Welcome Guide 2014 BA (Hons) Music Journalism 2 Contents www.ucreative.ac.uk A welcome from your Course Team 3 Admin contact 4 Pre-arrival 5 Reading list 5 Films 10 Course costs 17 Student checklist 18 Front cover image of Ben Howard by Braden Fletcher. This page: Muse by Braden Fletcher 3 from your Course Team www.ucreative.ac.uk Dear Student, Welcome to BA (Hons) Music Journalism. In this Wishing you all the best for the summer break and pack you will find all the information you need to looking forward to welcoming you in September. help you settle in to your studies at UCA Epsom Best regards this September. Your course team You are joining a course which will provide you with the skills and knowledge to find employment in all areas of the music and lifestyle media. As a Music Journalism student, you will benefit from numerous facilities, including two dedicated studios with Macs and colour and black and white printing facilities, a photographic studio, and a media store containing video cameras, stills cameras and laptops which you can borrow. In your first year you will be given an introduction to music journalism, explore media analysis, cover music history, learn about visual and popular culture since 1900, practice online writing and interviewing, and become familiar with broadcast media. 4 Admin contact www.ucreative.ac.uk If you have any queries please contact: Jackie Forrest Campus Registry Email: [email protected] Tel: 01372 202460 An answer phone service is available on the above line for any out of hour’s enquiries. 5 Pre-arrival www.ucreative.ac.uk Reading List The lists below are books and films that will be • Bangs, Lester (2003), Mainlines, Blood Feasts useful to you throughout your degree and will help and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, London: you gain essential critical and cultural awareness Serpent’s Tail needed for this course. It will be useful if you have This tome compiles 54 of his pieces, including read and seen a few of the items from the lists several that are previously unpublished. It contains before enrolment, and to continue to engage with excerpts from autobiographical work Bangs wrote these books, films and places throughout your as a teenager, as well as cultural rants and rages. studies at UCA. • Cohn, Nik (2004), Awopbopaloobop Music-specific writing Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning, • Bangs, Lester (2001), Psychotic Reactions and London: Pimlico Carburettor Dung (Five Star), London: Serpent’s From Bill Haley to Jimi Hendrix, Cohn’s book is a Tail cogent yet unruly history of the era and the first to Before his death aged 33 in 1982, Lester Bangs really celebrate the language of rock’n’roll. wrote wired, passionate pieces on Barry White, Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon and Lou Reed. ‘What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews’, wrote the book’s editor Greil Marcus. 6 Reading list www.ucreative.ac.uk • DeRogatis, Jim (2000), Let it Blurt: The Life and • Kent, Nick (2007), The Dark Stuff: Selected Times of Lester..., London: Bloomsbury Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993, London: Faber and Faber Infamous rock critic Lester Bangs, when he sat still long enough, thumped out 16 crackling pages ‘The Dark Stuff is a mighty tome, containing some an hour for the likes of Rolling Stone and Creem. of the best music journalism ever written,’ The His prose was distinctively streetwise, indulgent, Spectator. corrosive and humane, the result of seeing • Kent, Nick (2010), Apathy for the Devil, London: rock’n’roll as an attitude rather than a style. Faber and Faber • Des Barres, Pamela (2005), I’m with the Band: `Not just a biography but a thriller; a high-octane Confessions of a Groupie, London: Helter Skelter chase through a decade’s musical history.’ (NME) The title says it all – memoirs of a hippy groupie • Ogg, Alex (2006), No More Heroes: A Complete who hung out with everyone from Jim Morrison History of UK Punk from 1976 to 1980, London: to Jimmy Page. Faintly trashy but enlightening Cherry Red Records look backstage in the 1960s and 70s. This exhaustive book, based on over 200 • Faithfull, Marianne and David Dalton (1995), interviews with the participants, chronicles not Faithfull, London: Penguin only the good and the great, the icons of the Biography of a 60s icon written with bald honesty punk movement, but also celebrates some of the and a dark sense of humour. fantastic lost bands and music of the era, as well as the cash-ins and artistic failures. 7 Reading list www.ucreative.ac.uk • Stein, Jean (2000), Edie: American Girl, New York: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The life and death of Warhol’s Factory muse. • Smith, Patti (2011), Just Kids, London: Bloomsbury An evocative and atmospheric look back at the singer/poet’s early life and times and her pursuit of art and freedom. • Sugerman, Danny (1991), Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess, London: Abacus At the age of 13, Danny Sugerman went to his first Doors concert. He never looked back. Still in his teens he became manager of the Doors and then Iggy Pop. He also plunged gleefully into the underworld of the rock’n’roll scene, diving headfirst into booze, sex and drugs – in every possible permutation. • Woronov, Mary (2008), Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory, London: Serpent’s Tail Sam Price 8 Reading list www.ucreative.ac.uk Seminal books you also should have read 1920s... 1940s... • Ulysses by James Joyce (1918-20) • Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1948) The first ever truly modern novel. A tour de force 1950s... of literary, philosophical and poetic genius. All set • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955) on one day in Dublin. • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) Fleeing his Pennsylvania prep school, Holden A slice of life among the flappers, bright young Caulfield holes up in New York City and rails things and socialites of the 1920s, The Great against adult phoniness while trying to lose his Gatsby is a literary classic, and now a flashy Baz innocence. Lurhmann film.. • On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1951) 1930s... An iconic car journey of abandonment and • Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (1937) hedonism across America, charting the ups • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931) and downs of Kerouac and Cassady. The book that launched the Beat Generation and 1960s A brilliantly written satire of the future in which counterculture. society is made to be a machine. A grim and unforgettable read. • Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes (1958) • The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (1959) 9 Reading list www.ucreative.ac.uk 1960s... 1980s... • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) This black • The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe comedy about World War II Army Air Corps (1987) aviators attempting to survive the absurdities 1980s excess goes into overdrive. of military bureaucracy has become a part of the American collective consciousness. • American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) • Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973) The seminal 1980s excess goes serial killer. 1960s female emancipation book. 1990s/2000s... 1970s... • No More Mr Nice Guy by Keith Altham (1999) • Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S Epsom boy and music PR veteran and journalist Thompson (1971) going back to the early 60s exposes what the • The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970) rock stars of yesteryear and today are really like to work with. Genius. • The White Album by Joan Didion (1979) Collected essays on the 60s. 10 Films www.ucreative.ac.uk Films to watch… • 24 Hour Party People (2002) • Almost Famous (2000) British film about Manchester’s popular music American comedy-drama film written and directed community from 1976 to 1992, and specifically by Cameron Crowe and telling the fictional story about Factory Records. of a teenage journalist writing for Rolling Stone magazine while covering the rock band Stillwater, • 8 Mile (2002) and his efforts to get his first cover story American hip-hop drama film, directed by Curtis published. The film is semi autobiographical, as Hanson and starring Eminem, Kim Basinger, Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Brittany Murphy, and Mekhi Phifer. The film is Stone. an account of a young rapper, thought to portray • Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) Eminem, growing up in poverty-stricken Detroit. Although the movie stars Eminem he says the Canadian heavy metal band trying to make a movie is not a full portrayal of his early life and comeback – not much luck – but loads of heart! start of his rap career. As such, the film is set in • The Blues Brothers (1980) the underground Detroit hip-hop scene in 1995. The Dan Akroyd / John Belushi classic that needs • Access All Areas: A Rock & Roll Odyssey (1990) no introduction. A documentary following rock band Bon Jovi • Blow Up (1966) on their successful New Jersey Syndicate Tour between 1988 and 1990. It contains live, Definitive look at swinging sixties as fashion backstage, and candid footage of the band, photographer gets caught up in murder mystery. soundtracked with their music. 11 Films www.ucreative.ac.uk • Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980) • The Doors (1991) American biographical film which tells the story of Biopic about the 1960s-1970s rock band of the country music performer Loretta Lynn. same name which emphasizes the life of its lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was directed by Oliver • The Commitments (1987) Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison.