Pop Conference 2011: “Music and Money”! [UCLA, Friday 2/25 to Sunday, 2/27] by Cory Davis and Tom Kipp

Much enjoyment was had by all re: the festivities! This was my second Pop Conference – I attended sparsely last year as I had work conflicts throughout the weekend, unfortunately. We saw some great speakers this year, especially (in my opinion) Robert Christgau, David Ritz, and even an exceptional grad student or two! I had a couple of wonderful chats with the lovely Allison Wolfe (of Riot Grrrl fame). Also, I enjoyed getting to know Ann Powers and Daphne Carr a little. Sunday night, Tom, Joe, and I burned the midnight oil for a long while back in the hotel lobby with Cheetah Chrome, whose wife happens to be from my parents’ tiny hometown in Middle Tennessee!

My favorite moments from over the weekend included Greil saying to Tom, “You always give the best presentations!” and sitting next to Chuck D while he took notes on a talk about black mid-century radio DJs.

It was my very first witnessing of The Great Christgau for “Blue Monday: The Class Origins of ’50s Rock and Roll”, and I was impressed with his ability to gather a boatload of facts, condense them to crunched numbers, and rapidly deliver them in a talk that was shockingly informative, yet so impassioned, he and I were both almost moved to tears at some point! In short, early rock ‘n’ rollers tended to come from musically-inclined families, play music more-or-less for the sole purpose of making money, and rarely ever worked “day jobs” even before they were famous. Who knew that pointing this out could be so moving?

David Ritz is someone who knew some very famous people quite intimately and I was impressed by his talent for telling stories about it during his talk, “Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, and Money” without seeming for a minute like he was bragging.

And of course, our own Tom Kipp was well-received, though I’ll let the upcoming Youtube appearance of his presentation speak for itself soon enough!

One disturbing trend independently noted by myself and Allison, as well as seconded by Daphne, was that various incarnations of the term “prostitute” get thrown about quite frequently when talking about the music industry and we, as feminists, don’t like it! Why do honest, hard-working sex professionals have to be lumped in with shady record executives and sellout rock stars? This trend is indicative of misogyny, sex-negativity, and ignorance, and I’m surprised that it goes virtually unchallenged in an academic environment, save for a few rogue women willing to be cast as “over-sensitive females” by speaking up.

In conclusion, as I have sought over the past couple of years to expand my musical taste and knowledge, I have discovered that the Pop Conference is a stupendous, free-of-charge resource, and I can’t believe it’s not attended by more of the general public. It is a do-not-miss event for anyone who values the art of thinking hard and speaking passionately about music!

Can’t wait for NYC in 2012!

– Cory Davis

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Our five days of Hotel Angeleno misadventures would take at least an hour to recount, so let’s leave those aside for now, if not FOREVER! Same with the three $50 cab rides! LOL

Day One:USC!

The Thursday, 2/24 USC pre-Pop Conference event ["Work It! Gender, Race and Sexuality in Pop Professions"] was really cool, like a daylong, somewhat more nuanced, version of the old "feminist working group" meetings that took place during lunch breaks at several past Pop Conferences in Seattle.

I particularly enjoyed the opening Music Biz panel, deftly moderated by Ann Powers. Hanna Pantle of BMI was hilarious in her descriptions of boardroom and/or “Boys’ Club”  idiocy, and Lauren Onkey of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame compelling in her commitment to integrating deserving women into The Canon.

Daphne Carr’s “break out session” re: Publishing was especially enlightening re: some of the politics and peculiarities of both Academic journals and presses, and actually gave me a few glimmers of hope re: my own prospects!

The “wrap up” panel culminated in the terrifically insightful and impassioned comments of USC’s Jack Halberstam, who advocated for those with tenure taking risks within the Academy [“You’re being protected to do something!”].

It also boasted Pop Conference perennial Daphne Brooks, who insisted that writers need to “have fun, even with difficult subjects”, contrasting, by way of explanation, the unexpected receptions accorded her two books, both of which counted toward her own tenure—the brief, moving and exceedingly conversational 33 & 1/3 title re: Jeff Buckley’s Grace, which greatly impressed her Princeton peers, and the unexpected difficulties voiced by various Harvard “American Civilization” students re: her more “serious” tome, Bodies in Dissent [“This is SO hard!”].

Days Two, Three and Four: UCLA!

Critics Ned Raggett (Seattle Weekly, the All Music Guide, and Stylus Magazine) and Robert Christgau (Rolling Stone, ex-Village Voice) at afterparty of the 2007 Pop Conference, Experience Music Project, Seattle, Washington. 21 April 2007. Photo by Joe Mabel.

By the by, during the main event at UCLA I was very pleased to finally connect with several Pop Conf folks whom I have enjoyed but not particularly [or never!] conversed with in the past—Dylan Hicks of Minneapolis, Daphne Carr, Douglas Wolk, Michelangelo Matos, Ned Sublette, John Shaw of Seattle, David Grubbs [whom I had chatted with a bit more than any of the others over the years], Karl Hagstrom Miller of Austin, famed Riot Grrrl Allison Wolfe, and several others whose names escape me just now.

I also greatly enjoyed meeting and talking to Bob Pfeifer [Human Switchboard], Mike Hudson [The Pagans] and Cheetah Chrome [Rocket from the Tombs, The Dead Boys] for the 2nd time in just over a week, during their “Burn on Cuyahoga” panel on Saturday! Said punk legends had appeared together at EMP back on the 17th, as their "Cleveland Punk Rock Book Tour" commenced inSeattle.

Greil Marcus was magnificent as usual, venturing deep inside several songs I thought I already knew intimately [Gang of Four’s “Damaged Goods”; Barrett Strong’s and The Beatles’ “Money”; The Brains’, Cyndi Lauper’s, and Delta Moon’s “Money Changes Everything”], and Bob Christgau very moving, in that forceful way he alone can muster, re: “The Class Origins of ’50s Rock ’n’ Roll”, as exemplified by 31 originators whom he’d spotlighted in his research.

Dylan Hicks, who presented a deliciously witty and bizarre piece of fiction masquerading as a long Barbara Streisand record review at the 2006 Pop Conf, actually surpassed that unique landmark [later included in the Da Capo Best Music Writing 2007 anthology] with his oft-discomfiting account of producing a long series of fictive recording sessions for an unreleasable vanity project called Inheritance. Most subtle [as well as most amusing] paper of the weekend, sans doubt!

Jonathan Lethem’s opening night talk on Talking Heads’ FEAR OF MUSIC was not quite the powerhouse I’d hoped for [the reverb on his microphone seemed to be on some sort of “Grand Canyon” setting, alas], but eminently worthwhile nonetheless. I eagerly await his 33 & 1/3 entry on same!

Additional conference highlights included:

 Devin McKinney on the grim trajectories of L.A. Punk; Jasen Emmons on Pearl Jam’s dizzyingly perverse, deeply admirable battles with Ticketmaster; Miles Grier’s thoroughly engaging exploration of Joni Mitchell’s oscillations between her Canadian-ness and her Black Hipness; Holly George-Warren’s can’t-miss amble through the prime number career of Alex Chilton; David Ritz recounting his time in the trenches as brilliant biographer of both Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye; Kevin Gaines on Stevie Wonder’s amazing crossover journey; Charles Hughes’ fascinating exploration of the confluence of Black Power and the Record Biz; the awesomely charismatic UCLA professor Scot Brown raising the roof as he recounted the remarkable achievements of L.A.-based Solar Records exec Dick Griffey; Matt Sullivan’s neo-detective story about the disappearance of singer-songwriter Jim Sullivan, whose 1970 album UFO he’s just reissued on his splendid Seattle label, Light in the Attic; a reprise by Pat Thomas of the revelatory talk he gave at last September’s Bumbershoot festival in Seattle re: Black Forum, Motown’s long-disappeared Civil Rights-oriented imprint; and Andy Zax’s dizzyingly bizarre account of musician, composer, former Nashville socialite, and serial tax evader, Tupper Saussy!

I even largely enjoyed the end-of-Sunday "Kiss Panel",which Mr. Chuck Klosterman managed to elevate above the middling-plus efforts of his co-presenters, with an impassioned free-form theoretical mash-up/meltdown re: the one band about whom he truly DOES have something to say!

And one final shout-out to the excellent six-man “roundtable” entitled “Let’s Get Physical: Box Sets and Specialty Reissues in the Digital Era”, which managed to illuminate a stunning number of complex issues pertaining to the memorialization of the musical past, and actually elicited multiple questions and comments from me, which was an unprecedented feat, given my customary reticence during the first nine-plus iterations of the Pop Conf!

Final Thoughts:

With Cory’s excellent A/V assistance, my "Classic Rocker Disco Single" presentation went over well, which came as quite a relief, I must say, given the immense technical challenges that went along with going on the road AND losing the services of my brilliant, longtime A/V guy, Dan Mohr, at virtually the last moment.

Thanks be to Cory’s hilarious friend, H.B. Radke of Mercer Island, for getting our Power Point into good shape, and for giving us a ride to the airport on Wednesday morning!

And I was thrilled to be on the same panel [Sunday morning’s “Singles”] with the always lively Douglas Wolk, who drolly tracked the rise and fall of the Indie seven-inch in his ninth Pop Conf presentation, and Chris Molanphy, whose eloquent, rapid-fire distillation of over fifty years of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart included what was certainly the most impressive display of A/V firepower at this year’s conference!

From what I understand, most of the 2011 Pop Conf talks should eventually be available for free via iTunes, on audio AND video [!], so I hope we’ll all be able to catch up on a goodly cross-section of what we missed this past weekend! [More on that as soon as I hear anything from Eric Weisbard.]

Tom Kipp

P.S. Another incredible highlight of the trip was meeting up for a delicious Greek feast on Thursday night with two old friends who’ve called L.A. home since about 1997—Brooke Dammkoehler, whom I’d last seen at the end of our freshman year at Brown [May 1982], and Jim Harrison, with whom I worked at The Record & Tape Exchange in Fairfax, VA from 1988-92! So great to see them again….

For another perspective on the 2011 Pop Conference, go here:

EMP Pop Conference 2011 — Ned Raggett’s summary and full notes from Twitter

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