Part Of The Air We Breathe

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with SEC fight song expert Carrie Tipton, veteran arts editor Mike Huguenor, and Williams College professor W. Anthony Sheppard. Plus! A call for new Stuff You Gotta Watch contributors, reading recommendations, and much more! But first…

Nevermind Lede Of The Week; This Is...

Released as a companion piece to Matt Trollope's book of the same name, One More: A Definitive History of UK Clubbing is an extensive and immersive journey through a scene that changed British nightlife forever. (The title refers to that final request for the DJ to play "one more" before the inevitable return to reality.)

Brandon Block serves as host of this documentary that traces two decades of UK clubbing, quickly guiding us through legendary venues, superstar DJs, masterful promoters, game-changing publications, and myriad other adjacent elements (i.e. ecstasy) that proved essential to keep the party going for all those years. As we travel from Birmingham to London passing through Nottingham, Brighton, Sheffield, Mansfield, Stoke-On-Trent, Manchester, and Derby, as well as a couple of Welsh and Scottish cities, we get a useful taste of the British club circuit in the '90s and 2000s that doubles as a unique geography lesson.

Sonique, Danny Rampling, John Holland, Fatboy Slim, Jeremy Healy, and many others share their memories of those wild golden days alongside video footage, personal and professional photos, and an impressive collection of posters, tickets, flyers, record sleeves, and other memorabilia.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Carrie Tipton is a musicologist. For six seasons, she hosted the book interview podcast Notes on Bach, and her work often touches on “a lot of things inside, outside, and adjacent to academia.” Carrie’s new book is From Dixie to Rocky Top: Music and Meaning in Southeastern Conference Fight Songs.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I started taking piano lessons at age three (my mom is a great pianist) and throughout my Music Ed degree and master’s in Piano Performance, I thought my professional future lay in that direction, as a collaborative pianist, church musician, and piano teacher, maybe with a DMA in Piano Pedagogy or Collaborative Piano. But during my master’s degree, I fell down the musicology rabbit hole and never dug myself out—I ended up getting a Ph.D. in it. (I worked as an archives assistant for many of my student years, which showed me that I loved working with historical materials and probably should have been an early clue.)

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Mike Huguenor is a musician, writer, and the former arts editor of Metro Silicon Valley. Mike just left his job at Metro and is now working on a biography of Asian Man Records, in addition to touring across the United States.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

Long before I was writing about music, I was playing it. My bands Shinobu and Hard Girls were active in the San Jose area through the 2000s and 2010s and regularly left on lengthy tours where few people saw us. These days I have a variety of musical projects I play in, but am most active as the guitarist for Jeff Rosenstock.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

W. Anthony Sheppard is the Marylin and Arthur Levitt Professor of Music at Williams College, where he teaches courses in 20th-century music, opera, popular music, and Asian music.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

Starting “from the beginning”?! Well, my parents met at a local Sing Out! chapter meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida where I was subsequently born. As a child, I mostly heard Elvis records at home and music making was central to my activities. I started on the clarinet in elementary school and performed various second-tier roles in multiple musicals in children’s theater groups. I was in the Pinellas Youth Symphony and, as a student member, was able to score lots of free tickets to concerts in the Tampa Bay Area. For my fifth-grade essay on my future career, I wrote about orchestral conductors. However, I stopped saying “I’m gonna be a conductor when I grow up” after sitting in on the Tanglewood Music Center conducting fellows’ seminar and noting that they were all already 30 and were still just starting out. This was after sophomore year in college and by then I was already falling in love with the academic life and trying to figure out how I could stay in college forever.

Insider Extra: September 29

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more!

Make Angular Great Again

Just For Myself

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with music journalist Michael Azerrad, Australian hip-hop expert Dianne Rodger, and freelance writers T.M. Brown and Eli Schoop. Plus! Jann Wenner takes, a call for new Stuff You Gotta Watch contributors, and much more! But first…

Been Here More Times Than I’d Care To Admit

Often viewed as an early example of the Black Power movement, The Cry of Jazz connects jazz to African-American history through performance clips (which include the likes of Sun Ra and John Gilmore), dramatic sequences, and narrated footage of Chicago's Black neighborhoods in the 1950s.

The documentary is revolutionary for its depiction of Black and white people discussing jazz and politics together—suggesting an integration that was far from the norm in late '50s America—but also for including clear statements denouncing how much of Western popular music is an appropriation of black genres: "Rock'n'roll is merely an offspring of rhythm & blues," George Waller's Alex tells a white couple.

The Cry of Jazz is a valuable document of an era and a lifestyle, with its juxtaposition of sociopolitical contextualization and musical sequences proving to be both educational and entertaining. It also traces a parallel between jazz and Black life: Both are defined as a mix of "freedom and restraint." Initially released in 1959 to mixed reviews and accusations of "black racism," it has since been selected for preservation by the Library of Congress due to its cultural significance.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Michael Azerrad is a longtime music journalist and the author of The Amplified Come as You Are. It’s a “30th-anniversary deluxe edition of the iconic bestselling biography of Nirvana, updated with exclusive new content exploring the personal and cultural forces that inspired the music.” (Full disclosure: Michael is my old boss at eMusic and Nirvana is a band that I work with at my day job at Universal Music.)

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

My dad brought home Sgt. Pepper the week it came out and I proceeded to play it over and over; I was just a little kid but at that moment I realized I was a rock person and I wanted to make it my life. Fast-forward many years to the mid '80s, a year or so out of college, and I found myself working at a little company called Rockamerica that distributed music videos to nightclubs. They published a little music/video magazine that they sent to music labels, management companies, production companies, etc., and the editor decided that since Michael played in bands and had gone to college, he could write about music. I protested: I hated writing. HATED it. But the editor talked me into and I wrote a review of a compilation of Gumby videos—everybody liked it and, I grudgingly had to admit, so did I. The first musician I ever interviewed was Robert Smith from the Cure and that went really well. (Little did I know that he's just a great interview and whatever talent I had, had little to do with it.)

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Dr. Dianne Rodger is a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide. She has a new 33 1/3 book on Hilltop Hoods' The Calling, which is "a major event on the timeline of hip-hop in Australia."

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I am currently employed as a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Adelaide. This role includes both teaching and research. It’s not a professional career that I imagined when I was younger. When I started University in 2002, I was initially studying a combined Bachelor of Arts and Law. As my degree went on, I found that I was really enjoying the Arts subjects (in particular, Anthropology) and decided to drop Law. I got a major in Anthropology and went on to do an Honours year. At that time, there were some big shifts happening in the discipline with people increasingly doing research in their own communities and with cultural groups that they were a part of.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

T.M. Brown is a freelancer with bylines in the New Yorker, New York Times, and much more. His day job is VP of Creative at Codeword, a communications and marketing agency.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I had a really roundabout path to all of this. I started as a city planner working for the Feds and NYCDOT. I loved it. Something about how these massive interlocking systems worked was always fascinating to me, as was anything you only noticed or appreciated when it broke (like the subway.) In 2015, I ended up winning a research fellowship to go study high-speed rail in Berlin—but ended up spending most of my time in clubs. (The German word for “high-speed rail” is “hochgeschwindigkeitsbahn.”) I wrote a couple of gratis pieces for Drew Millard at Noisey while I was there, and those were probably my first bylines that meant anything.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Eli Schoop is a freelance writer from Cleveland, newly based in Brooklyn. Eli has bylines in Tiny Mix Tapes, Bandcamp Daily, and Tone Glow.

Did you have any mentors along the way? What did they teach you?

Formally I started music writing with ACRN, Ohio University’s alt-radio network, and in addition to being good friends, Clem Baker, Abbie Doyle and Sam Tornow all encouraged me to really sit with music even if it’s mediocre (the worst musical crime). Getting my first big boy gig at Tiny Mix Tapes I learned style and voice from legends like Nick James Scavo, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Sam Goldner, and the indomitable C Monster—not that he can be replicated. Joshua Minsoo Kim gave me a music writing community with Tone Glow and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And Mariana Timony, who has probably edited more of my pieces than anyone, has no patience for dumb flowery bullshit, and for that I salute her.

Insider Extra: September 22

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more!

All You Had To Do Was Stay

Oliver Wang: Notes on Process [SPECIAL EDITION]

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: A new Notes On Process with Oliver Wang.

Oliver Wang: Notes on Process

Insider Extra: September 15

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more!

RIP

The Answer Was Yes

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with John Prine expert Holly Gleason, former Melody Maker and Uncut editor Allan Jones, Australian music journalist Samuel J. Fell, and freelance writer Celia Almeida. Plus! Reading recommendations, podcast recommendations, and much more! But first…

10/10, No Notes!

It's common sense that history, politics, and culture often intertwine, and the case with Latin music is no different. The desire to understand its origins and overall background is precisely the motivation behind The Latin Explosion: A New America, which comprises numerous informative sequences that regularly break the otherwise music-oriented narrative in order to signal crucial social movements or illuminating immigration patterns.

This fascinating HBO documentary traces the roots of Hispanic contributions to American music from early Afro-Cuban rhythms to contemporary superstars like Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, highlighting several turning points such as the 1961 premiere of West Side Story, Santana's crossover phenomenon, or the invaluable contribution of Fania Records to the dissemination of salsa. Adding to an astonishing amount of footage edited at a feverish pace are first-person testimonies from many inspirational pioneers, including Rita Moreno, Jose Feliciano, and Gloria Estefan.

Despite clocking in at just an hour, The Latin Explosion: A New America does an excellent job at explaining why so much pop music today flows from the myriad Latin sounds that came before.

Holly Gleason is a Nashville-based writer and artist development consultant. She's written for countless publications, and was recently named Entertainment Journalist of the Year at the Southern California Journalism Awards. Her new book is Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters with John Prine. It collects Prine, in his own words, across a variety of different formats.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I was a championship golfer as a kid, and I started writing about golf. A hand injury ankled my college golf career, but having met Vince Gill as a high school senior – looking for someone to play golf with, I kidnapped him and interviewed him for the St Andrews’ Bagpiper. The last day we played golf, he made the outlandish suggestion: “You should write about music.”

That seemed crazy. I was never going to know another famous person, but I loved music, and I had time on my hands. Suddenly writing for the Rollins Sandspur turned into the University Of Miami Hurricane, In Record Timez (yes, with a “Z”), and then being the South Florida correspondent for touring trade Performance. Rock & Soul, Black Miami Weekly, Trouser Press and the Cleveland Plain Dealer followed.

Allan Jones is a former editor of Melody Maker and Uncut. His latest book is Too Late To Stop Now, which follows Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down. Both books collect stories from his work as a staff writer at Melody Maker from 1974 to 1984.

How did you get where you are today, professionally?

I graduated from art school and moved to London in June 1973 with post-college career plans that would be flattered if you described them as vague. I got an early break when a selection of my drawings was published in a new arts magazine called The Image, recently launched by David Bailey and his publishing partner David Litchfield. A commission for some illustrations from the BBC quickly followed, the eventual payment for which barely covered the cost of the ink and paper involved, let alone next week’s rent. I got a job in the mail order department of a posh bookshop in Piccadilly. It was a cushy enough gig, I suppose. At least I wasn’t working on a building site, breaking rocks in the hot sun, bones cracking in winter cold, anything like that. At the same time, it was such dull repetitive work I daily hoped someone in the office might introduce a little havoc to the slowly unwinding days by running amok with a hatchet.

I was still at the bookshop in April 1974, when I met my girlfriend Kathy for lunch in Green Park. She was looking through the jobs vacancies in London listing magazine Time Out. Something caught her eye that made her laugh. “Someone,” she said, “is looking for you.” What caught Kathy’s attention was an ad announcing a vacancy for a junior feature writer/reporter on Melody Maker, the music weekly I've devotedly read for years, then the largest selling music weekly in the world, with a weekly sale of 250,000 copies.

Samuel J. Fell is an Australian journalist, writer, and critic. He’s written for Rolling Stone, Sydney Morning Herald, Rhythms, and more. His new book is Full Coverage: A History Of Rock Journalism In Australia.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

So it was initially a case, as I suspect it’s been with many in this game, of being in the right place at the right time, and it being not what I knew (which was goddamn nothing at that point) but who I knew. I was 19 and studying Broadcast Journalism at a local TAFE (like a community college)… one of the teachers, among many other things, ran a music website (this was in 1999, so it was quite ahead of its time) and he ambled into class one morning and said he had space for a live review on the site, and had anyone been to a gig recently. I put up my hand, having seen Sepultura a couple of nights previously, he commissioned it on the spot, I wrote it that night and he paid me $40. I was hooked, and came to regularly review live shows for the site over the next couple of years as I finished ‘studying’. Up until this point, despite the fact I’d been reading a bit of music media, I’d never really thought that someone could be, ya know, paid to write about music; the concept of a rock journalist didn’t exist, to my mind. Anyway, once I discovered it could possibly be a thing…

This teacher also ran a print magazine called Rhythms, an incredibly well-regarded mag specialising in roots music / Americana. After I left TAFE, in between sitting around drinking too much beer going to a million gigs and traveling (as most in their early 20s are wont to do), I’d hook up with him and came to be a regular at Rhythms—in the early years transcribing his interviews, answering phones, organising the subscriber database, doing the monthly mailout—before finally being invited to write for the magazine; I became a regular contributor, I was assistant editor for a period through the 2010s, and today am a senior contributor, having been associated with the magazine for literally half my life.

Celia Almeida is a music, arts, and culture journalist. She’s the former culture editor at Miami New Times, and has been published in Billboard, Consequence, and more.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

As a child, I felt confused when peers complained about free writes or essays—they were my favorite part of school. I worked at a bookstore in high school and on breaks from college, and I devoured music magazines (Rolling Stone, Spin, MOJO, American Songwriter) before and after my shifts and on lunch breaks. I’d had a tunnel-vision focus on music and musicians since I was a child. (One of my earliest memories is not being able to eat or get out of bed for two days when Selena was killed. I was six.)

Coming from my background—first-generation daughter of working-class Cuban and Salvadoran immigrants—it never occurred to me that you could make a career of writing, and much less about music, which was seen as a frivolous interest in my household. I started out as a psych major at the University of Florida. The field interested me, but I didn’t see a future in it. After a year-and-a-half, I switched to English, with some journalism classes thrown in for good measure. I figured if I did pursue music journalism, I could apply what I learned in dissecting and critiquing literature to music.

Insider Extra: September 8

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more!

No Whey

My Fuel

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with journalist and essayist Aaron Gilbreath, dance music expert Tami Gadir, Solent University professor Chris Anderton, and the French-focused scholar Aimée Boutin. Plus! Rock She Wrote, reading recommendations, and much more! But first…

Why Else Would You Get Into This?

Not many labels can pride themselves on starting a cultural revolution. Born out of UK council estates and dancefloors, Trojan Records helped introduce ska, rocksteady, dancehall, and reggae to the world while inspiring a whole new generation of British youth. It's pretty impressive for a label that, up until its liquidation in 1975, operated from a warehouse in northwest London.

The story, however, has its origins "on an island far far away." As the beginning of Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records signals: "No Jamaica. No Trojan." Taking inspiration from a land both had once called home, founders Lee Gopthal and Chris Blackwell came together in the late 1960s and immediately started putting out chart hits like Desmond Dekker's "You Can Get It If You Really Want," Jimmy Cliff's "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," and Bob and Marcia's "Young Gifted & Black."

This documentary details Trojan Records' rise and fall—and rise again, with a little help from a 21st-century renewed interest in the label's back catalog—through loads of archival footage and compelling interviews with the likes of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Lloyd Coxsone, Marcia Griffiths, and Dandy Livingstone. But the pièce de résistance really lies in the several dramatization sequences that capture the zeitgeist of the era and tie the entire narrative together.

Aaron Gilbreath is a journalist and essayist who has written for Harper’s, The New York Times, and many more outlets. He is the author of This Is: Essays on Jazz and, most recently, The Heart of California: Exploring the San Joaquin Valley. Previously an editor at Longreads, he now runs the Substack music series Alive in the Nineties.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

My life as a music writer started as a music fan. My friends and I went to so many concerts in our teens and 20s during the 1990s, and I occasionally wrote things down in a journal from those shows: memorable moments, things people in the band said, set lists. Some were human moments. Some were mundane details I didn’t want to forget. I kept flyers and posters from countless concerts, many from shows I didn’t even attend. I kept concert tickets, back when they printed them. I saved music magazines and articles about bands I liked from local alt-weeklies.

Even before I wrote finished music stories, I had a strong documentary impulse and the sense that the shows, and that time of our lives, were important fleeting things that needed to be preserved. So I literally just piled stuff in various boxes over the years and carried around the notion that I was creating some sort of music culture archive. Little did I realize that that archive was what I would tap when I started writing about music! I also started recording concerts I went to, first on cassette tapes on crappy equipment, then with a really good video camera, because live music was often my favorite music, because it had a unique energy often lacking in studio recordings.

Tami Gadir is a lecturer in music industry in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her research “addresses the mechanisms that promote or hinder participation in musical life, on the one hand, and the mechanisms in musical life that promote or hinder political imperatives beyond musical life, on the other.” Her new book is Dance Music: A Feminist Account of an Ordinary Culture.

Can you please briefly describe the book?

The argument is straightforward: global electronic dance music and DJ cultures are part of the wider culture we live in. Even the most alternative/underground scenes do not float above (or below) something called a mainstream of music culture. The book includes an intellectual history of dance music cultures and critically examines how they have been celebrated as emancipatory and radical. It takes all kinds of problems with gender as core examples of where dance music falls short of emancipation, along with other issues such as its in-built neoliberal, entrepreneurial orientations. It is based on years of clubbing, DJing, a little bit of promoting, a lot of observation, and 80 interviews.

It cannot and does not cover every scene, every genre, and every geographical corner. But it is international in its outlook and outreach.

Chris Anderton is an associate professor in cultural economy at Solent University Southampton. His research examines a range of topics including the live music and festival industries, the development and representation of music genres, the management and marketing of popular music, and the intersection of fan practices and intellectual property law.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I’d like to say that I planned my academic career, but this is certainly not true. When I left school at 18 the last thing I wanted to do was carry on with education, so I took a job with a bank that over the following years I gradually became ever-more disillusioned with. My girlfriend was at University, so one summer I decided to put in an application to the same university (University of Wales Swansea as it was at the time), got accepted and more or less immediately handed in my notice. After three years studying geography I thought I’d carry on to a Masters course so looked around for something that interested me. As a lifelong fan of all kinds of music, but with relatively little talent as a performing musician, I found the MBA Music Industries at University of Liverpool and thought it looked ideal either as a stepping stone into getting into an industry job or just to find out more about how things work behind the scenes.

Having decided that I liked researching the business more than necessarily working in it, I proposed a PhD project on music festivals back at Swansea University. At the time there was little research into music festivals, yet the sector was growing at a rapid rate and becoming ever more mainstream, professional and commercialised. On completion of my thesis I made a few job applications and took a lecturing role at Solent University. I’ve been there ever since, extending on my research interests and successfully supporting students into their steps into the music industries. I’m now an Associate Professor and Associate Head working with a great team of research active academics in the music business area, and have had the opportunity to push a variety of research projects and externally focused events (gigs, club nights, outdoor festivals, conferences and so on) with students on the music business and performance courses. I am currently working with local industry stakeholders on how to enhance the music scene in Southampton.

Aimée Boutin is a professor of French at Florida State University. She specializes in 19th-century French poetry, women writers, cultural history, gender studies, art history, soundscapes and the city in literature. Her most recent book is City of Noise: Sound and Nineteenth-Century Paris.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I grew up in Ottawa, Canada in a bilingual French/English family. I did my entire K-12 schooling in French. Although early on, I fell in love with French poetry, I was encouraged to pursue a scientific track. (I never excelled in music and didn’t play an instrument; I like vocals, but I can’t sing in tune. I love the radio because I’ve always found that listening to the disembodied voice is enthralling). So, in college I started as a biology and French major, but I quickly figured out that was schizophrenic. I decided to pursue a BA in English/French literature then I went on to an MA/PhD in French literature at Cornell U.

At Cornell, as a grad student, I took a seminar with Professor Nelly Furman (she would later be the director of the ADFL) called “le regard et la voix” (the gaze and the voice). This seminar was formative. It used a psychoanalytic framework to analyze and compare the lure of the voice and of the gaze. We read Lacan on the gaze, and Chion on sound in cinema. We read Didier Anzieu on the sound envelope. Cixous on the laugh of the Medusa and Clément who wrote so passionately about the female operatic voice (Opera, or the Undoing of Women, 1979).

Insider Extra: August 25

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more!

Programming Note

My Etsy Shop

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with Teen Vogue editor P. Claire Dodson, writer and author John Lingan, Boston music journalist Victoria Wasylak, and hip-hop scholar J. Griffith Rollefson. Plus! Ralph Ellison, TikTok, and much more! But first…

Are You Kenenough?

P. Claire Dodson is the senior entertainment editor at Teen Vogue and a freelance journalist who has written for the New York Times, Fast Company, and more.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

In the early 2000s, my dad took me to a Britney Spears concert that he was reviewing for our small community newspaper in East Tennessee. It was my first concert, and my first time realizing that you could literally get free Britney Spears tickets—all you had to do was write about the show. He was a copy editor for all of my childhood, and I loved hanging out in the newsroom and playing on the computer; I was really lucky to see a model for a journalism career early on. My mom taught elementary school and is a big reader, and so she really instilled in me this love for education and reading and learning about people’s experiences that aren’t your own.

My junior year of high school, I took a journalism class and had a great teacher who assigned us an album review. (Shoutout to Mr. Vacek, whose AP Language class basically taught me how to do what I do now.) I wrote about Relient K’s Forget and Not Slow Down, and something just clicked. It was everything I liked to do, listening to music obsessively and forming opinions about how that music made me think about the world.

John Lingan is a writer with bylines in the New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, and many more. His latest book is A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

My writing career has always been part-time. I was already a father when I graduated college in 2007, which didn't seem like a great time to pursue a full-time writing gig like a staff position. I don't have any journalism training; I have an English B.A., a love of reading, and a lifelong music fandom that came from devotedly playing drums (and in bands) as a teenager.

For a few years after graduation I wrote all sorts of stuff for occasional diaper money and intellectual stimulation: movie reviews, essays on literature, reportage about YouTube video trends, and a reflection on my hometown's minor history of political radicalism. I wanted (still want) to be a feature writer, which led me to seek out what one editor called "the weirdo beat," i.e. whatever characters caught my interest.

Victoria Wasylak is a Boston-based music journalist and editor. She’s the Boston music editor of Vanyaland and a former writer for the podcast company Double Elvis.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I’ve dedicated the past decade of my life almost entirely to music journalism. I was fortunate enough to have my “a-ha” moment about my career path when I was 16, when I abandoned my dream of studying sharks as a marine biologist for the chance to document music history as a reporter.

At Boston University, I wrote for—and later became music editor of—The Buzz, BU’s only print culture publication. I also co-hosted a radio show on WTBU for almost every semester I was in college. I surrounded myself with similar folks: The kids with dyed hair and denim jackets glistening with handmade pins, who were descending into Allston basements every other night for DIY shows. I covered everything from vinyl subscription services to ska in Boston and our local Converse Rubber Tracks studio, interviewed some peak-2010s artists (Neon Trees, BØRNS, Fitz and the Tantrums, to name a few) and frequently invited area artists into the WTBU studio for interviews and live sets. I kept my Beats on me at all times and I kept busy.

J. Griffith Rollefson is professor of music at University College Cork, National University of Ireland. His latest book is Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I'm probably a good example of someone who's done it all in terms of the winding "fake it til we make it" paths we take in academia. I held precarious "adjunct" posts during and after my 2009 PhD from UW-Madison, teaching a wide range of classes and developing my resume from 2006-2011. As the most absurd example, one semester, I taught my signature global hip hop class "Planet Rap: Global Hip Hop and Postcolonial Perspectives" alongside music major surveys in "Medieval and Renaissance Music" and "the Music of Africa and the Middle East." I mean, there were some fun chances to talk, for instance, about Andalusia and cultural transfer to students in both those musicology and ethnomusicology survey courses, but it was a good example of how Music Departments are increasingly reliant on precarious workers to teach courses that should be taught by tenured specialists.

I graduated at the depths of the financial crisis as state hiring freezes hit and jobs dried up. Although I got some great interviews, I didn't get a job after graduation, so took a church choir director post as I continued to adjunct across Southern California (where my wife had scored a tenure track post). During this time I tried to keep writing and publishing through plenty of struggles and the exceptional challenges of the birth of my first child.

Insider Extra: August 18

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more? Yes, definitely more.

Good Luck!

Dethroned Gatekeepers

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with MySpace expert Michael Tedder, podcaster Tim Crisp, King Curtis biographer Timothy Hoover, Johnny Thunders biographer Nina Antonia, and musicologist Jonathan Bellman. Plus! Hip-hop at 50! And much more! But first…

Nothing Beats The Original

Michael Tedder is the author of Top Eight: How MySpace Changed Music. Michael has freelanced for many years for The Ringer, Stereogum, The Daily Beast, and more. This is his first book.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I started writing for The Orlando Sentinel when I was in high school, and then attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, where I was the Arts Editor of the student newspaper The Maneater. After kicking around Orlando for a little while freelancing for places, I moved to Brooklyn and went to NYU. I interned at CMJ and then later graduated up to the Managing Editor position.

Since then, I've worked at Paper and The Talkhouse and written for Spin, The Village Voice, The Ringer, Stereogum, Esquire, and a bunch of other places, covering film, music, television, and the like. I've also done my share of business reporting and copywriting, as one does. While watching the industry change has been difficult, I'm glad I got in the print editions of Spin and the Voice before they ended. But while freelancing can be tough, it's also rewarding and filled with weird experiences. I've seen the forest where The Hotelier took the "naked old people" photo for their album Goodness, Stan Lee told me to speak slower, I was fortunate that Ted Leo trusted me with his story and I've talked to Titus Andronicus' Patrick Stickles about a million times.

Tim Crisp is the podcaster behind Better Yet, which features longform conversations with musicians and other creatives. Launched in 2016, Tim has featured Steve Albini, Sadie Dupuis, Tom Scharpling, and many others on the show.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I grew up in a very musical household. To this day, my dad buys more records than anyone I know. He was always making mixtapes for car rides and telling stories about shows he'd seen, be it David Bowie on the Young American tour or The Cure in New York City before Robert Smith was wearing make-up. I wrote about music for my high school newspaper and I was a feature writer for my college newspaper, Illinois State University's Daily Vidette. I suppose I had aspirations to do music writing of some sort but never really had the discipline to write consistently.

I moved to Chicago after college and started playing in a band called The Please & Thank Yous and was lucky enough to get a gig as a barista and then a coffee roaster. The idea for Better Yet was in my head for a few years after getting into Marc Maron and Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling Podcast. There were tons of bands in the pop-punk and emo world that were making music that was flying under the radar of the Indie Rock publications at the time, bands like Everyone Everywhere, Hard Girls, and Pile, and then there were people I'd met in and around Chicago like NNAMDÏ, Julia Steiner of Ratboys, and Seth Engel from Options.

Timothy Hoover is the author of Soul Serenade: King Curtis and His Immortal Saxophone. Tim began research for book in 2001, calling the result a 22-year “odyssey of researching, interviewing, writing and finally getting published.”

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

In 1994, at a David Sanborn concert at Northrup Auditorium in Minneapolis, David played King Curtis’s hit song, “Soul Serenade,” and it just knocked me for a loop. I had never heard of King Curtis and had to find out everything I could about him. The more I listened to his music and the more I researched his life, the more I couldn’t believe nobody had ever written his biography. He was so influential to so many famous musicians and his story ends so tragically.

After waiting over six years for a talented, well-known author to come forward to write Curtis’s story, I decided to write it myself. While researching and interviewing, I had started to network with the King Curtis world of magazine writers and fans. I was contacted by Hittin’ The Note magazine (an Allman Brothers fan magazine that morphed into an all-around blues publication) to write a feature article about King Curtis. This led to another article about Delaney Bramlett, and finally, writing my book.

Nina Antonia is author of Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood. The book was first published in 1987, but has been revised and expanded to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his debut album with the New York Dolls.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

If I was to tell you about my journey as a music journalist and author, we would be here all day and night! I didn't go to school to study journalism and always wrote from the heart, for the passion of the subject rather than cold objectivity. People have different ways of getting into the field and although education and a university degree is helpful, sometimes it can make people's work a little homogenised. The people I looked up to as music journalists were Lester Bangs and Nick Kent whose personalities seep through in their writing. They are very much products of their time but still readable, they capture the energy of those times.

The first edition of Johnny Thunders - In Cold Blood which came out in 1987, when I was 27, is very different to the updated 1992 version, I'd had time to grow as a writer and gather more material. I've written countless liner notes, aside from Thunders, there has been the Dolls, Stooges, Velvet Underground & Nico, in fact I think there is a kindle book of the sleeve notes that Jungle Records compiled. I never looked upon writing as a profession or a job. For me, it was a vocation and I still feel that way.

Professor Jonathan Bellman is the area head of academic studies in music at the University of Northern Colorado. He’s a pianist, musicologist, and the author of many books, including Chopin's Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom and The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

Those close to me know about my initial rock’n’roll ambitions, but I’ve never admitted them publicly. I took piano lessons starting at age 6, and had a certain knack for it (playing by ear, natural speed, etc.). It was part of my persona (“brand”?) through high school, where persona is all. My parents—Dad was an English professor; Mom trained as a teacher—were very clear that I should choose my career, not my elders (they had their own experience to bring to the table on that one). So I decided to be a piano major, and I really had to make up for a lot of lost time, since I had never really considered piano anything but fun. So eventually I made it up to the University of California at Santa Barbara, with a secret ambition to be, believe it or not, a classical-rock artist. (Think early ELO, the Strawbs, Procol Harum, lesser known groups—that music just sucked me in.)

My parents knew of this ambition but wisely figured that since I was going to college…well, good; I could dream of life onstage but they had confidence that I would be exposed to all kinds of things in class and in lessons, and the rock and roll life wouldn’t be a worry. (And there is no one on earth less suited to it than I!) And they got it exactly right—beginning my first quarter, I started studying with the international scholar who taught medieval and Renaissance music, and my world blew open. I had known none of that music, and it just rearranged my DNA. Of course, I still played piano, under the watchful eye of a wonderful teacher, still pursued the piano major, but was strongly drawn to the academic side. No, this did not disappoint my parents at all. And I think that virtually all the faculty knew which way I would end up going, and encouraged me in piano … confident nature would take its course. And it did.

Insider Extra: Recommendations Smörgåsbord

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

Welcome to a special edition of Insider Extra! This week, we’re going deep on recommendations. Insider Extra will have the usual spread of offerings, including job listings, next week.

Annie Parnell

One Thing I Know For Sure

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with dance music expert Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, Bolivian music writer Javier Rodríguez-Camacho, grime champion Silhouette Bushay, and Chicago stalwart Mark Guarino. Plus! Reading and podcast recommendations! And more! But first…

The Eternal Question

The year is 1982. Long Island suburban radio station WLIR chooses to rebrand by refusing to comply with increasingly suffocating corporate mergers, instead embracing the New Wave arriving from across the Atlantic. That’s no small thing. Forever remembered as the station that broke U2 in the United States, WLIR's programming helped bridge the gap between the two sides of the pond, presenting the fresh sounds of bands like The Cure, Spandau Ballet, The Clash, The Pretenders, and Adam & The Ants to the American public. Moreover, it proved to be the perfect companion to a music-oriented TV channel that had just begun operations. As publicist Michael Pagnotta argues, "I don't think MTV would've been possible in the way that it was if WLIR hadn't pre-existed it."

New Wave: Dare to Be Different tells the story of those dizzying days through loads of video footage and extensive interviews with broadcasters, fans, producers, DJs, and many others who, one way or another, played a crucial part in turning WLIR into a cherished radio station for millions. There's also valuable testimonies from the artists themselves, with the likes of Joan Jett, Midge Ure, Billy Idol, Thompson Twins, and many more explaining the importance WLIR had in their careers.

Review by Ana Leorne. Check out the full archive of the Stuff You Gotta Watch column.

Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham. He writes prolifically on electronic music, and his new book is Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I had schooling in music from a very early age, due in part to some family history. My maternal grandfather forbade his children from pursuing music of any sort, due to classist prejudices against professional musicians. One of my uncles turned out to be very musical, however, and my grandfather was really brutal in suppressing that; my mother tells stories of him destroying my uncle’s musical instruments, whenever he found them.

At the same time, both of my parents came up in Peruvian and Colombian societies where dancing was an essential part of social life, and they both fell in love through dancing together. And so, my parents sent all their children to music lessons as soon as they could; in my case, they also saw that I shared their passion for dancing and sent me to dance classes for several years. I ended up getting into an arts-focused public school, which led me to specialise in voice and violin. In high school, I discovered the rave scene in my corner of Southwestern Ontario, which became a parallel passion to the mostly classical music that I was learning in school.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Javier Rodríguez-Camacho is a Bolivian music writer. He has been active as a podcaster, journalist, and critic since 2006. He is the author of Testigos del fin del mundo, a retrospective of Latin indie music in the 2010s. Between 2014 and 2020, he was a staff writer at Tiny Mix Tapes, and since 2020, he’s published the newsletter Visiones Incomunicadas. He is also an associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I was born in Bolivia and lived there until I turned twenty. My family was precariously middle class, but my parents made their best effort to keep us surrounded by books, music, and film. I vividly remember reading Giotto’s biography when I was eight, it was part of a series of books my parents bought from a traveling salesman, probably nothing special, but I think that's when I realized it was possible to write about art and artists.

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!

Silhouette Bushay is a researcher, writer, and film documentary writer/director, as well as a senior lecturer at the University of East London in the School of Education and Communities. She is a huge advocate of employing hip-hop pedagogy and creative arts for education.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I’ve always been interested in music, education and social justice. My father was a record producer from the 70s and I was surrounded by musicians, music artists and industry people from an early age—I dabbled in singing a little myself.

Mark Guarino is a journalist and playwright. He started as the pop music critic for the Daily Herald outside Chicago, a position he held for 11 years before serving as Midwest Bureau Chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years. He is currently a producer with ABC News. In 2023, the University of Chicago Press published his first book, Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

I started as a local news reporter for a Chicago newspaper called the Daily Herald. Before then I was the editor-in-chief of my college paper; the experiences set the groundwork for giving me the fundamentals in reporting. I firmly believe even music critics need to be reporters first, which means understanding the basics of how to report out a story. It’s not all reviewing concerts. The music business is a serious industry just like any other and to cover it correctly requires reporting skills. From there, I switched to national news, a lane I’ve been in ever since.

Even though I am based in Chicago I tend to write about culture and news events from the middle part of the country, connecting trends here to ones happening nationally. I’ve been lucky in this sense because my travels have essentially followed the path of the Mississippi River as I’ve covered everything from Chicago politics to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and Katrina; personally, my main interest is music from this slice of America as well because I believe it’s the richest. Staying put in Chicago and not running away was the smartest move I made because all the national media outlets on both coasts need good people here.

Insider Extra: August 4

I’m Todd L. Burns, and I put together Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. The newsletter collects some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; highlights news about the industry; and features interviews with writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.

In this edition of Insider Extra: Reading recommendations, job listings, and more? Yes, definitely more.

A Bygone Era, Pt. 1

Lose The Words

I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.

Today in the newsletter: Interviews with dance music expert Ed Gillett, music journalist Amy Linden, SSENSE managing editor Ross Scarano, and Vassar professor Justin Patch. Plus! Reading and podcast recommendations! And more! But first…

Truly The Goat