When Mojave 3 was recording what would become its 1995 debut 'Ask Me tomorrow' for 4AD records at the Abbey Road Studios, Wendy Fonarow was there. Only Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, still working together after their band Slowdive ended, didn't have any idea that they were working on a Mojave 3 record yet; they had yet to settle on a name for their new, sparse, country-tinged project. Fonarow keyed into the similarities between the group's sound and childhood car rides through the desert. She suggested 'Mojave' as a moniker. The name fit.

This is a telling anecdote about the work of Fonarow. She is not in the bands she writes about, but an active participant in the community who understands the inner workings of their rituals and behaviors at times better than they do themselves. Dubbed 'The Professor of Indie' in music circles, the doctor of Anthropology earned her Ph.D. at UCLA (where she is currently a visiting assistant professor) and has been involved in music for as long as she can remember.

Fonarow did her undergraduate work at UCSD where she specialized in Psychological Anthropology with a minor in Applied Mathematics. She continued on to UCLA to pursue her interest in ritual, performance and communication, doing her masters thesis on children’s participation in Halloween. Her combined knowledge of linguistic, cultural and physical anthropology gives her the insight to find the meaning behind many of the cultural practices that people take for granted.

Empire of Dirt, her first book, is the culmination of more than 13 years of research and study of indie music and is available through the University of Wesleyan Press. The UK music scene was always a draw for Fonarow, both personally and professionally.

"When I was in grad school, the only time I would take off from work was to go to shows and when a ticket says a show starts at 8pm, I'm there at 8pm! So many times, I was the only women in the room and I would be there by myself as all of my friends thought it was crazy to get there hours before the headliners were playing. Invariably, the only other people at the shows that early were music industry professionals. They would ask what I was doing there and I’d say I was waiting for the show to start. I made friends in the business very fast, by just being a fan. When I finally made my way over to the UK to do my research, I already had a lot of people looking out for me.]"

After years of attending gigs for fun and while studying ritual, performance, art, and communication in her coursework, Wendy had an epiphany at a show and realized the 'gig' itself was an event worthy of study. Relying on the indie music connections she had established while going to gigs in California, Fonarow completed the majority of the research for Empire of Dirt in Britain, where she was able to combine her love of the music with several years of anthropological field research. In fact, it was Creation Records Founder Alan McGee who gave Wendy the album with the line that inspired the title for the book!

Over the course of her research and years abroad, Fonarow became the first employee of the essential independent label Domino Records where she did everything from helping potato print singles with Flying Saucer Attack to taking Domino’s fledgling bands out on tour.

Later, she scouted up-and-coming British indie acts as an A&R representative for American labels Reprise and MCA. Fonarow has witnessed firsthand the rise of indie-based acts such as Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Suede, Elliott Smith, Elastica, Ride and Franz Ferdinand. She has seen the boom of British indie from its sensitive, twee beginnings to its current state and has chronicled her observations in a provocative text that even makes the musicians themselves take a step back and look at their world a little differently.

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