#099: Glorious Mohawks
Glorious Mohawks
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 Courtney E. Smith of Songs in the Key of Death; music journalist Konstantina Buhalis; and librarian and metal music expert Joan Jocson-Singh. Plus! Joni Mitchell, Latinx punk, and more! But first…
I’ll Never Forget You
Source
Reading List
- Joe Coscarelli on Britney Spears
- Elyssa Goodman speaks to the director of a new documentary on Rolling Stone journalist Ben Fong-Torres
- Miloš Hroch talks to journalist Chris Bohn about an influential NME article Bohn wrote about the Czechoslovak music underground in 1981
- Steve Knopper reports on the shortage of tour bus drivers
- Michaelangelo Matos talks with Eric Weisbard about his new book, Songbooks
- Wayne Robins wonders whether Pitchfork could lighten up a bit
- Noah Yoo reveals the issues MF Doom had with the United States immigration system
- Jonathan Rowe remembers the days of CD subscription services
- Emily Witt on the return of clubbing in New York
- Mark Beaumont talks to musicians and industry folks who got sober during the pandemic [h/t MusicREDEF]
Q&A: Courtney E. Smith
Courtney E. Smith is the Editorial Director at Hark Audio in addition to being the host, writer, and co-executive producer of Songs in the Key of Death, an excellent new podcast about murder ballads. In this excerpt from our interview, Courtney explains what Songs is all about.
Songs in the Key of Death is historiography—it’s a storytelling podcast that examines the true crimes that inspired a murder ballad, the people who wrote the song or popularized it by singing it, and the historic times that both of those things happened in. It hopes to give listeners context around what was happening historically and when one of the most notable versions was performed. It also aims to explore how we’ve talked about these crimes in the past and what new information we have now that we should consider. Many of the songs don’t tell the real story or reflect the victim’s point of view. Giving them a voice and some life is a way to look again at a violent history.
Read the full interview with Courtney here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Courtney E. Smith:
I love Noise for Now. I have been following it since I saw the cute merch it created on Kim Gordon and Karen O’s Instagram accounts. It is an Arizona-based activist group that puts on concerts and work with artists to raise money for abortion funds, primarily across the South. I love that they’re connecting progressive artists with places like the Yellow Letter Fund and TKTK. I interviewed one of the founders for UPROXX and found her to be mindful about using privilege to funnel money from the highly white worlds of indie music into the hands of BIPOC and women-identifying people who need it.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Joni Mitchell’s Blue Reading List
- The New York Times surveys 25 musicians
- Jenn Pelly and Ann Powers go long on the album itself
- Emma Holbrook takes a more personal approach
- Jessica Hopper writes about Joni Mitchell’s feminism
Podcasts!
- Mogul has launched its third season, focused on DJ Screw
- Musicology heavyweight Richard Taruskin helped close the second season of Sound Expertise
- Emily Warren explained behind-the-scenes issues around songwriting credits on Switched on Pop
- Keith Jopling outlines some of the lessons he’s learned doing The Art Of Longevity podcast
- Skip Hollandsworth joins State of Mind to explain how he put together a classic Texas Monthly story
Q&A: Konstantina Buhalis
Konstantina Buhalis is a music journalist and content creator for NGP Records and the podcast Communion After Dark. Konstantina also has a great TikTok, which is where I first encountered her work. In this excerpt from our interview, Konstantina talks about the future of music journalism.
I think TikTok will be the future for music journalism in a few ways. Whether it maintains an aspect of regular music journalism distribution, only time will tell. However, we already see the early stages for op-eds and video essays condensed into 60-second clips. In addition, many writers use the platforms to discuss albums, genres briefly, or make points and observations about the music industry. It’s a new tool, but at the same time, we have a blueprint because social media has changed the journalism landscape so rapidly that we are all used to the way this works, but this app happens to be somewhat uncharted territory.
Furthermore, I think music journalism will eventually revert to blogging and fewer mass publications. We already have a few popular blogs, but I think the blog model will eclipse traditional publications for a while. Y2K trends are in style right now, and zines are having a moment and I think print is going to become trendy and find its way back into the mainstream. It’s going to be cool to have a stack of magazines, even if it’s just for aesthetic’s sake.
Read the full interview with Konstantina here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by Jesse Locke.
Los Punks: We Are All We Have aims its lens into LA’s underground Latinx backyard punk scene of 2016. Director Angela Boatwright delivers a spiritual sequel to The Decline of Western Civilization, yet her subjects’ stories are told with the heart-tugging techniques of reality TV.
In between scenes of raging mosh pits, police busts, and glorious mohawks, the film follows several primary characters. There is April, the 15-year-old show promoter. Nacho, the singer of Corrupted Youth, who opens for his favourite band, the Casualties. Most emotional is the story of Alex, the singer of Psyk Ward, who transcends his mental health struggles to become a cook.
As they talk and sing openly about the difficulties in their community, the members of this DIY scene bond like family. That’s necessary when the punks are faced with criticisms like the devastating dad burn that Alex’s pop drops in the film’s closing scenes: “I just hope some of these people get a job so they can buy your album!”
How Do You Do, Fellow TikTokers?
- @pablothedon explains why the Black TikTok creator boycott isn’t exactly what you think
- @markmallman celebrates the Black punk band Death
- @rachelandthecity provides a quick overview of post-punk
- @halfdiminishedseventh imagines what might happen if Mozart had a YouTube channel
- @vjblee traces the tangled history of an oft-interpolated reggae tune
Trivia Time
What record producer called Chicago Reader critic Bill Wyman a “stooge” in response to a ’90s article celebrating Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, and the Smashing Pumpkins?
Pivoting to Video
- The recent panel discussion Say It Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies is now online
- Rocked counts down ten albums that were hated by critics (at first)
- Grady Smith explains why people don’t trust country radio
- Genius explains why the Adult Swim trend on TikTok blew up
- The recent panel discussion Creators are Driving Diversity in Country Music is online (starts at 27:00)
That Took A Turn
Source
Q&A: Joan Jocson-Singh
Joan Jocson-Singh is Institute Librarian at CalArts. She has done a great deal of research in metal music studies (specifically on gender and motherhood) and zines/special collections/DEI work over the past few years. Metal music and librarianship aren’t the first thing you tend to think of together, but as Joan puts it: “The two were married under one of the most traumatic experiences a person can have—death. I was in my early 20s during the summer of 2007 and had lost my mother to illness.... I started listening to anything heavier to deal with the stress of work, school, and my grief.... Having the support of my then husband who had already been a long time metalhead, we started going to more and more shows and I realized how rare it was to see others like me.” In this excerpt from our interview, Joan describes some of the work that she’s currently undertaking.
As a librarian, I have the pleasure to be a generalist. And with that, I have a broad range of interests that I pursue in the name of research. Right now, I just closed up a study on Rock and Metal Motherhood with my colleague Julie Turley at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY. She and I have interviewed mothers in the rock and metal musical subcultures who identify as musicians and/or music industry workers. We’re looking to investigate how these mothers do musicking (music making) that allows for self-care, how they question masculinity within the subcultures and whether they advocate for feminism and its performance within these traditional masculine spaces.
My other research is with another CUNY colleague, fellow punk scholar, Junior Tidal at City Tech College, CUNY. We’ve been granted an ALA (American Libraries Association) grant to work on a bibliography of extreme music by POCs (people of color). This work is closing up in July 2021 and we hope to provide a free LibGuide (online bibliography) that lists notable works by and for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities who have written books, papers, articles and created documentaries of “extreme” music.
Read the full interview with Joan here.
Bits, Bobs
- BuzzFeed is acquiring Complex
- Jim Bessman, Glenn Watkins, and Alan Lewis have passed away
- A new music book imprint called Nine Eight Books has just launched
- Jordannah Elizabeth has a new column at Jazz Journalist Association called New & Diverse Voices in Jazz
- Beeple and the founder of Pitchfork are launching an NFT site
Academic Stuff
- New issues: IMS Musicological Brainfood, Music and Letters, and Latin American Music Review
- Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology; contact podlip@amu.edu.pl for more information (Article due August 30)
- Registration is open for the Sound, Meaning, Education: Conversations conference (Online, July 21)
- Anicca Harriot has a thread of useful academic research tools
- Call for Articles: Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture for its 2022 issue; contact WAMjournal@gmail.com for more information (Submissions due July 7)
- Call for Articles: “Really Popular? – Criteria of the Popularity of Music / Richtig populär? – Kriterien der Popularität von Musik” (Abstracts due October 1)
- Call for Papers: A special issue of Nineteenth-Century Music Review titled “Urban Desires: Music and Nostalgia” (Abstracts due July 23)
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Trivia Time Answer
Record producer Steve Albini took umbrage with Wyman’s year-end list and essay in a heated letter.
Do you have a question you’d like to see included in Trivia Time? Hit reply and let me know.
The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! 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…