#060: The Three Stages Of A Viral Tweet
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 Creem veteran Roberta Cruger; Ray Padgett, author of a new 33 1/3 about tribute albums; freelance writer Marianne Eloise; and Dream Theater expert Jordan Blum. Plus: Reading recommendations, Sun Ra’s business cards, and much more! But first…
Larry Asks A Not-So-Innocent Question
Reading List
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson asks why those who have the most in techno seem to be sacrificing the least during the pandemic
Niela Orr on Whitney Houston, Robyn Crawford, and female friendship
Creem superfan Toby Weiss details why the magazine was so important to him (and many others)
Brady Gerber interviews music journalist Zach Schonfeld
Chris O’Leary on Benny Goodman
Andre Gee wonders why numbers signify relevance in rap
Study Hall has created an interactive narrative about working as a journalist of color
Jenessa Williams on Hole’s set at Reading Festival in 1994
Sara Benincasa with a powerful personal essay
Ernest Wilkins provides a number of possible hip-hop equivalents to Phil Collins’ “In The Air” drum break
Chal Ravens on a number of pandemic-era initiatives in the dance music world
Highlighting this again, for those who didn’t see it the first time: Taylor Crumpton on why misogynoir in hip-hop must end
Q&A: Roberta Cruger
Roberta Cruger has had an incredible career that’s hard to summarize, but it all started at the iconic Detroit magazine Creem. Roberta’s work there is a reminder that Creem was hardly just music: She helmed the film and television side of the publication for a number of years, before going on to a variety of fascinating jobs that—mostly—involve the celebration of journalism and narrative storytelling. In this excerpt from our interview, Roberta talks about how her role at the magazine changed over the years.
From administrative duties and writing in my spare time, to being part of the editorial team, I was happy to make the shift from music-oriented reviews to film and television. I found a comfortable niche of my own and expanded the pages for a more inclusive lifestyle publication. Tired of getting handoffs to review stuff like Sha Na Na, after Dave [Marsh], Lester [Bangs], and Ben [Edmonds] had picked the most coveted albums to review, I was still passionate about music but I wanted to see it expressed visually—not just read about it…
As I delved deeper into the film section and covered movie stories, I also improved my writing and editing skills. Soon I wondered why I was still expected to do admin stuff too. I’d long-ago drawn the line about housecleaning and cooking meals. When I resisted doing clerical duties, I got pushback and went part-time, handling the writing and editing. And took another part-time gig on the editorial staff of TV Guide’s regional office. TV was pretty standard stuff then... But I sensed a shift in attitude at Creem which didn’t suit my feminist sensibilities, like the guys contributing a music section to Oui magazine. When Dave Marsh left as editor and the magazine held a less political bent, instead displaying a more cheesecake appeal visually and content-wise, the shift in style was my cue to split.
Read the full interview with Roberta here.
Notes On Process: Lindsay Zoladz
In case you missed it, I sent out a special newsletter last week introducing a new column in the newsletter called Notes On Process. The idea is simple: I invite a writer to a Google Doc where I’ve copy / pasted one of their pieces and added a bunch of comments with flattery, jokes, and questions. They reply to my queries, and then we provide you with a link to the doc where all of our marginalia is visible. I’m hoping to provide a window into the writing and editing process, so that folks can see how great writers think about their work. The first edition of the series was Lindsay Zoladz talking about her piece “I’m Not a Dad, but I Rock Like One,” which was first published in the New York Times. You can check out the Google Doc here.
This is the first time I’ve done this column, so I’m eager to hear what you make of it. Is there another format you’d prefer? Is there a writer whose work you're eager to see dissected? Let me know by replying to this email.
Bits, Bobs
The MoPOP Pop Conference has announced the schedule for this year’s virtual conference
NME writer Dele Fadele has passed away
The Quietus has launched a subscription service
A recent roundtable about race and gender in music criticism from The International Florence Price Festival has been posted online
Tone Glow has launched a newsletter called Tune Glue
The Seattle Times has created some guidelines for inclusive journalism [h/t Study Hall]
Anger
Q&A: Ray Padgett
Ray Padgett is one of the world’s leading authorities on cover songs--he even founded a website devoted to them, called Cover Me. “Cover songs are an odd niche,” he says. “But it seems like just about every music fan has a favorite cover they're dying to tell you about. It's a bigger niche than you'd think.” I interviewed Ray now, however, because he has a new book coming out in the 33 1/3 series, devoted to I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. It’s a deep dive into the album (of course), but the project truly began because Ray wanted to write about tribute albums. Here’s how he picked I’m Your Fan.
I made a ton of lists. First: All the tribute albums I liked. Having followed this world more closely than probably anyone alive (that's not a brag—no one's competing for that title), that was a very long list. Then I filtered it by tribute albums that other people had actually heard of. That list was shorter. Then tribute albums that came out relatively early in the format's history, formative examples that others would follow. Now we were down to a dozen or so.
Then I thought about which tribute albums had a measurable, concrete impact on music history. Not the unquantifiable "brought the artist to a new audience"—tons of tribute albums claim to do that (and sometimes it's true). Something more specific. I came up with two. 1993's Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles, which more or less reunited the Eagles, but which I had no interest in writing an entire book about, and 1991's I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. Its claim to relative fame: That tribute album is the reason you know "Hallelujah" (way condensed chronology: Leonard recorded it to crickets -> John Cale covered it for I'm Your Fan several years later -> Jeff Buckley covered Cale's version, not knowing Leonard's -> its current ubiquity).
Read the full interview with Ray here.
Did You Know?
Lee “Scratch” Perry vouched for Paul McCartney when the Beatle was jailed for weed possession in Japan
Tony Soprano really, really loved Green Day
Sun Ra had business cards
Factory Records boss Tony Wilson was a digital music evangelist
It’s "mic’d," not miked, miced, or mic’ed. (Apparently.)
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by freelance writer Chal Ravens.
The concept of Afrofuturism was still relatively embryonic when John Akomfrah and Edward George, co-founders of the Black Audio Film Collective, made The Last Angel of History in 1996. The 45-minute film is part documentary, with talking heads and cleverly collaged sound, and part visionary sci-fi tale centred around the character of the time-travelling “Data Thief,” who’s come from the future to find meaning in the “techno fossils” of our era.
Starting at the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul, the film posits a deep connection between Black art and futuristic technology. From African drums—a technology that could “communicate both across the African diaspora and across time”—to Parliament-Funkadelic’s “Mothership Connection,” through Sun Ra, Lee Perry, and the man-machine visions of Detroit techno, the Data Thief discovers a long-running affinity with science fiction, cyborgs, and space travel.
Alongside insights from the likes of George Clinton, Juan Atkins, Goldie, and Derrick May (who at one point gets hilariously catty about A Guy Called Gerald), Akomfrah speaks to Black astronaut Bernard Harris, sci-fi writers Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, novelist Ishmael Reed and a young Kodwo Eshun, who at the time was working on More Brilliant Than The Sun, his extraordinary and definitive book on Afrofuturism. Considering it was made at the height of critical interest in cyber- and techno-culture, The Last Angel of History feels barely dated at all, and it’s an illuminating companion to Akomfrah’s other installations and films, including 2013’s The Stuart Hall Project.
Bargaining
Q&A: Marianne Eloise
Marianne Eloise is a freelance writer, who has had work appear in PAPER, The Guardian, Mic, The Face, Dazed, VICE, Vulture, i-D and Nylon. Her writing circles around digital culture, emo, film, mental health, autism, wellness and TV. (You may also know her from her zine emo diary, where she published passages from her teen diary.) In this excerpt from our interview, Marianne explains how her approach to her work has changed over the past few years.
I have only been doing this for four years and more seriously for two, but my attitude has changed quite a lot even in that time. When I started I was super grateful that anyone even wanted to pay me a shred of attention, so I was really bad at asking for more, if any, money, and I would always bend over backwards for anything anyone asked. Now, I make sure I’m paid fairly, on time, and never agree to anything I’m not fully up for. I’m also generally a lot more organised. I realised I had ADHD a few years ago and understanding that – and working within my limits – was a turning point. I treat freelancing like my job now, which also means not working through the night like I once did.
Read the full interview with Marianne here.
Podcasts!
Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick have launched The Culture Journalist
Photographer Georgina Cook has started a new podcast called Vision of Sound
Carlene J. Brown and Guthrie Ramsey discuss Rae Linda Brown’s Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price on New Books In Music
The newest episode of Deep Dive features Ira Robbins talking about the past, present, and future of Trouser Press
Rolling Stone Music Now delves into the long history of moral panics over raunchy lyrics
Sound Only goes deep into the phenomenon of slowed + reverb music
Not exactly podcasts, but Apple Music Country launched an incredible slate of radio shows this week
Acceptance
Q&A: Jordan Blum
Jordan Blum is the author of Dream Theater: Every Album, Every Song, part of Sonicbond Publishing’s “On Track” collection. (He also wrote about Jethro Tull for the same series.) You can also find his work at a variety of other outlets, including PopMatters, where he’s an associate editor. When he’s not listening to and thinking about progressive rock and metal, he’s teaching college English. In this excerpt from our interview, Jordan discusses how he went about writing his two “On Track” series books.
I outlined the introduction for every chapter (album) so that I had a rough idea of what I wanted to cover in each paragraph. From there, it was a matter of compiling as many resources as I could to help me flesh out the stories of the albums. For example, I found a few books about Jethro Tull and I had a few special edition records that came with liner notes. So, when it came time to write about, say, Aqualung, I took notes on what those texts said while also finding outside articles and reviews about the album and band around that time. I used some library databases at the schools I teach at to find more scholarly texts, as well as Google to see what popular magazines had to offer. Of course, you could fall into an unending cycle of research that way, and turn up dozens of possible articles to peel through, so I limited myself to only a handful for each album. Then, I just found which excerpts from each source would work best for each paragraph and incorporated them into my own writing. It was a very academic approach, I suppose, and it resulted in a lengthy Citations section, haha!
Read the full interview with Jordan here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
This week’s cause worth supporting comes from Jordan Blum.
I’d be remiss not to mention what Black Sabbath are doing with their Black Lives Matter shirt/campaign. It’s an awesome way to represent a band while also supporting an important cause (the fact that they incorporate the message into the Black Sabbath style is awesome), and 100% of the net proceeds go toward the BLM Global Network Foundation, Inc. Outside of that, I think the cause also helps dispel the stereotype that metal music is somehow exclusionary, weird, or anything like that.
Sure, like every group, there is some negativity and elitism, but by and large, metal is one of the most inclusive, open-minded, friendly, and diverse communities in all of popular culture. From what I’ve seen, my colleagues, friends, and the overarching community are all about progress, acceptance, and the like; we have no tolerance for hateful speech or antiquated actions. Clearly, the metal scene’s support of BLM is among the greatest examples of that, and obviously Black Sabbath are among the most celebrated and important bands within the genre.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by the folks I’ve interviewed here.
Academic Stuff
SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal has published a new video detailing how two Nigerian music theorists/composers have attempted to set Ìgbò texts to music
The Journal of the Society for American Music has published a new issue, including articles on Bradford Cox and musical segregation in American college football
Joshua Eyler has some helpful tips for online synchronous teaching
The Black Opera Research Network launched this week
The Society for Music Theory’s Committee on Race and Ethnicity has published a bunch of tools for diversifying music theory pedagogy
Current Musicology is accepting submissions for its upcoming issue
IASPM-US awarded the 2019 Guthrie Book Prize to Mark Burford for Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field; and gave Dale Chapman’s The Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz in Neoliberal Culture an honorable mention
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture has published a new issue, including Samantha Ege’s article on Black composer Florence B. Price
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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…