#143: Challenge and Surpass
Challenge and Surpass
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 Leeds music expert Gavin Butt, k-pop writer Ashlee Mitchell, and scholar Robbie Campbell. Plus! Reading recommendations, girl groups, and more! But first…
A Lot To Unpack Here...
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Reading List
- The Ringer celebrated emo week
- Mariana Timony penned a tour diary
- Michael Andor Brodeur is unhappy about the disappearance of printed programs at classical concerts [h/t Music REDEF]
- Miranda Reinert writes a moving personal essay
- Jumi Akinfenwa analyzes the impact of music and media industry whisper networks
- Ted Kessler published a few chapters from his new book in The New Cue
- James Gaines explores how silence caused "prairie madness"
- Jack Probst reveals some fascinating finds from his years as a janitor at a music venue
- Emily Simpson speaks to Charlotte Ryan about her garden and music journalism career
- Alli Patton wonders what happened to the country music duo
Lede Of The Week
"There is a moment when the two bouffant-sporting, rhinestone-clad figures on stage, rhythmically bobbing like buoys at the knees, lock eyes." - Alli Patton
Q&A: Gavin Butt
Gavin Butt is Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. Since he graduated with a PhD in queer art history, Gavin has worked "as a writer and academic focused on the visual arts and their varied forms of connectedness with popular music, queer culture and performance." His latest book is No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk, published this year by Duke University Press. In this excerpt from our interview, Gavin explains what No Machos is all about.
The book tells the story of the post-punk scene in 1970s and 1980s Leeds and shows how England’s then state-funded education policy brought together art students from different social classes to create a fertile ground for musical experimentation. Drawing on extensive interviews with band members, their associates, and teachers, I explore how groups including Gang of Four, Mekons, Delta 5, Scritti Politti, Soft Cell and Fad Gadget were influenced by the outlooks of the art students amongst their membership. It tells the story of radical and avant-garde forms of art school pedagogy in Leeds at this time, and how band members sought to variously challenge and surpass these teachings by looking to the example of punk rock. The book chronicles the artists who swapped paint brushes for guitars and synthesizers and, in the process, became post-punk and pop music pioneers, taking avant-garde ideas to popular culture, sometimes even to Top of the Pops and American Bandstand. The book shows how they sought to dismantle art world and music industry hierarchies by making it possible to dance to their art.
Read the full interview with Gavin here.
ßèÿôñçé
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Podcasts!
- Danyel Smith talks about her new book on Questlove Supreme
- Switched On Pop unravels the long, strange trip of "Hound Dog"
- Howard Mandel explains how to listen to jazz on Yesterday's Concert
- The Art of Longevity has kicked off its fifth season
- Steven Daly discusses his career in music and music journalism on Rock's Backpages
Q&A: Ashlee Mitchell
Ashlee Mitchell is an actor, writer, and content creator. In terms of music journalism, Ashlee focuses (but not exclusively) on k-pop. "After the death of George Floyd, I noticed some k-pop journalists were offering to help young Black writers who wanted to write for bigger publications," says Ashlee. "I reached out to a few and was encouraged to pitch my ideas. I ended up securing my first pitch at Teen Vogue, which was an interview with a K-rock group called 2z, and just spent the rest of that summer pitching and building a portfolio." Fast forward two years, and Ashlee now has bylines at GRAMMY.com, Dazed, and many other outlets. In this excerpt from our interview, Ashlee offers one tip for aspiring music journalists.
My number one tip is to just go for it, whatever you want to do. I’m the type of person who doesn’t like taking no for an answer and will go all in for something I care about. I think hesitancy or lack of confidence can be a huge detriment for someone pursuing music journalism. You really have to have a go-getter mentality and not be afraid of rejection or constructive feedback.
What's your favorite part of all this?
My favorite part from the beginning has always been getting to connect with artists on a deeper level. I did this because I wanted to really humanize the artists, and I think I’ve accomplished just that. I get to listen to music early, receive gifts from my favorite artists, attend press events, and overall feel more connected to the music than I ever did before. When I receive feedback from an artist I’ve met that they enjoyed talking to me or they felt comfortable or they remember me, it’s always special and a reminder of how I turned my fandom into a career opportunity. Recently, I interviewed Enhypen and I asked the members if they had any last words. One of the members, Jake, said “Shout out to Ashlee!” and it just put a smile on my face. I really love seeing how friendly these artists are when it’s just you and them.
Read the full interview with Ashlee here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by Ana Leorne.
Few things in life bring as much joy as a reverb-filled double clap or perfect three-part harmonies. Although these are only details of what made the pop music public fall in love with '60s girl groups, they’re at the center of a distinct sound that never fails to ring as magical. Based on Alan Betrock’s 1982 book of the same name, Girl Groups - The Story of a Sound goes behind the scenes to tell the secrets of this wondrous world, explaining why the genre became (and remained) so incredibly popular—even after the British Invasion replaced it as America's main pop hype. Through interviews with the likes of Ronnie Spector, Leiber & Stoller, Darlene Love, Don Kirschner, and many others, the documentary combines equal parts emotion and analysis in order to paint the full picture.
Though the archival footage might not be so impressive in 2022 with all the resources we have at our fingertips, part of the appeal of Girl Groups lies precisely in its role as an historical document in and of itself, providing evidence of how the scene was perceived a mere twenty years after its peak.
How Do You Do, Fellow TikTokers?
- @songpsych explains a strange Warped Tour "what if?"
- @abigyesandasmallno reveals a clever hip-hop in-joke from The Sopranos
- @patrickhicks82 follows the trail of a lost guitar
- @tanita.dee tells the story of Bessie Smith
- @mazbouq breaks down what some "off-time" rappers are doing
Trivia Time
Which Star Wars character was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone reading a copy of the magazine featuring the original 1977 cast?
Bits, Bobs
- David Dalton has passed away
- Aotearoa Hip Hop: The Music, The People, The History won Best Factual Podcast at the New Zealand Radio Awards
- David Turner has turned on paid subscriptions for his newsletter, Penny Fractions
- Leor Galil and Philip Montoro won Best Arts Feature at the AAN Awards
- Getty has opened access to 30,000 images of the Black diaspora in the UK and US
- Michael Tau and Harry Sword will chat about their books on musical extremes tomorrow
Q&A: Robbie Campbell
Robbie Campbell has had a circuitous professional life. He started out as a location sound recordist in the television industry, and then went back to school and recently completed a PhD. (He's also been involved in music projects throughout all of this.) I first got in touch with Robbie about an interview around his unique thesis, which may be the first entirely web-based PhD thesis ever completed in the UK. The subject? The relationships between dyslexia and Chopi timbila xylophone music in Mozambique. In this excerpt from our interview, Robbie explains a bit of how it all came to be.
As a mature and dyslexic student, learning how to study at Masters level was not easy, and the first year was difficult and confusing to say the least. But once I started to bring in my own learning experiences into the research I was doing on West African music, things became far clearer. Everything started to settle and I decided to do a PhD—as long as I could get funding—in order to continue to explore these fascinating topics around music, dyslexia, neurodiversity and learning. I eventually did get the funding, and my PhD took me to Mozambique, where I learned to play Chopi timbila xylophone music. I also continued to explore the nature and experience of how research is conducted, and how we therefore understand, organise and share information (hence my thesis being a nonlinear multimedia website, not a written document).
I’m deeply proud to have completed the project, which is modelled on my own ‘dyslexic’ way of thinking. It was challenging at every step, in particular as the university had no existing system in place to handle a web-thesis and it took many years of negotiation for the format to be accepted. If my understanding is correct it’s the first entirely web-based PhD thesis in the UK, which is quite extraordinary given how established web-based workflow is in virtually every other sector.
Read the full interview with Robbie here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Robbie Campbell:
I’d like to share a little about Plum Village, the Buddhist monastery in France where I currently live, founded by Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh (who passed away in January this year, aged 95). Through his peace activism work during the war in Vietnam, it practices what is now known as engaged Buddhism. Several centres around the world offer support and training for peace and environmental activists of many kinds, as well as for teachers, scientists, young people, families, and lay friends from all walks of life. The community is largely funded by offering retreats and through donations. If you’d like to know more or donate, please visit here.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Wouldn't Put It Past Her
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Academic Stuff
- New issues: Punk & Post-Punk, Music and Letters, International Journal of Community Music, Contemporary Music Review, Cambridge Opera Journal, and Yearbook for Traditional Music
- Call for Papers: The Groove Workshop (Abstracts due October 3)
- Registration is open for Library Music in Audiovisual Media
- Call for Papers: The journal Arts is planning a special issue: "Feeling the Future – Haptic Audio" (Abstract due August 10)
- Call for Papers: Annual Meeting of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music (Proposals due October 1)
The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! And thanks to Miranda Reinert for their help with this edition of the newsletter. In case you’ve missed any special features, I’ve published a number of them in the newsletter, including articles about music journalism history, what music journalism will be like in 2221, and much more. You can check out all of that here.
I also do a recurring column in the newsletter called Notes On Process. The premise is simple: I share a Google Doc with a music journalist where we go into depth on one of their pieces. It hopefully provides an insight into how music writers do their work. You can check out all editions of Notes On Process here.
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Trivia Time Answer
Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks was a Rolling Stone cover star in 1999.
A Final Note
Thanks for reading! I make playlists from time to time. Check them out if you're interested. And full disclosure: my day job is at uDiscover Music, a branded content online magazine owned by Universal Music. This newsletter is not affiliated or sponsored in any way by Universal, and any links that relate to the work of my department will be clearly marked.
Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time...