Why the Flood of Musician Memoirs? An Exploration by Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #84

in Books, Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 3rd, 2021

There’s been an explo­sion of rock and roll auto­bi­ogra­phies in recent years, with pret­ty much every music leg­end (and many oth­ers) being invit­ed by some pub­lish­er or oth­er to write or dic­tate their sto­ry. What’s the par­tic­u­lar appeal of this kind of recount­ing, what’s the con­nec­tion between writ­ing and read­ing these books on the one hand and pro­duc­ing and lis­ten­ing to the actu­al music on the oth­er? Do we get a rough­ly equiv­a­lent ben­e­fit from a biog­ra­phy, doc­u­men­tary, or film depic­tion of the per­son­’s life?

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt along with guest Lau­ra Davis-Chanin, author of her own music mem­oir, each picked a book, cov­er­ing Elvis Costel­lo, Car­rie Brown­stein, Ozzy Osbourne, and Deb­bie Har­ry respec­tive­ly. Reflect­ing on these read­ing expe­ri­ences we com­pare the author’s pur­pos­es in writ­ing the book, how con­fes­sion­al or drug-addled or twist­ed the sto­ry is, what is empha­sized and what’s not, and what res­onat­ed in the sto­ry beyond the idio­syn­crat­ic recount­ing of that per­son­’s life.

Check out Lau­ra’s two books, hear her talk about her musi­cal adven­tures on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, and hear her dis­cuss clas­sic lit­er­a­ture on Phi Fic.

Some of the NEM episodes where Mark talked with guests about their auto-biogra­phies fea­tured Chris Frantz of Talk­ing Heads, Jim Peterik of Sur­vivor, Andy Pow­ell of Wish­bone Ash, Dan­ny Seraphine of Chica­go and John Andrew Fredrick of The Black Watch.

We did­n’t use much research for this episode, but you can read lists of par­tic­u­lar­ly good music mem­oirs from Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The Oak­land Press has an arti­cle about music biogra­phies and auto­bi­ogra­phies emerg­ing at the end of 2020.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Increasing Disabled/Other-Abled Representation in Media — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #83

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 24th, 2021

At least 20% of us have some sort of dis­abil­i­ty, yet such con­di­tions are reflect­ed by only tiny por­tion of TV and film char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, and what char­ac­ters are por­trayed typ­i­cal­ly get played by non-dis­abled actors. Depic­tions often focus on what it’s like to live with the con­di­tion. This can of course be social­ly ben­e­fi­cial, but we don’t want to essen­tial­ize peo­ple as their con­di­tions, so it’s even more use­ful to fea­ture dis­abled actors and char­ac­ters when the plot is not about their dis­abil­i­ty.

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by play­wright Kay­la Dryesse to talk about hur­dles to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, dis­abil­i­ty cul­ture, whether “dis­abil­i­ty” is even the right word, neg­a­tive stereo­types (no less than five James Bond vil­lains are in wheel­chairs!), and issues in por­tray­ing dis­abil­i­ty relat­ed to the­ater, com­e­dy, hor­ror, and super­heroes. Some shows men­tioned include Speech­less, Atyp­i­cal, Every­thing’s Gonna Be Okay, Break­ing Bad, Glee, The Stand, The Witch­es, and The Great British Bake-Off.

Learn more from these arti­cles:

Also, watch Stel­la Young’s TED talk, called “I’m Not Your Inspi­ra­tion, Thank You Very Much;” the episode of Drunk His­to­ry about 504 acces­si­bil­i­ty; and Ste­vie Won­der’s SNL par­o­dy of a cam­era com­mer­cial.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Bruce Springsteen & Barack Obama Release a New Podcast, “Renegades: Born in the USA”

in Podcasts | February 23rd, 2021

Yes­ter­day, Barack Oba­ma and Bruce Spring­steen unveiled the first two episodes of an 8‑part pod­cast called “Rene­gades: Born In The USA.”  The pod­cast (avail­able on Spo­ti­fy) is “a series of con­ver­sa­tions between Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Bruce Spring­steen about their lives, music, and endur­ing love of America—despite all its chal­lenges.” The con­ver­sa­tions were taped at Spring­steen’s home between July and Decem­ber of 2020. To hear the episodes, you will seem­ing­ly need to cre­ate a Spo­ti­fy account, if you don’t have one already.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Names His Favorite Books, Movies & Songs of 2018

Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band Impro­vis­es and Plays, Com­plete­ly Unre­hearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

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Why Does The Karate Kid Persist as the New Cobra Kai? A Critical Consideration by Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#82)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 18th, 2021

Did any­one sus­pect that the beloved 1984 film The Karate Kid (and its decreas­ing­ly beloved sequels) would now be not just remade but revived as the YouTube-Red-turned-Net­flix hit Cobra Kai? Is this new show actu­al­ly good, or just liv­ing unhealth­ily on nos­tal­gia and the fas­ci­na­tion of watch­ing teens and mid­dle aged peo­ple fist­fight and fall in love.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark-san, Eri­ca-san, and Bri­an-san sur­vey the show and all the films for non­sen­si­cal plot­ting, vil­lain moti­va­tion, ques­tion­able act­ing, and more. It’s almost as if PMP is the best… around… and noth­ing’s ever gonna keep it down.

Care for some arti­cles with more info about these shows?

If you haven’t seen the noto­ri­ous Karate Kid III, watch this.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Radio vs. Podcasting: A Discussion with Jason Bentley (KCRW, The Backstory) on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #81

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Radio | February 11th, 2021

Jason was music direc­tor at KRCW, the LA NPR sta­tion, is also a DJ with a lot of expe­ri­enced inter­view­ing musi­cians, and now hosts a new pod­cast, The Back­sto­ry. He joins Mark and Eri­ca to dis­cuss the cre­ative and busi­ness pos­si­bil­i­ties of pod­cast­ing in com­par­i­son to radio, what their futures may hold, and his own jour­ney between the two media.

Fol­low Jason @thejasonbentley. Lis­ten to his Back­sto­ry inter­view with Kris­ten Bell and his cur­rent radio show, Metrop­o­lis.

Here’s some com­par­i­son data and oth­er basic infor­ma­tion on radio and pod­casts:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Do We Need Yet More Films About Time Loops? A Pretty Much Pop Discussion (#80) of Groundhog Day and its Descendents

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | February 2nd, 2021

Tine loop­ing, where a char­ac­ter is doomed to repeat the same day (or hour, or longer peri­od) is a sci-fi trope dat­ing back more than a cen­tu­ry, but real­ly entered Amer­i­can con­scious­ness with the 1993 Bill Mur­ray film Ground­hog Day. Since then, and espe­cial­ly in the last five years, there have been numer­ous iter­a­tions of this idea in var­i­ous gen­res from racial police-shoot­ing dra­ma to teen sex com­e­dy. But do we need more of this? What are the philo­soph­i­cal ideas involved, and how do these change with tweaks to the sce­nario?

Mark, Eri­ca, Bri­an, and return­ing guest Ken Ger­ber dis­cuss not only the very recent and pop­u­lar for­ays into this genre with Hulu’s Palm Springs and Net­flix’s Russ­ian Doll, but also touch on Edge of Tomor­row, Repeaters, 12:01 PM, Before I Fall, The Fare, and episodes of The Twi­light Zone, Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery, The X‑Files, and Rick & Morty.

There are of course oth­er film and TV uses of this trope. For a rel­a­tive­ly full list, you can see this wiki page list­ing time loop films and this oth­er wiki page dis­cussing lit­er­ary antecedents. Also see the “Ground­hog Day” Loop page on tvtropes.org, and here’s a rel­e­vant red­dit thread.

Here are more arti­cles:

Watch the 12:01 PM 1990 short film. This bonus episode of the 11.22.63 pod­cast had a great dis­cus­sion of time loop media includ­ing the Ken Grim­wood nov­el Replay and the short sto­ry “12:01 P.M.” and its sequels. You can read the 1941 Mal­colm Jame­son sto­ry “Dou­bled and Redou­bled” online. As a fore­run­ner to the time loop idea, check out the very short 1892 chil­dren’s sto­ry “Christ­mas Every Day” by William Dean How­ells, where time does move for­ward with its con­se­quences, but it’s always Christ­mas!

We talked a lit­tle about Hap­py Death Day with its cos­tume design­er in our ep. 38 and got into time trav­el more gen­er­al­ly with Ken in ep. 22 and into “weird sit­u­a­tions” in our Twi­light Zone ep. 52. You may also enjoy Wes Alwan’s (sub)Text pod­cast dis­cussing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Ground­hog Day.

Check out the time loop movie bin­go card that Bri­an put togeth­er (with ground­hog pic­ture by Ken):

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

 

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The Formula for The Coen Brothers/Noah Hawley’s Fargo – Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #79

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 28th, 2021

Your hosts Mark Lin­se­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Tam­ler from the Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast to con­sid­er the plau­dits and com­plaints heaped on this moral­i­ty-tale-turned-orga­nized-crime-dra­ma that began with the 1006 film and  has con­tin­ued through a 4‑season TV show. We delve into its elab­o­rate style, “tun­dra west­ern” set­ting, dry humor (includ­ing “Min­neso­ta nice”), speechi­fy­ing, gen­der issues, stunt cast­ing, and the role of chance in its plot­ting. Did the show go down­hill in its lat­er sea­sons, and is there alto­geth­er too much rehash involved? Yes, there are spoil­ers, but no, it bare­ly mat­ters.

Check out these resources for more opin­ions and back­ground infor­ma­tion:

Fol­low @tamler. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Check out his book, Why Hon­or Mat­ters.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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The Renewed Popularity of Chess and The Queen’s Gambit: Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion #78 with Chess Expert J.J. Lang

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 21st, 2021

The high lev­el of inter­est in Net­flix’s adap­ta­tion of the 1984 Wal­ter Tevis nov­el, The Queen’s Gam­bit has brought this most pop­u­lar game back to the fore­front of pop cul­ture. Chess expert/teacher J.J. (who’s also a grad stu­dent in phi­los­o­phy) joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er chess cul­ture, what gives this game its edge on oth­er con­tenders (why not Ter­ra Mys­ti­ca?), play­er per­son­al­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics, and the effect of chess media.

We con­sid­er gen­der, genius, and oth­er issues in Gam­bit, plus Pawn Sac­ri­fice, Search­ing for Bob­by Fish­er, The Luzhin Defense, and The Cold­est Game.

A few arti­cles and lists:

Watch J.J. on stream on Twitch. Oth­er inter­views he’s done: Per­pet­u­al Chess, Friends and Ene­mies, Aakaash

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion about more chess films and oth­er top­ics that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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