Feminist Memory with Jessica Hopper
6/21/19 - Writer and rock critic Jessica Hopper joins us to crate dig through some archives we have and some that we need. From the inbox appearance that sparked her friendship with Ann, to untold histories of women in arts and music, to the power of the year 1975 for women writing songs and playing them. Plus, Joni Mitchell, problematic fave.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
A Jury of Her Peers by Elaine Showalter
The Last Bohemians podcast
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac
Labelle - Phoenix
Betty Davis - Nasty Gal
Jessica Hopper on Lost Notes
The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper
TRANSCRIPT: FEMINIST MEMORY WITH JESSICA HOPPER
[Ads]
(1:00)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On today's agenda we're talking about music, history, and feminist memory with the writer and producer Jessica Hopper.
[Theme Song]
(1:42)
Aminatou: How's the book writing going? [Laughs]
Ann: Ugh, don't even pretend your brain isn't fried too. Maybe your brain isn't fried too. Maybe you're doing great.
Aminatou: My brain definitely is on fire but, you know, I just try to conserve my energy.
Ann: So in the interest of conserving energy we have another amazing guest this week who is doing the hard thinking for us. I talked to the author, producer, and journalist Jessica Hopper whose writing I read going back to the early days of blogging, early Internet days, and you will hear us talk about this in the interview but one reason why I wanted to have her on the podcast is that she is I think the only person in my life who was a total stranger to me, just someone whose work that I read, and at a personal low point I wrote her an out of the blue email -- like I said, total stranger -- and just like said a bunch of personal stuff about my life. I have no idea -- this is not behavior I condone. This is not something I have done before or since.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I basically emotionally vomited into her inbox even though we had never met and had no relationship and she wrote me, you know, a not overly belabored but a very kind and considered email back and fast-forward like ten-plus years we are now friends and I don't know, I think about that moment a lot of like look, did I have access to her or a right to kind of demand a response? Absolutely not. Do I think everyone should be out here emotionally barfing into strangers' inboxes? I do not. But it's kind of a sweet story that worked out very well and we are like -- I would say I consider her to be someone, kind of a colleague I've never worked with. Do you have those people in your life?
Aminatou: Yes, so many. So many good people in my life. And I think there's also something about knowing that you, you know, you're paddling somewhere in the same river but you never see each other that makes it extra sweet.
Ann: Parallel kayaks? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yes, parallel kayaks but you never see each other.
(3:50)
Ann: Well if you're not familiar with her work Jessica Hopper is the author of the anthology The First Collection of Criticism By a Living Female Rock Critic. Amazing title.
Aminatou: Love it. Love it. You've got to create your own mythology. It's good.
Ann: Trust me when I say I still remember the moment when I realized that's what she was calling this collection of her criticism and I was floored. I was like this is so brilliant. She is also the author of the music memoir Night Moves and you can hear her as the host and executive producer of season two of the KCRW podcast Lost Notes which is all about untold stories in music. And she's also currently at work on her forthcoming book No God But Herself: A Critical History of Women in American Music in 1975. Whew. So . . .
Aminatou: Love it.
Ann: So here's Jessica.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Hi Jessica. Welcome to the podcast.
Jessica: Hi Ann! Thank you so much for having me.
Ann: So much. I have to tell you that I was explaining to a friend last night how I knew you. She was asking.
Jessica: How do we know each other?
Ann: Well I sent you an email responding to a personal post you had written on your blog that spoke to me and it was -- I went back and looked it up today in anticipation of this conversation.
Jessica: What did I say? I remember you writing to me asking for life advice. It was the middle of the night.
Ann: It was a very "Jessica fix my life" kind of an email. [Laughs]
Jessica: And what did I tell you?
Ann: Well, hang on. So before we read it I will tell you that I was explaining this. And I was like "But, you know, so I really looked up to her for a long time and I still look up to her but also we're friends." And Beth was like "Oh, so she's a pero? Like a peer and a hero." And I was like "Yes! She's a pero."
Jessica: I love the word. Love the word.
Ann: A pero lies in you. [Laughter]
Jessica: Did you ever know you're my pero?
Ann: Did you ever know that you're my pero? And you are.
Jessica: [Laughs]
Ann: Okay, hang on. I'm going to find this email. The gist of it was like "I wish I hadn't waited so long to really give it my all and try to be a writer." That was the gist of the section of your blog post and I was feeling very much that way.
Jessica: Wow.
(6:00)
Ann: And also I was feeling like men in particular in my life were not supportive of that goal and I think that was another thing you had mentioned. You had mentioned people who are supportive of that.
Jessica: Yeah. I think also because at that time, I think maybe right around the time that you wrote me, I started dating the man that is now my husband and many of the people that I had -- many makes it sound like there's a lot. There's just a few central assholes. The men that I had dated before my husband were people who wanted to keep my ambition small. It doesn't make any sense to me now as a fulcrum, dinosaur of 43, like young me being with dudes who were like, you know, "Your vocabulary is intimidating to my friends. You've got to like . . ."
Ann: [Laughs] Sorry, I shouldn't laugh at that but . . .
Jessica: No! But I was like "No, no." But then I'm still with them for another year or whatever because I still had my sort of psychic on-ramps for those bad feelings and those bad men into my life. Not bad men; people who at the time were not capable of being decent boyfriends. And I was no saint but, you know . . .
Ann: You can be bad for someone without being bad full-stop. Right.
Jessica: Yes, exactly. But at that time I think when you wrote to me I had pretty recently had these revelations of like oh, it can be other ways. I can be in partnership with someone who really sees me and kind of facilitates a kind of boldness in the world who sees that my ambition is not a threat to them.
Ann: Right.
Jessica: And I up until that point had really been with people like that. I was so afraid of -- I think what I said in that note to an extent is I was afraid of my own success. I was afraid of my own power and I kind of used these relationships and these men to really keep that in check because I was so I think in some ways afraid of encountering who I was in all my raw glory [Laughter] of my 20s. And, you know, Matt and I have now been together like 14 years? Something like that? And he has essentially given up parts of his career and some of his ambitions in order to facilitate my career because he thinks that's like important and he wouldn't have it any other way. That was -- when you wrote to me I was at this point of really realizing that it meant to have a man that I loved reciprocate and show up for me.
Ann: There's this sense too of -- which your reply to me really did -- I wasn't saying "Jessica, men aren't giving me permission to do this thing. Will you give me permission to want and do this thing?" But that's what you did. You kind of read between the lines that part of it was if I'm sending an email to a stranger saying "Oh, I don't really feel like I can grab this thing that I've always wanted for myself and I don't feel like certain people in my life -- some people are encouraging me and other people aren't." And just doubling down on that like yeah, yeah, you can do it. And I really do think about it all the time when I get emails from strangers. Like I feel very far from the person who sent you that email which is in some ways great but also I don't want to lose touch with that either. It does sometimes take an outside affirmation.
(9:40)
Jessica: You know, one of the things I think about whenever I get an email from a stranger, and sometimes people want something very particular and I think about how when I was 16 years old and I went to go interview Fugazi and somebody at Discord Records said "I get all this mail and I can't really write back to it." And there's basically like an audible gasp of if people put in the effort to write to you you cannot not write back to them. And basically this is the law.
And so I still think about that because I also think about all the people that I have written letters to over the years and people who I've made sometimes strange and desperate overtures to myself and I even thought about it this morning because I was hanging out with my friend Alex Popadimas (?) when I was pregnant with my son and I was so -- my first son -- and I was so desperate for dollar or two dollar a word work because I was pregnant and just couldn't hustle to the degree that I was. You know, I was supporting my husband who was still and kid. And like, you know, on nine cents a word, like weekly rates.
And I had been asking men I knew like "Can you help me with an introduction to somebody at GQ?" or like wherever these places -- or even like a small, some small front of book interview with some nominally famous person or a listicle literally is my rent.
Ann: Right.
Jessica: And no one would share their contact with me. And then I wrote to Alex who I maybe just barely knew and he told me later, he was like "You just seemed kind of desperate in the email." And he wrote me back this super long, detailed email about how to pitch the New York Times Magazine and who to pitch at GQ for what part and what they look for. And he was somebody that was doing cover stories for them and all this stuff and it was like -- he was like the good man that unlocked that world.
Ann: [Laughs]
(11:48)
Jessica: But I always think about how somebody just taking the time to reply to an email from some desperate pregnant lady about how to get a GQ front of book, it changed my life. It changed the course of my life. For two years I could support my family because I started just doing one or two pieces every couple weeks and it was like the difference between writing for hours and hours and hours and hours and doing something that was small and paid a half decent wage. So I don't know, not to be like -- just trying to pay it forward Ann. [Laughs]
Ann: No, I mean but I think I have intuited that. And I really do think about . . . I mean I couldn't remember the substance of this exchange until I went to look for it today but I did remember it was highly emotional and I didn't know you and I had no business sending you a highly emotional email and expecting a reply and you sent a very gracious one. So I think that -- I think about that when I take time and reply to people now. And sometimes I literally do -- when they're like "Thank you so much" I'm like "Please reply to other emails that you get like this in the future."
Jessica: [Laughs]
Ann: And sometimes I actually just say that. We recently had an email exchange about the shocking gaps in both of our knowledge about shit that we should know about women's output in the world, like women artists or women thinkers, and . . .
Jessica: Or progenitors.
Ann: Yes! I can't remember for sure but I think the inspiration for that conversation was this podcast The Last Bohemians.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Ugh, I really savored that. Like I started powering through a couple of these episodes and I really encourage anyone listening if you enjoy this podcast you will also enjoy The Last Bohemians.
Ann: Yes, please describe the premise.
Jessica: So it's basically these edited interviews with women who I think are primarily 60s/70s/80s, I think the oldest person on the show was like 92, and they are women who are -- most of them are sort of at the vanguard of doing some interesting thing and some of them just led really creative kind of strange lives. And the interview sort of follows them through these -- you know, the details and contours of their artistic or personal lives, but really how they came up and how they became who they were. Not so much as achievements and failures and things like that but it's really kind of like this is who I am. And some of them are like, you know, women talking about their sexual conquests of famous men in the '60s. [Laughs] And then other ones are about what was artistically fulfilling to them and what their artistic practice is like in their 80s. And I was like oh my god I'm so hungry for this.
Ann: Mm-hmm.
(14:35)
Jessica: And I also -- I'm so aware of being so divorced from a lot of these just histories and narratives and the work of these women because I think there's so many ways that culture I think really proactively works to cut us off from those histories and those narratives because it keeps us sort of in these spaces of reinventing the wheel, being detached from historical activism. We're like how do I locate the lineage of what I'm doing culturally, personally, whoever? And just forever having to dig for those people.
Ann: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Like people who are not going to be remembered in a way that is kind of like algorithmically served up to us by culture.
Ann: Sure, or institutionally protected.
Jessica: Oh my god, yeah.
Ann: It's like retrospectives or even the kind of venerating magazine profile of -- yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. These are people who are not -- we're just not being served content of women who are in their 80s. Like . . .
Ann: The market is . . . [Laughs]
Jessica: Yes. The book that I'm researching right now, most of the women who are the subjects of it are in their 70s now and I feel a kind of desperation for their stories but particularly told in their own voice. Because so much of what I even find in my research, 95% of it is cis white men who were the gatekeepers of music criticism and cultural proclamation on high of who gets to matter and this is what this work means.
Ann: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And so you kind of have to . . . I feel like I'm constantly sort of trying to claw back that filter and find these women talking about their own art and own process and no one thought to ask them about it a lot of the time so it's -- I am excavating.
(16:25)
Ann: It's one reason why we don't really interview men. [Laughs] It's like, you know, a real-time -- a living document of women talking about the things that they're making and doing right now, yeah.
Jessica: It's still such a radical thing. And even when you read -- do you know this book A Jury of Her Peers?
Ann: Yes.
Jessica: I think about that book a lot. It basically starts at the founding of America, essentially who were the women who were allowed to publish and what did they write about and what was their deal? And just sort of moves forward. And so it's a history of women writing in America for about 400 years and you just see how recently it was that women were able to put their own names on books and you're like whoa, just the simple fact of me publishing a book is like this is still a big deal. Like in the broader scope of this history and reading books like that for me have been really nutritive but also sometimes is -- you know, I'm someone who goes to the library and the bookstore and I'm forever this is the thing I do when I'm stuck in my writing is I count how many people are not -- in the music book section I count the people who aren't white male authors writing about canonical white male artists. And it's like, you know, like a good book store that's maybe seven or eight books that aren't that. And that motivates me to be like all right, just keep moving. Get your shit together. Come on. Like not to say that my work is part of some grand solution but it helps me kind of keep broader perspective on what I'm doing to just keep moving.
(18:08)
Ann: Well also your book is part of a grand solution. I'm allowed to say that.
Jessica: Okay. [Laughs]
Ann: Well and I want you -- I feel like for people who are listening and don't know you should talk about the title of your collection because its' directly relevant to this experience of looking for and not finding certain people represented.
Jessica: In 2015 my second book came out and it is an anthology of about 15 years of primarily my criticism called The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. And even though it is not exactly -- that is not entirely true -- I kept being told when I wanted to make this book, and I talked about it for a couple of years, of like I want to do an anthology of my work. I've been writing for a really long time and I have all this work that's sort of scattered to the wind and I feel like I want to put it together because I read books by men that are that all the fucking time.
Ann: [Laughs]
Jessica: And I kept being told "Well there's no precedent." Like Klosterman is not a precedent? Or Bob Sheffield or . . .
Ann: We've been making this mistake a long time and we'd like to keep making it.
Jessica: Please keep letting us iterate it into infinity. Like I don't count in the same realm of this and after a couple years of that I was so suitably pissed off by it but also going like yes, these works do exist and they're by women in the UK in the '80s and, you know, other people who have come before me that have done this sort of work. By saying there's no precedent you're also erasing their work, so the title was really sort of like -- it was at once a fuck you and it was also . . . I mean I really just didn't want anybody who was coming after me, coming up alongside me to be fed this same line of shit about why their work couldn't exist.
Ann: Mm-hmm.
(20:00)
Jessica: Maybe this is a tool to somebody but also to just be like literally every single month two books on The Beatles and Bob Dylan come out over and over again and like -- I mean those bands are perfectly fine but . . .
Ann: That's not the issue.
Jessica: This is not the issue. Please don't get in my mentions about the validity of Bob Dylan's work because I'm not going to fight you on it. But just being like there's all these women whose work has been anthologized. There's all these different people whose work and their voices has never been collected, that they are not considered to have expertise or their work is just erased. And those women and a lot of the critics and cultural critics who were considered sort of marginal were the people who shaped my voices and . . .
Ann: Like who? Do some shout outs.
Jessica: In particular there was a woman named Terry Sutten (?) who was the pop critic at the weekly paper when I was a teenager and I thought because oh, we have this pop critic here at City Pages who's a woman who's writing feminist criticism that must mean that every city has one. And then I found out later she was literally the only one at the time.
Ann: Everyone did not have a Terry Sutten. [Laughs]
Jessica: No, it was like Ann Powers and Terry Sutten were like the . . .
Ann: Yeah.
Jessica: And I still think about things that she wrote that I read as a teenager that made a huge impression on me. You know, her rejecting certain canonical dudes that have been sort of shoved down our throats and instead, you know, being like fuck the Rolling Stones. Marianne Faithfull, people, you know?
Ann: [Laughs]
Jessica: And I was like yeah, this is it! And it was sort of the first time that I was really encountering work that centered people who otherwise -- people said oh, you know, Marianne Faithfull is just a groupie that lucked into this record or whatever. And instead saying like here, no, this person's doing -- this is the real art going on here and would this other band even exist if it wasn't for these women? And I was like yes! You know, it was such a revelation for me.
Ann: [Laughs]
(22:10)
Jessica: And then it sort of . . . also there was a book called Rock She Wrote that was Ann Powers and Evelyn McDonnell I believe were the editors on the . . . and my mom worked at the newspaper and brought me home like a galley of that book. And I was like oh, there's like a whole lineage of women that I'm really interested in. And at the time I was just a teenage girl doing a fanzine in my bedroom on the typewriter. And I was like oh, this is like a thing women do. I didn't realize like, you know, there's only two books like that ever.
Ann: Well also though even knowing that there's one or two suddenly puts this thing that you're doing in your bedroom on your own in contact with a thing that is bigger. And I think that is really important in terms of seeing it as important. Like understanding that this is a thing that respected professionals do in the world.
Jessica: And that there's a history of it going back to the '70s.
Ann: Yeah.
Jessica: Where I was like oh, those books and those people were saying you know, we've been here all along. But I think there hasn't been enough opportunity for those folks to continue to be celebrated, to be rediscovered, to have their voices sort of come in from the margins.
Ann: Well I wanted to ask if this impulse kind of against erasure -- if there's a link directly between that and this book project that you're working on right now.
Jessica: Oh I think for sure. So the book that I'm working on right now is called No God But Herself and it's about women in music in 1975.
Ann: I get a chill just hearing that title. [Laughs]
(23:50)
Jessica: It is -- 1975 is the year that a lot of women artists start to have charting hits and success of various definition with songs and material that they wrote culled from their own lives. They're singing it themselves.
Ann: Could you throw out a few examples?
Jessica: So 1975 we have landmark work from LaBelle, Minnie Riperton, Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac which the first two charting singles off of that are, you know, written by the women in that band. And it is a landmark year for Joni Mitchell. She puts out this record The Hissing of Summer Lawns which I think is her at the absolute height of her power and she makes the entire record, you know, in this sort of furious attempt to show people this is my genius. Stop crediting men with this. And she just goes all in. But also it is a year that gives us Chaka Khan and Donna Summer and . . .
Ann: Full body chill. [Laughs]
Jessica: And the year, you know, ends with Patti Smith Horses.
Ann: Oh my god.
Jessica: So really for me it was, you know, LaBelle, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Patti, Chaka Khan are some of my . . . I mean those are like my big ones.
Ann: Canonical.
Jessica: They are -- yeah, they are people that I have their pictures framed in cheap IKEA frames in my office.
Ann: [Laughs]
Jessica: But for a while I was just sort of like how do I tie these people together? Because these are the things that I want to write about. And at some point I was reading this kind of whatever book about Fleetwood Mac and it talked about 1975, what that year was for the band and about how Over My Head became the first top-20 rock song written by the woman who sang it. And I was like no, that's too late. I mean part of that is also because the rock charts were pretty new. Rock as a format was pretty new.
Ann: Uh-huh.
(25:55)
Jessica: But I was like wait a minute, and it just kind of skewed so much of my timeline. I just realized I needed to interrogate the timeline of women in rock and start finding maybe some history that was different than what I thought I knew and I found just -- you know, also 1975 gives us Betty Davis. It is also the tail-end of the height of The Carpenters and they're making their last big record in the studio at the same time Joni Mitchell is recording Hissing of Summer Lawns and I'm just like imagine . . . my brain sort of went on fire and I was like Karen and Joni on either side of the wall, they're the two biggest perfectionists in music right in that moment. Ah!
Ann: I'm so happy you're writing this book. [Laughs]
Jessica: Thank you. I am too. The thing that kicked my ass into finally getting my proposal done was I was looking up an email address of someone, as we keep going back to these ancient emails.
Ann: The archive. [Laughs]
Jessica: Dude, never truly flush out the Gmail. I know some people are Inbox zero but like . . . [Laughs]
Ann: You know, it is my most valuable. I truly think about my Gmail and all the data therein as my most valuable possession.
Jessica: And so I went back to this email. It'd be 2012, 2013 that I'd written -- I was like yeah, I'm going to get around to my Joni like '70s lady book when I have time for the proposal. I was like it's been five fucking years, bitch. Get it together. Find the time. And my husband just agreeing to take care of our kids like nonstop for the summer and take them on trips to see the grandparents and all this stuff so I could just be alone and unimpeded. He's a real champ.
Ann: Ugh. I mean look, like who gets to make any incredible art without a supportive family presence in their lives?
(27:50)
Jessica: No. I don't know how people do it.
Ann: Right. And also the fact that doing work like this is not sumptuously capitalized, you know what I mean? It's a sacrifice.
Jessica: No, and I . . . I mean one of the things that really kicked my ass being no, no, no, you've got to hurry the fuck up, not another five years, is I was working on this oral history about the first five women who were on the editorial masthead at Rolling Stone and one of the women died the day before I was supposed to interview her.
Ann: Oh my god.
Jessica: And she had been the woman who was like the longest-serving editor of all of them and I just thought what don't we know now?
Ann: And what will we never know?
Jessica: Yeah, oh my god. And her friends did a beautiful job of talking about what an incredible role she played and all of these things and I just -- but it just really struck me like I need to try to excavate these things that I care about, like that I feel a sense of duty towards all these people that came before me that made what I do possible, the ways that I find purpose in my life. So much has to do with my work for better or worse but that hadn't . . . and I want their stories. If I have a platform to dig into these things I fucking owe it to them so we can have a history.
Ann: Yeah, like you can rattle off the names of women who came before you and say this is why their work is important to me but the level of, you know, not having those women or their work be examined figures I think is a really interesting thing as well. I knew every artist you mentioned as having important work come out in 1975 but have I meaningfully engaged with criticism of those artists' work that kind of puts it in the context of the time it was produced, that lets me really understand what they were -- not just the notes they were trying to hit but what they were really trying to say with that body of work? And the answer is I have almost nothing for you.
(30:05)
Jessica: And most of those -- many of those women don't have memoirs. I mean Linda Ronstadt does but so much of it is about horses she has loved and that's the story she wants to tell and that's great.
Ann: [Laughs] Should not laugh at that but also man . . .
Jessica: And some of them have documentaries and some of them the legacy we know is so oftentimes, particularly in the case of Betty Davis who I think is just finally starting to get some due that isn't purely she was Miles Davis' wife and people assume that's why she got to make records. You know, and she was self-producing and she was doing these incredible, beautiful outfits that were designed by this guy that later went on to do LaBelle's outfits and Kiss's outfits and some of Bowie's suits and like she was just out there so far ahead of everybody else that I think she's just starting to have her work and her legacy understood in part because of people like Jamila Woods and Solange and folks who have revivified her work and said this is -- this is who came before me. This is someone who endowed me with some creative permission.
Ann: Right, they cite it. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, and that's just the very beginning. Like we can't just be like okay, well Solange has acknowledged this person so now they are -- no, no, no. Okay, and then we need some books and we need some deeper scholarship to fully put Betty Davis where her work belongs canonically. We need to crack that fucking nut open and put her in there and not just have it be here was the famous man that meant we had to pay attention to her.
(32:00)
Ann: Right. And yeah, it's why when I think about sometimes the stereotypical criticism that older generations of feminists have that younger feminists don't know their history or are not fully clued into what it's taken to get to where we are today, I'm like yeah, where are they going to -- what is the means by which we all learn? I mean yes, you can do your homework and know more about things that happened before you were born for sure. But I think that what we're talking about is really -- there's no starting from the place where others left off if there's no memory.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. One of the things that I came across in my Betty Davis research for example is that she felt really competitive towards LaBelle. LaBelle were blowing up and they were also wearing spacesuit kind of attire and, you know, feeling some maybe kind of squeezed out by the attention they were getting because their records were like really coming around right at the same time and their hits relative -- Betty Davis doesn't quite have hits, certainly not to the degree that LaBelle does.
And some of these things and looking -- even going, sort of zooming out on it and going well there were all these people that were saying there can only be one woman like this. There can only be one artist like this.
Ann: One sexy futurist like groundbreaking black woman, yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And it's going to be Patti LaBelle. Guys, all right, there can only be one. And it makes me also think immediately to, you know, the sort of manufactured idea of like we can only have Beyonc or Rihanna and one of them is the -- you know, sort of the peak and all the different ways, all the different mechanisms and things culturally, historically within music that have perpetuated these totally fucked up ideas that have then shaped women's careers and legacies and our understanding of them because there can only be one. And that's how it's been for fucking ever, you know? And how much that shapes our narrative sense of like who we're inheriting pop music from and all of that.
[Ads]
(37:19)
Ann: Could you talk a little bit about the podcast that you are hosting for KCRW this season and where it fits into all of this?
Jessica: Yes! So I am the host and producer, executive producer of season two of Lost Notes which is a podcast from KCRW that dives pretty deeply into music -- music's untold stories, that's the tagline. But sometimes it is . . . the pieces are stories we do know from music's history but told from a new perspective.
Ann: That still qualifies as untold in my mind. [Laughs]
Jessica: Yes, for sure. So this season as we started to field pitches and every episode is like a longer form reported piece or like a documentary so it's not just like two people chatting about an album or something, I think these pitches that we got were very much informed by what an impact #MeToo has had on music and how we're thinking about legacy and in particular great men and who's not in this story and why? And so there was a lot of pieces that were retrospective in that way. They were fascinating stories from great producers and, you know, writers like Hanif Abdurraqib did this great episode on cat power. For the nerd in me it was great but also it's like there's not a lot of . . .
Ann: Nerd in Me is my favorite Bob Dylan song. [Laughter]
Jessica: That I think there's a lot of stories that are going untold and unreported within music journalism, music media in particular, because where can you dig into -- like a big historic piece that's also kind of a report and that's also probably an essay and it doesn't have any peg to the news and maybe the person in the story's been dead for 15 years.
Ann: Or hasn't had a new album out in years and years, yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, or is just someone who is not -- you know, not going to heat up that SEO or whatever.
Ann: [Laughs]
Jessica: But these stories are still super important and also there's just so many music writers and journalists and producers who are like really a lot of people coming from really different backgrounds and perspectives and being able to bring so much of that into their reporting, it was just . . . I was super stoked. But there's also a lot of the episodes aren't just oh, we're digging back into history and it's this sort of clear-cut narrative of this man's a shitbag, let's cancel him, you know?
Ann: Mm-hmm.
(39:55)
Jessica: A lot of it is like I think the podcast form and a lot of the reporting that happens on this season and a lot of the women who do the reporting in particular really bring super nuanced perspectives to it and for me I'm just so . . . I'm just forever thirsty for more of that because that's how my brain works.
Ann: I feel like maybe -- please correct me if I have this wrong -- but I feel that if I were going to pick anyone who was equipped to be a guide through how to think about modern standards and politics and how do we expect people to comport themselves and apply that to art forms or things that are so venerated that they've wormed their way into all these corners of culture? It's not just like oh yeah, throw out your one album or get rid of that DVD and tear up the movie poster, you know?
Jessica: And then we're pure. We're karmically pure.
Ann: Right, exactly. A lot of your work really grapples with what's awful about things we love and what do we love about things that maybe are 95% awful? Or not to affix a percentage but, you know . . . because I think there's a positive aspect right? Of like oh, this person was really groundbreaking and so, you know, you have to understand it was a different time then and that's why they're so amazing. But sometimes it's like oh, it was a different time then and they are still fucking horrible for this thing that they did. And trying to parse some of that . . .
Jessica: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Ann: That wasn't a question. Now I'm rambling. [Laughs]
Jessica: No, more of a comment than a question. Joni Mitchell is kind of one of the people that's at the centerpiece of the book that I'm working on and Joni Mitchell in the '70s and beyond is at some points hugely problematic. She's truly a problematic fav, both an N-th degree of problematic and N-th degree of fav.
Ann: [Laughs]
(42:05)
Jessica: You know, that it was like she had some really deeply fucked up stuff that she did and, you know, sort of most famously or infamously is, you know, on her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter she appears in black face. And it's not just that she appears in black face on that and sort of sees herself as someone who can try on blackness and really considers herself someone who's been so marginalized as a beautiful white woman who lives in Bel Air that she has the soul of a black man. And she has some super fucked up ideas and does some totally fucked up things and doesn't just wear this -- doesn't just wear black face on the cover. She goes to parties in Hollywood and tries to pass and thinks it is a sign of how gloriously clever and convincing she is. And you just see these pictures and you're like Jesus fucking Christ Joni.
Ann: So that's why you didn't pick '78 or '79 for this book? [Laughter]
Jessica: I mean but there's parts of what she does kind of immediately after Hissing and just some different things there but also she was someone who was like in interviews years later says she doesn't identify with feminism because she wanted to be a homemaker and she felt most comfortable in the company of men and all these things where you're just like -- so as part of what I'm doing is saying okay, I believe she's making fun of mentally feminist work with Hissing of Summer Lawns because this is an album that describes women's social role and the sort of -- the toll that it had on them psychically that their only realm of power was their own beauty that they could transact on and to be a powerful man's wife, to live in the shadow of a man and whatever he could kind of get.
(44:05)
Ann: Right. Ideas so entrenched and powerful that they are very much still around.
Jessica: Yes, but at the time that was absolutely the huge concern of second wave feminism, particularly right around like, you know, '75 and, you know, the sort of -- the ERA not being ratified and a lot of landmark legislation passes at the dawn of the '70s but the really big one about universal childcare and the things that were really starting -- that could've potentially shaped women's lives in an even more major way are failing and women are still having to encounter so much resistance lots of times at home for these big ideas.
So she makes a whole fucking concept record about this at the height of her power. You know, the last track on this record is literally 300 tracks of her voice that she, you know, self produces and she's using some of the greatest musicians in the world. Something that you can go okay, this is feminist work whether she wants it or not.
Ann: [Laughs] Whether we love her whole body of work or not, this moment, yeah.
Jessica: This moment and kind of going but what does it also mean when she's really problematic and insisting that she found out about what feminism was when Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson asked her if she was one. It's like yeah, they're not exactly feminist second wave evangelical, you know, carrying the good news. That's . . .
Ann: Right, I'm sure it wasn't the consciousness raising where that question was posed.
Jessica: No, because also it was like at the time -- she's out to dinner with them and at the time they have a bet about which one of them can fuck her first. It's like yeah, I'm sure they super cared about your feminism. You know, this record is so meaningful to me and the content of this record and also Joni doing all of these things but also she had some terrible fucking ideas about the world and humanity of the people in it and complete blindness to what her whiteness and her wealth entitled her to and how she used and utilized that power personally and professionally.
(46:10)
And so while I -- that's all in there. It's all in there because I can't just be like oh, and here's this beautiful thing she did and I'm just going to cut it off right at this point before I have to fucking interrogate her racism which is deeply inconvenient to this but that is . . . to me that is the you can't just be blinders on. To me that's not what to love something is is to not see it and whether I'm writing about the city of Chicago which, you know, at times has felt like such a gift to have this city that I love that seems to love me back but there's other people in the city who have really different experiences and their humanity is crushed by this city and that they don't have, you know, they can't safely move through the city the same way I did on my bike as a 28-year-old which is a lot of what my most recent book is about. And I feel like music is sort of the same way, like I can't leave the things I love uninterrogated just for the sake of my convenience.
Ann: Yeah, convenience.
Jessica: Yeah.
Ann: Yeah, right. I mean and I think that's actually a very nice articulation of how I really feel when people are like "Cancel culture is bad." You know, I often think people say that because they want to get away with bad behavior, not because they actually want to have a complicated conversation that includes the good and the bad and everything between.
(47:45)
Jessica: And also where you find yourself within that, you know?
Ann: Right.
Jessica: Your own negligence or your own ignorance or your own cosigning of terrible men. [Laughs]
Ann: Right, the fucked up things that help you hold on to power.
Jessica: Yeah.
Ann: And I mean that in every possible sense. You already talked a little about your supportive husband who sounds wonderful but what about your friends? Who are the people in your life -- maybe just pick one who you want to shout out as really, I don't know, as really being there for you in maybe some recent and specific way?
(48:30)
Jessica: I would have to shout out one of my long-distance besties Nore Bronk who you can go take yoga from her if you're in LA who has always been a wild and phenomenal presence in my life the last like 14 years. And we met because she was dating my roommate and the first time I hung out with her I remember she was wearing cut off control top pantyhose as part of her outfit like on the outside.
Ann: Amazing.
Jessica: She was a big proponent for a while for wearing her underwear outside of her clothes. She's like an incredible person and part of the reason I love to come to LA is to be with her. But that she's someone who has called me on my bullshit when necessary and also just someone who when I need that like -- that fuck those people support, you know, when you feel done wrong she's the person that I call but she's also someone who the last time I was here in LA and we had a nice nighttime hang by the fire pit of my curious Airbnb with the outdoor fire pit, she was like "You know, you've basically had this exact same complaint for ten years. Maybe you should just -- this is just how it is dude. Kind of just get over it." And I was like thank you. Thank you for putting these things in perspective.
(50:00)
Ann: The ten year perspective.
Jessica: Yeah, it's great.
Ann: Okay, favorite snacks?
Jessica: Right now big fan of the Trader Joes peanut butter pretzel -- they're like capsules.
Ann: Yep, I know exactly what you mean.
Jessica: It makes the inside of my mouth feel like cardboard. Don't fucking care, whole bag.
Ann: [Laughs] It is really so good.
Jessica: So salty and delicious, so industrial seeming . . . [Laughs]
Ann: It's like human dog food kind of. [Laughs]
Jessica: Yes, yes. And it's also a treat I can give to my dog.
Ann: Amazing. And finally where can people find you and your work in the digital space?
Jessica: I'm on Twitter. God, ugh, why?
Ann: Why?
Jessica: Why? Don't know. I am on Instagram. I am kind of boring on Instagram but I think the good way to find me is I have an occasional newsletter. I would like to have more spaces that are mediated by like a grim surveillance capitalism giant.
Ann: Algorithm too, yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah. And so I'm trying to sort of list towards tiny newsletter.
Ann: Yeah. And can they find that on your website?
Jessica: You can go to my website and it is also linked through my Twitter, though I just don't advise -- just do not be on Twitter.
Ann: Is your website jessicahopper.com?
Jessica: It is jessicahopper.org.
Ann: Dot org.
Jessica: Jessicahopper.com is the Jessica Hopper that -- she's like a dance instructor. She's also in Playboy and she also made a cameo in the Red Shoe Diaries.
Ann: Not you. [Laughs]
Jessica: Not me, different life.
(51:44)
Ann: Okay, dot org.
Ann: Jessicahopper.org for all your digital Jessica Hopper needs.
Ann: Amazing, amazing.
Jessica: And my books are out in the world and are pretty easy to find.
Ann: Ugh, going immediately to the music section to look for you and get excited. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Jessica: Oh my gosh, as a longtime listener to the pod this delights me to no end.
[Interview Ends]
(52:08)
Aminatou: We do not talk about music on this show.
Ann: I know. Really speaking with her made me realize that too, of like this is an area where we really need to improve and interview some people working in music, people whose mode of expression is music. As you pointed out earlier ever since we realized we had to pay to license song content we've featured less music. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, as the holder -- as the person who handles that process please never mention songs on this show. [Laughs]
Ann: There is like a fair use clip length or whatever but yeah, I agree.
Aminatou: I'm not risking it. Not risking it.
Ann: Dangerous territory.
Aminatou: [Laughs] You know, more women talking about all sorts of things.
Ann: Yes. Okay, well I'll see you on the Internet. I'll hear you on the Internet. Something like that.
Aminatou: Listen, Ann, I might even see you at the beach. I hear you're turning a book in soon.
Ann: Oh my god, stop. [Laughs]
Aminatou: How's the writing going?
Ann: This is not even a joke that this is like my book alone. I feel deeply attacked. [Laughs]
Aminatou: [Laughs] You can find us so many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.