personal and cultural chronicle of his years spent in indie rock. His most recent album, I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A., was released in 2021 on Double Feature Records.

Bob Mould is an American musician/singer/songwriter now in his fifth decade of making and performing music. Bob has released 15 solo albums since his 1989 solo debut, Workbook, after forming and leading Minnesota punk rock innovators Hüsker Dü starting in 1979. Along with two albums with the group Sugar, Bob has redefined guitar driven rock across 23 studio albums over the last 40-plus years.

In addition to a catalog of over 250 songs, Bob contributed the theme song to TV’s The Daily Show and has served as a creative north star to legions of musicians ranging from Dave Grohl to Billie Joe Armstrong. Bob’s most recent album was 2020’s Blue Hearts, released to continuing critical acclaim. He tours as both a solo artist and in the Bob Mould Band featuring Jason Narducy (bass) and Jon Wurster (drums).  Bob has solo tours set for the remainder of 2024, with two runs in the USA in September and October, and his first visit to Australia and New Zealand in more than a decade in November.

Andre Perry is a writer and arts administrator in Iowa City, Iowa. He currently serves as the executive director of Hancher Auditorium and the Office of Performing Arts and Engagement at the University of Iowa. In his role, he oversees a robust multidisciplinary year-round presenting program while stewarding collaboration and creative practice across the university’s performing arts campus. He previously worked as executive director at The Englert Theatre and national talent buyer for The Mill. While in school at Iowa, Perry co-founded the music and literature event Mission Creek Festival and works as its artistic director.

His debut nonfiction book  Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, was hailed by NPR as “extraordinary” and Foreword called him “a fresh American voice that demands to be heard.” His next book, a work of narrative nonfiction, explores the lives of independent artists and musicians in the early 2000s.

Rose Marshack is Interim Director of the School of Creative Technologies, and a Professor of Music at Illinois State University. She teaches Computer Programming for Creatives and Music Business, and has developed courses with topics as varied as virtual and augmented reality, psychogeography, sustainability and hacktivism. Rose and her partner Rick Valentin founded the bands Poster Children and Salaryman, releasing 12 albums on various indie and major labels in the US and overseas. They are pioneers in digital media communications, having created the first Enhanced-CDs (on Sire/Reprise) and written some of the earliest blogs (Rose’s tour reports, 1995). In 1998, they launched the podcast Radiozero, which they continue to this day. In 2023, Rose released her first book, titled Play Like A Man, My Life in Poster Children, on University of Illinois Press. 

Lisa Gottheil is the co-founder of Grandstand Media, one of the most respected and in-demand music publicity firms in the world. At Grandstand, she has overseen campaigns for artists such as Tame Impala, Perfume Genius, Julien Baker, Snail Mail and Sam Fender, while also working with organizations such as Governors Ball Festival, SoundCloud, and the nonprofit Sounds Of Saving. Gottheil got her start in the music business as a DJ at Berkeley, California, radio station KALX and then spent five years in retail, video promotion, and publicity roles at Rough Trade Records. In 1991, she co-founded AutoTonic Publicity and Management, who worked with a number of bands at the start of their career such as The Afghan Whigs and Guided By Voices. From 1996-2013, she ran her own company, 230 Publicity, while simultaneously overseeing the press department at Beggars and later serving as VP of Publicity for the larger Beggars Label Group. Gottheil is on the board of the nonprofit Josh’s Fund, which is dedicated to providing educational support to oncology nurses, and co-founded the nonprofit The Sled, which aids housing-insecure New York public school children and their families. She lives in New York City with her husband and two teenage children.