Working for @Latenightjimmy
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Alyxandra Vesey Working for @LateNightJimmy Abstract This article analyzes Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’s musical performances and booking practices to claim it as a site of recording industry and intermediary labor. These traditions exist within the late-night talk format, a holdover from broadcast-era television programming that was indebted to radio’s industrial model. Late Night represents the format’s relationship to music alongside paradigm shifts in recording industry labor practices. It also demonstrates late-night talk and the recording industry’s efforts to utilize social media. To better understand the evolution of these intermedial industrial practices and their historical underpinnings, I evaluate the labor relations between musicians, bandleaders, and booking agents. I do this to show how Late Night broke emerging recording artists who used edgy aesthetics and networking savvy to negotiate questions of identity and representation. To do so, I engage in textual analysis of the show’s musical performances and Twitter presence. I employ this method alongside discourse analysis of press coverage to argue that Late Night serves as a productive space for recording artists and intermediaries’ negotiation between broadcast network television and social media’s labor paradigms. I first analyze Roots’ drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s work in shaping the show’s musical identity as its bandleader and music director alongside music booker Jonathan Cohen. I then evaluate network-debut performances from Odd Future collective members’ Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean, the latter following a much-discussed Tumblr post about his affair with another man and his ambiguous queer status. On November 21, 2011, Representative Michele whole life: making strange musical connections, Bachmann appeared on NBC’s Late Night reveling in the way that something obscure can with Jimmy Fallon. The congresswoman was a illuminate something obvious.”2 Republican candidate during the 2012 presidential Thompson’s use of the walkover as political election who held controversial positions on same- critique was not without consequence: sex marriage, the Iraq War, and health care reform. I set out on a mission to find the best Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Late Night’s musical song about politics and evasion and un- director and drummer for its house band, the Roots, truth. I considered “Lies” [by En Vogue seized upon Bachmann’s walkover, which refers to guests’ stroll from backstage, as their opportunity or McFly] but we don’t generally sing for protest. any lyrics [to avoid paying synchroniza- Some house bands perform instrumentals that tion fees], so I ended up picking Fish- reference guests’ personae and projects. Bandleader bone’s “Lyin’ Ass Bitch,” a ska number Paul Schaffer helped popularize the approach by from their 1985 debut […]. Then, the arranging instrumentals for guests during his tenure next day, satisfaction and smugness on Late Night with its first host, David Letterman. turned to ego. I was sitting around at As a musician, Thompson took pride in using his home thinking that I had done some- encyclopedic knowledge and skill to make “the thing historical, something political. I Fallon walk-ons to be classics of the genre, the talk- had struck a blow for truth. I wanted show equivalent of video game Easter eggs.”1 When credit. When you want credit for some- Salma Hayek appeared on the show in 2010, the thing and you don’t want to operate via Roots learned the theme to Theresa, a Mexican soap traditional channels, where do you go? opera the actress appeared in earlier in her career. In this day and age, you go to Twitter. Such attention indicates Thompson’s contributions That’s where I went. Someone tweeted and his identification with the walkover as “the me a question: “Was that ‘Lyin’ Ass culmination of everything I’ve cared about my Bitch’?” I answered like someone in Performing Labor in the Media Industries 47 Kate Fortmueller, editor, Spectator 35:2 (Fall 2015): 47-56. WORKING FOR @LATENIGHTJIMMY the grip of ego, which is exactly what broadcast network television and its various stream- it was: “Sho’ nuf.” […] We had a meet- ing ventures. ing in Jimmy’s office, Team Fallon and I, and they told me that things were Setting the Stage looking bleak, but that we would try to ride it out. Jimmy made a formal apol- To better understand Late Night as a site for industrial ogy to Bachmann on Twitter, which put labor, I will situate my analysis within scholarship me squarely in the crosshairs […] That on live musical performance, intermediaries, and Tuesday night there was a Republican professionals’ engagement with social media. On debate, and Bachmann went out and television, musicians perform in theatrical spaces made a blunder. She was a member of that resemble concert venues, which are often the House Intelligence Committee, and perceived as more “authentic” musical experiences. she said that six of Pakistan’s fifteen Jane Feuer and Nick Couldry observe television’s nuclear sites had come under jihadist at- deeply constructed nature, which John Caldwell 4 tack […] They claimed that she had dis- describes as television’s “myth of liveness.” Musical closed classified information. Her staff performances offer the promise of liveness to late- had to get busy putting out that fire, fast. night talk in ways that complement segments like Plus, it was the week of Thanksgiving, the opening monologue, interviews, sketches, and which disrupted the normal news cycle. stand-up routines. But musicians’ work is heavily We were saved by the skin of our teeth.3 regulated. For example, in an article on CBS and NBC’s collective efforts to target alternative rock The implicit misogyny of the Roots’ selection through its late-night programs’ booking decisions, notwithstanding, this walkover illustrates late-night journalist Wes Orshoski offers a useful itinerary for talk shows’ mediation of liveness, its coordination the band Clem Snide, who were at the time signed between television and recording industry profes- to New York-based independent label spinART sionals, and its entanglement with political com- and performed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien mentary. Thus, this article explores Late Night with on January 4, 2002. The group completed a line Jimmy Fallon as a site for live musical performance check—a process where individual members of an by analyzing these moments within the context of ensemble perform his or her part of a composition the show’s booking practices. These industrial tra- so that sound technicians can confirm that all of the ditions exist within the late-night talk format, a equipment works—as well as a sound check where holdover from broadcast-era television program- they ran through the song three times as a group, a ming decisions that evolved from radio broadcast- listening session of the mix, and a trip to the payroll ing and vaudeville theater. Yet at the same time, department. Nearly eight-and-a-half-hours later, Late Night demonstrates late-night talk’s efforts the band taped their performance before a studio to contemporize the format through engagements audience.5 Yet such work must seem spontaneous with social media. To better understand the evolu- to both the studio and imagined home audiences. tion of these industrial practices, I evaluate the re- Keith Negus notes difficulties in representing live lationships between musicians and intermediaries music on television, as producers navigate various like booking agents. By analyzing Late Night with editing decisions when framing a song’s formal Jimmy Fallon’s musical performances and booking elements and performance.6 As a result, Philip practices, I claim the show as a site of negotiated Auslander claims that “the home audience does not media labor. Using textual and discourse analysis see the same performance as the studio audience, of the program’s performances, social media usage, but sees a performance that never took place.”7 and trade coverage, I analyze Thompson’s work with Richard Peterson, Murray Forman, and Kyle music booker Jonathan Cohen and R&B singer Barnett claim that early broadcast programming Frank Ocean’s network-debut performance to show relied heavily on musicians in country, jazz, and rock how the program balanced the booking of emerg- ‘n’ roll, in part because of television’s shared legacy ing musical acts and mediating their “liveness” for with radio.8 Forman observes that its negotiated 48 FALL 2015 VESEY representations of liveness resulted from camera primacy in representing and promoting musical operators and editors inventing a visual grammar artists, late-night booking practices are still for performances distinct from radio. Musicians bound up in traditional (and contemporized) also had to develop telegenic performance styles placement and sales metrics, like Billboard, College by unlearning “bad habits” like nervous tics, blank Music Journal, and other recording industry stares, or crude gestures that were unnoticeable charts, which include—among other factors—the to a concert audience but could be detected on measurement of songs’ radio airplay. The influence camera.”9 In addition, Barnett observes that of U.S. college radio—particularly its programming recording industry professionals like talent scouts decisions and the ascendance of particular bands were crucial in discovering musical talent and that individual stations and their surrounding acquiring them contracts, as well as concert and scenes chose to champion16—would become radio broadcast appearances. Such reliance upon particularly important to the cultivation of Late intermediaries bridging multiple industries informs Night’s booking decisions and musical identity. In the significance of booking agents, who help shape the wake of a series of deregulatory practices and late-night talk show’s musicality by serving as a policies which culminated in the passage of the gatekeeper for recording industry professionals, 1996 Telecommunications Acts, radio’s influence accommodating broadcast network mandates, and did not necessarily disappear; however, in the two attracting potential consumers to products from decades since its passage, a number of individual both industries.