As students of California State University, Stanislaus, we are very lucky to have a faculty almost as diverse as the student body – especially when it comes to tastes in music. Dr. Keith Nainby of the Communication Studies Department is no exception.
Dr. Nainby has been teaching since 1999, but started teaching at CSU Stanislaus in 2005. Since then, the southwest Florida native has gone on to teach important courses on campus regularly, including Communication Theory and Communication and Gender.
Last week, Dr. Nainby sat down with the “Signal” to give a little insight into his taste in music and his vast CD collection. What was most surprising about this seasoned Communication Studies professor was his favorite performer thus far, but he’ll get to that later.
How would you describe your taste in music?
Keith Nainby: So, I have always tried to describe it as eclectic and broad-based because I always try to push myself to listen to new things. But it’s a little bit of a lie in the sense that it’s almost all Euro-American. […] It was shaped by what’s on, like, classic rock radio, you know. Sort of everything that descended from the Led Zeppelin/Pink Floyd-vibe was where I was until I went off to college, and then I finally started to get into more of what was then – this is embarrassing to say, what was then modern rock, which would include stuff like when Sting went solo, or like new wave stuff, like [Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark] and The Cure and stuff like that. And then I got into grunge when grunge was new. I was sort of the right market for it. I was about 20 and I had grown up on hard rock, but I had political attitudes that were more like punk. And so I was sort of an ideal audience for bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and stuff like that. […] I spent most of my time in my 30s listening to jazz. […] I live in Oakland, so I go to Yoshi’s sometimes, which is a famous jazz club in Oakland, and listen to jazz.
I know you just said that your taste is very eclectic, but do you have a favorite genre? Do you have a go-to?
KN: Hm. I mean jazz is – I mean that’s changed over my life. So when I was in my teenage years, that would have been classic rock. I mean, I was a huge Rush fan. I will be amazed if you know who that is.
Amanda Langston: Yeah I do.
KN: You do?
AL: I do. I’m not very familiar with the music, but I am familiar with the band.
KN: Alright, cool. So, you know, we’re weirdos. Like we’re Rush geeks. Everybody was into hard rock, but those of us who were into Rush were like an inner circle. So my go-to in the 80s was Rush and other kinds of music in that, like, hard rock genre. And then, like I said, once I get into my late 20s it’s starting to narrow again and it was mostly jazz.
I mean I listen to a lot of classical also, but probably in the same ways a lot of people do. Now that I have a professor, middle-class kind of lifestyle, I own a lot of classical music and listen to that. But usually jazz and then teenage years: hard rock.
What do you look for in music? What’s important to you?
KN: I’m sorta going through a weird thing lately. I have a new thing, which is shocking to me, that I have never liked Top 40. You notice the one thing I left out of my explorations of various genres is I’ve always defined myself as not somebody who listens to Top 40. And occasionally, I’ll have little dabblings with, like, I was a little bit – a little tiny bit into Paula Abdul when she was brand new. But generally, I kinda push away – and I’m a huge Prince fan. But I consider Prince to be someone who occasionally wrote Top 40 but is a real artist.
And I was always defining real artists as “not Top 40.” It’s ‘cause he writes his own songs; that’s the biggest thing. But, exactly a week ago last night – Thursday of last week, a good friend of mine, whose dad works for P!nk, took me to the P!nk show. And I cannot, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine 10 days ago that I could say what I’m about to say with a straight face, but she is the best performer I have ever seen.
AL: Wow.
KN: I mean, unbelievable. I have bought five P!nk  albums in the last nine days. So the reason I bring that up with what I listen for in music is because she feels different to me than most Top 40 because she really integrates hard rock, which is what I grew up on. And I’ve been really surprised; I was shocked at the concert at how much of a rocker she is. I mean, I’ve seen Iron Maiden, I’ve seen Pink Floyd, I’ve seen Rush six times maybe and she rocks hard. And I just would never have imagined that a Top 40 female artist is somebody I could say that about. Her concert was overwhelming. All I’ve done in nine days is listen to P!nk.
How important are lyrics to you? Is it more about the beat and the vocal style?
KN: That’s a good question. That’s something that’s changed over time. So part of what made me a Rush geek in the 80s is, you know, all of us who were into Rush thought they were a much more intelligent band. We could tell that they were other nerds. It’s very obvious in the music because they write about sci-fi stuff and because the lyrics are more intelligent than just, you know, “I’m gonna go to a night-club and get laid,” which is what most hard rock lyrics are about, right? And so that was part of it with Rush; the lyrics were more intelligent.
But generally speaking, especially as someone who gravitated toward jazz, what matters to me about lyrics is that people write them. So I mean, I published two articles on Bob Dylan, and so clearly lyrics matter a lot to me if I published two articles on Bob Dylan. But what matters is not necessarily – it’s that they reflect the will of the artist who’s singing them because then I think that the artist is committed to the lyrics.
P!nk is a great example of this. I mean I have never been into Top 40 and never thought I would like P!nk this much because she doesn’t solo-author the songs. They’re always these producers who are co-authors on all the songs and who work with the musical part. And I used to be very disrespectful toward that. I felt like, well if you’re not like Bob Dylan or Prince and you can’t write your own music, then I don’t care, right? I don’t care that you’re getting somebody else to write songs for you so you can sing them. But she writes all her own lyrics, and I think she sings in a much more committed, soulful way because she writes her own lyrics.
And everything I just said applies to Adele. She co-writes the songs with big, famous pop producers, but she writes the lyrics. So lyrics are becoming more important to me as I start to listen to people like Adele and P!nk because I realize how being committed to the lyrical content affects their vocals, makes them differently committed and differently artistic as they engage in singing.
Do you look for new music, or do you just kind of stick to what you know?
KN: So historically, I’ve always thought of myself as looking for new music in the sense of something new-to-me. But interestingly, that’s usually meant going backwards in time. […] So I bring that up to say I always want to broaden my musical knowledge and I always look for new stuff to listen to, but it usually means, like, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan – going backwards. Because I grew up listening to music that was deeply influenced by people like Bob Dylan and the Beatles.
And now as an adult, I spend a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. So something new means to me something different or something new-to-me. But usually, especially as I have gotten older – this happens to everybody – new music becomes less interesting because it sometimes feels trivial, like, it sometimes feels like it doesn’t meaningfully expand on the music. This is why I’m always dismissive of Top 40, you know? I mean, I’ll hear a Christina Aguilera song or a Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift song, and I’ll think, “That sounds like the same foolish Top 40 I heard 20 years ago.”
And this is why I was so shocked at P!nk and Adele, because I’m like – well I’m sure I would have said three years ago, I would have said, “Oh, even if they have interesting voices, they’re just writing the same music people would write in the 80s or the 90s and so who cares?” And so the biggest lesson I’ve taken away from last week’s concert is now I care because I can hear that P!nk is actually doing what – I would say she does what Prince did in the 80s, which is synthesize a huge range of genres. Not just for the purpose of seeing if you can do that, but because it develops a new unique voice. So I like it when artists do that, but I think it’s really rare, at least on initial listens, for me to hear that.
Who are some of your favorite jazz artists or musicians?
KN: I have about 80 Miles Davis CDs. So Miles Davis is by far the favorite. But I also listen to Wayne Shorter a lot; he’s probably my other favorite. Um, John Coltrane […] those are the three I listen to a lot as far as jazz musicians. And I told you I’m a big Rush fan. Bob Dylan – I mean I have maybe 60 books on Bob Dylan and I’ve published two articles on Bob Dylan so he’s another one.
Wow, that’s incredible. How big is your music collection?
KN: I have a lot. This gets me in trouble at home, but I buy a lot of music. I don’t have a lot of other vices, so I don’t feel bad; like I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. You know a lot of people just go out with friends on the weekend and drop $30 on beers, right? And so I might spend $20 a week on music, and that seems perfectly fine to me. And it’s not the money that’s the problem, but it’s not like we have a huge house, and so at a certain point when you’re buying CDs and you don’t, like, get rid of them like a lot of people do after they digitize the music – I mean, we have a lot of CDs. So it’s a challenge sometimes for me to make sure they’re filed in a way that is not offensive within my household to other people who are inside of it.
AL: I just imagine this big room with boxes and boxes of CDs.
KN: See it’s not even – we don’t have that kind of a house. We live in Oakland, so we have a pretty small house; it’s a very nice house, but we have to keep everything very carefully put away and I can’t have a whole room for my music, ‘cause we also have a lot of books [too]. So I have these two nice CD cabinets that fit a ton of CDs. I did put a lot of them in wallets and got rid of the cases. We [also] have several of these big 250-CD wallets; we have a bunch of those.
You said P!nk was the best performer, but was that your favorite concert, or?
KN: [It] probably [is] now. I can’t believe that’s what I’m telling you. I mean other great concerts I’ve seen in the past: K.D. Lang was fantastic. What makes K.D. Lang and P!nk alike is they both have extraordinary personal charisma. And so you can be in a venue with thousands of people, and you’ll swear that they see you, that they’re flirting with you and that they’re singing just to you. And I mean that’s an amazing gift. You can’t teach that. You either have it or you don’t. And I always thought K.D. Lang is gonna be the most charismatic person that I’ve ever seen in concert. P!nk has more charisma than she does; it’s amazing. Um, but, Peter Gabriel I’ve seen twice and both of those shows were fabulous. I saw him in 1994 or 1993, so mid-90s, and I saw him last year. And both of those shows in very different ways were superb. McCoy Tyner, who’s a jazz musician. He’s a piano player for John Coltrane; he’s still alive, he’s in his 70s and he had a terrific band at Yoshi’s. That’s definitely in my top five list, too. Probably McCoy Tyner, Peter Gabriel, K.D. Lang, P!nk – those would be the best I’ve seen. And I’ve seen Bob Dylan three times; the second time I saw him was very, very strong. The other two were kind of disappointing actually.
AL: I’m so amazed, like, these artists are just so awesome; I wish I could have seen them, too.
KN: I feel lucky, yeah. The weird thing is that I haven’t seen any of the grunge people. I’ve never seen – I didn’t see Nirvana, I’ve never seen Pearl Jam, I’ve never seen Smashing Pumpkins, and it’s a little strange for me given that I was born in 1970. But I’ve never seen any of those; they’re all the same age as me. Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan were born in 1967, so it’s a little weird that I haven’t seen their acts. But I haven’t, even though I have like 20 Pearl Jam records and 20 Smashing Pumpkins [albums]. But yeah, I feel lucky I’ve gotten to see as many good musicians as I have.