E28 Band People with Franz Nicolay 

This episode is a recording of a seminar held at the University of Essex with Franz Nicolay on his book Band People. In it Franz Nicolay explores the working and creative lives of musicians. In it, he argues that to talk about the role of a ‘band person’ is not only to talk about art and craft but also to develop a critique of the value placed on fame and a celebrity culture that requires the singling out of individuals from a collaborative enterprise.

Band People foregrounds the political dynamics of cultural labour and the precarity that the working lives of musicians share with a growing segment of the larger economy. It sets out to uncover the wide pyramid of talent and effort that supports the work of making music. The book provides insights into how, in the creative sector, social groups organize themselves, into how musicians navigate aspects of their work such as anonymity and agency, and how the industry creates taxonomies of specialists and stylists, generalists and chameleons, hired guns and band members, road dogs and punch-clock session players, the fan favorite and so on. It asks, who are ‘band people’, the character actors of popular music? 

Seminar introduced & chaired by Melissa Tyler 

Bios: Franz Nicolay is a writer, musician, and faculty member in music and written arts at Bard College. In addition to records under his own name, he has been a member of World/Inferno Friendship Society and the Hold Steady. He is the author of The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar and the novel Someone Should Pay for Your Pain.

For more information on the book: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477323533/

The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with Firefly Frequencies: https://fireflyfrequencies.org 

Apologies for variable audio quality in the recording.