#055: An Entire Song About Grocery Shopping
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.
Today in the newsletter: Interviews with Chicago’s Britt Julious; freelance writer and content marketer Erica Campbell; punk and post-punk scholar Giacomo Bottà; and the trio behind the new podcast Late Era. Plus: Reading recommendations, a great photo of a jazz musician with a 303, and much more! But first…
The Content We Need RN
Reading List
Jennifer Berry Hawes with a powerful story about a gospel singer who contracted COVID-19 [h/t Craig Seymour]
Charles Holmes profiles Lil Baby
Ian Cohen explains when the emo revival started
Kira Thurman on how Black singer Marian Anderson defied the Nazis
Gabriel Szatan takes a look at the past, present, and future of UK Garage
Mariana Timony writes about the future of music journalism
Ilana Kaplan has an oral history of the Golden God scene from Almost Famous
Marcos Balter says “His Name Is Joseph Boulogne, Not ‘Black Mozart’”
Q&A: Britt Julious
Britt Julious is a Chicago-based freelance writer. Britt has freelanced for tons of places, but her work most often appears these days in the Chicago Tribune, where she’s always looking to tell “the stories of the marginalized and the disenfranchised.” In this excerpt from our interview, Britt runs through what her day-to-day looks like right now.
Most of my day is dedicated to my [full-time] work with Cancer Wellness, which involves directly working with cancer fighters and survivors to share their stories or create content relevant to their unique experiences. As for my music and culture writing, that largely happens in the early mornings, late evenings, or weekends. I write best in the early morning, like 5 or 6 AM, so I try to save writing for that period of time. I usually do interviews for stories in the evenings or Sunday mornings. Much of my admin work is done on Sunday afternoons and evenings. I had an assistant who helped me tackle my inbox, but she moved on to a different gig recently, so I’m handling it all myself.
What's your favorite part of the job?
My ethos when I entered writing was to tell the stories of the underground, the underdog and the avant-garde. Every day I get to do that is a blessing. That is absolutely my favorite part of what I do.
Read the full interview with Britt here.
Podcasts!
The latest guest on Heat Rocks was Regina Bradley, who talked about OutKast’s Aquemini
Endless Scroll talked about new records and the newsletter wave with Miranda Reinert
Faith Pennick talked about her D’Angelo book on the latest Bloomsbury Academic Podcast
Switched On Pop explored how women are reclaiming nu-metal
Launched this week: Will Robin’s Sound Expertise; and Winston Cook-Wilson, Andy Cush, and Sam Sodomsky’s Late Era
Launching soon: Steve Greenberg’s Speed of Sound; and Ian Cohen and Steven Hyden’s Indiecast
Q&A: Erica Campbell
Erica Campbell is a freelance writer based in New York. Earlier this year, she was furloughed from her gig as music editor at Consequence of Sound, but as she puts it, “I’m a Black woman writing about rock music who didn’t go to school for journalism and didn’t start her writing career until she was nearly 30. Yes, I have no business being here, but I never let that stop me.” In this excerpt from our interview, Erica explains how content marketing has become her main gig.
I’m a freelance music journalist, sure, but I work in content marketing. That’s where most of my money comes from. When I lost my gig at Consequence, I upped the hours I work at Patreon as their managing editor. They pay me to host, produce video content, and manage their editorial program. A lot of the stories we share involve music and entertainment and I was glad to be working there when the global lockdown first hit and I could share resources for musicians on how they could make money while losing income from touring.
Content marketing isn’t as cool or “sexy” (even though I hate that word to describe things like jobs) as music journalism, but the hourly rates are great, something that happens in tech more so than music journalism, and it’s how I afford to live in New York City. I have no clue how I would do that otherwise.
Read the full interview with Erica here. If you’d like to know more about how to get into content marketing, Erica is doing some cool Zoom Q&A’s through her Patreon, which you can check out here.
Writer’s Corner
Aaron Bala outlines common problems he sees in scripts
Manchester University Press has put together a video presentation outlining how to develop and pitch your book project
Donna C has advice on how to break through writer’s block
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by freelance writer Jesse Locke.
Jesse Jams tells the kind of survival story we don’t hear nearly enough. The Cree, Ojibway, and German transgender singer/guitarist of self-proclaimed “mumble punk” band Jesse Jams and The Flams has experienced countless hardships in his 25 years. After enduring a childhood in Edmonton, Alberta, marked by a lengthy list of health issues including fetal alcohol syndrome and schizophrenia, on top of moving 45 times before turning 18, Jams has now found solace in music.
This 15-minute short by drummer turned director Trevor Anderson, streaming for free on Vimeo after a run of festival appearances, is as emotionally charged as it is stylishly filmed. Following Jams and his band mates from a guitar shop to his grandparents’ house while preparing for an outdoor performance at Edmonton’s Interstellar Rodeo festival, its scenes are narrated in first person with unvarnished observations. This continues in Jams’s songs, channeling his troubled experiences into fist pumping hooks and darkly funny lyrics. Interested listeners can continue to Bandcamp and hear instant classics like “It’s Not Fun to Stay at the YMCA.”
Academic Stuff
A conference about U2 is accepting presentation proposals
A new issue of Twentieth-Century Music has been published
Philip Ewell talks about Music Theory and the White Racial Frame; Kira Thurman breaks down the controversy around a new journal issue that responds to Ewell’s work
NABMSA is seeking donations to fund the newly announced Linda Shaver-Gleason Award
Essay submissions are now being accepted for two edited volumes: Sacred Contexts in Secular Music of the Long Nineteenth Century and Heavy Metal Music and Dis/Ability: Crips, Crowds, and Cacophony
Q&A: Giacomo Bottà
Giacomo Bottà is the author of the new book Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester, Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere. Over the past few decades, many have come to associate the music from these scenes and cities as the soundtrack to grey and gloomy post-industrial landscapes. Giacomo wanted to see if the cliche was actually true. In this excerpt from our interview, Giacomo explains how he came to this subject.
I begin the book by referring to a biographical epiphany, when I saw a German artist banging on some rebar art. That was something important for sure. But the scientific interest in times of crisis and the role that music plays in these times comes from experiencing the 2008 economic crisis. I got really frustrated by music journalists (sorry guys!) expecting music to react to the crisis by giving birth to a new punk or a new electronic music. According to my thesis in the book, music anticipates—and doesn’t simply react to—crisis. Moreover, music is not static. It mutates its social function over time and space. The role punk played during deindustrialisation is a completely different thing to what it is now.
Read the full interview with Giacomo here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
This week’s cause worth supporting comes from Giacomo Botta.
Brigate Volontarie per l’Emergenza is a collective from Milan, which has been active during the lockdown in providing food and help to people in economic distress. Milan and the rest of Lombardy has been deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brigate work continues also now that the lockdown has been disbanded. Support their crowdfunding here.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by the folks I’ve interviewed here.
Acid Jazz
Q&A: Late Era Podcast
Winston Cook-Wilson, Andy Cush, and Sam Sodomsky are the guys behind a new podcast called Late Era, which will go extremely deep on (relatively) forgotten records by big name artists that happened, yes, late in their careers. The podcast is a natural extension of their (still ongoing) dissection of Chicago’s discography, Welcome To Chicago. I talked to all three of the guys behind the podcast, but in this excerpt from our interview, Sam Sodomsky provides a succinct explanation of how the trio came to this idea for a show.
Sam Sodomsky: As a music fan, I have always had a collector’s mindset. If I like an artist, I want to know everything they have ever done. I have probably listened to, say, Neil Young’s Fork in the Road more than most band’s best albums. When I start reading a rock memoir, I always skip ahead to see how much they get into their later albums, because usually those are the most mysterious to me. Why did they choose that cover art? Why is there an entire song about grocery shopping? Most times they don’t get into it. I also find that eventually everything comes around. The same way that I can hear Van Morrison’s ’80s albums with fresh ears, maybe someone decades from now will hear that Who album from last year and feel totally mystified by it. Maybe not. Either way, it’s good to get outside the canon mentality, especially when you’re dealing with these legacy artists.
Read the full interview with Winston, Andy, and Sam here.
Biz News
Q Magazine has closed
Stacey Anderson was laid off from Pitchfork
Mag Culture is doing an IG Live with Electronic Sound tomorrow at 5 PM BST / 12 PM EST
Sheldon Pearce has joined The New Yorker
Red Bull has cut a large portion of its music programs
Matthew Schnipper and Claire Lobenfeld have launched newsletters
Time Out founder Tony Elliott and NME writer Dan Martin have passed away
Five Lines From This Week’s Reading List
Men tossed out marriage proposals to her like chefs throwing spaghetti against a wall, hoping one would stick. [link]
“Are you taping this right now?” Coach K asks me. “Yeah,” I say. “He can tape that — I don’t give a damn,” Baby shoots back. [link]
If music journalism is going to die, it’s not because nobody is paying for it. [link]
As each hour passed, the chaplain didn’t call. Neither did anyone else from the hospital. Until around dinnertime. This time, the nurse sounded excited. [link]
Two attendees are nervously casting glances at one another, having both shown up wearing a Todd Edwards-modelled shirt loudly proclaiming JESUS LOVES UK GARAGE. [link]
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The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time…