Jennifer Katherine Otter Bickerdike
BIMM Institute, Music, Faculty Member
- University of California, Davis, American Studies, UndergraduateFalmouth University, Cultural Management and Production, Faculty Member, and 2 moreadd
- Popular Culture, Popular Music, Popular Music Studies, Dark Tourism, The Sacred In Popular Music, Youth Subcultures, and 24 moreHip Hop Culture, Femininity And Hip Hop, American History, African American Women and mentoring, Black Feminisms, African Diaspora, Cultural Memory, Space+place, Cultural History, Popular Music and Culture, 20th Century British Literature, Modernism and Postmodernism As Literary Styles, Philip Larkin, Morrissey, Raymond Williams, Fan Cultures, Post-punk, Youth Culture, Subcultures, Death, Death Studies, Post Punk, Joy Division, and Ian Curtis and Joy Divisionedit
- Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike is a media and music academic, specializing in fan culture, the cult of dead celebrity,... moreDr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike is a media and music academic, specializing in fan culture, the cult of dead celebrity, pop culture and music. She has written and presented extensively on fandom and media, using her experience as a former American music industry and Silicon Valley executive to explore a range of societal issues and behaviors. Her newest book, Why Vinyl Matters, is out September 1st, and features over 25 interviews with fans of the format, including Henry Rollins, Tim Burgess and Nick Hornby. A recovering Anglophile herself, Jen has released several books about fan culture, including 2014’s Fandom, Image and Authenticity: Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis (Palgrave MacMillan); 2015’s The Secular Religion of Fandom (Sage); and the 2016 release Joy Devotion: The Importance of Ian Curtis and Fan Culture. Jen was also featured as an expert and pop culture commentator, most recently for TruTV, The Guardian, Camp Bestival, BBC Radio 4, BBC Music Radio 6, in the 2014 Channel 4 Christmas Day documentary Frozen at Christmas, as well as on Absolute Radio’s 2013 30 Years of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.
Jennifer is asked to speak regularly at conferences and public lectures around the world on various aspects of music and media, from symposiums on branding and promotion to talks on the cultural history of the 27 Club. She has spoken at a range of institutions including Camp Bestival, Google, Goldsmiths University of London, the Annual Association of Event Management Education, Experience Music Project Seattle, San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, XOYO and the BBC, on areas as diverse as the rise of celebrity culture, the tragic gothic heroine, and dark tourism.
Originally from California, Jen spent time at a variety of record companies, including Sony Music, MCA Records and Universal Music and Video Distribution before becoming the West Coast Marketing Director for Interscope Geffen A&M Records at 25. She toured with and devised marketing and branding campaigns for major international acts including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Dr. Dre, Gwen Stefani, U2 and Eminem, before leaving to start her own consulting company, working with a wide array of creative industry and technology tastemakers, such as Facebook, Music for America, Adeline Records and L.A.M.B. After friend Hunter McPherson was murdered in San Francisco, Jennifer decided to quit her job, sell everything she owned and roll the dice on fulfilling a life long dream of living in England. Her story of transformation was picked from thousands and featured in New York Times best-selling author Marlo Thomas’s book, It Ain’t Over ‘Till Its Over.
Jen is currently the Course Leader for Music Journalism at BIMM London. In 2013, she won the coveted Student Led Teaching award for Most Innovative Lecturer and was short listed for the same accolade on a national level by the Times Higher Education. Jen is currently working on a project about the icon Nico, and the re-emergence of yacht rock in the 21st century.edit
Why Vinyl Matters is part history, part future forecasting, part nostalgia and all celebration. A collection of more than 25 interviews, all illustrated with photos, sidebars, quotes, album covers, outtakes and much more. This is the book... more
Why Vinyl Matters is part history, part future forecasting, part nostalgia and all celebration. A collection of more than 25 interviews, all illustrated with photos, sidebars, quotes, album covers, outtakes and much more. This is the book for anyone who has ever gone to the store and bought music on vinyl.
Includes interviews with: Fat Boy Slim; Tim Burgess (Charlatans); Henry Rollins (musician, actor, writer, comedian); Gaz Coombes (Supergrass); Lars Ulrich (Metallica); Maxi Jazz (Faithless); Rob da Bank (DJ and founder of Bestival); Clint Boone (Inspiral Carpets); Mike Ness (Social Distortion); Chief Xcel (Blackalicious); Cut Chemist (Jurassic 5); Fab 5 Freddy (hip hop pioneer, visual artist); Fat Mike (NOFX); Julia Ruzicka (Future of the Left); Steve Hackett (Genesis); Nick Hornby.
Includes interviews with: Fat Boy Slim; Tim Burgess (Charlatans); Henry Rollins (musician, actor, writer, comedian); Gaz Coombes (Supergrass); Lars Ulrich (Metallica); Maxi Jazz (Faithless); Rob da Bank (DJ and founder of Bestival); Clint Boone (Inspiral Carpets); Mike Ness (Social Distortion); Chief Xcel (Blackalicious); Cut Chemist (Jurassic 5); Fab 5 Freddy (hip hop pioneer, visual artist); Fat Mike (NOFX); Julia Ruzicka (Future of the Left); Steve Hackett (Genesis); Nick Hornby.
Research Interests: Vinyl records and Vinyl
A longstanding, successful and frequently controversial career spanning more than four decades establishes David Bowie as charged with contemporary cultural relevance. That David Bowie has influenced many lives is undeniable to his fans.... more
A longstanding, successful and frequently controversial career spanning more than four decades establishes David Bowie as charged with contemporary cultural relevance. That David Bowie has influenced many lives is undeniable to his fans. He requisitions and challenges his audiences, through frequently indirect lyrics and images, to critically question sanity, identity and essentially what it means to be 'us' and why we are here. Enchanting David Bowie explores David Bowie as an anti-temporal figure and argues that we need to understand him across the many media platforms and art spaces he intersects with including theatre, film, television, the web, exhibition, installation, music, lyrics, video, and fashion. This exciting collection is organized according to the key themes of space, time, body, and memory - themes that literally and metaphorically address the key questions and intensities of his output.
Rising from the ashes of punk The Smiths proved you could protest with musicianship as well as just raw passion. Their third album The Queen Is Dead is widely cited by critics as The Smiths’ best studio album. Released in a Thatcherite... more
Rising from the ashes of punk The Smiths proved you could protest with musicianship as well as just raw passion. Their third album The Queen Is Dead is widely cited by critics as The Smiths’ best studio album. Released in a Thatcherite Britain in the midst of privatisation and the miners strike The Queen is Dead provided a raucous voice of opposition with the monarchy, the government and even record label boss Geoff Travis all feeling Morrissey’s wrath via the flawless pop brilliance of The Smiths.
The Queen is Dead was The Smiths at the peak of their power and provided a huge catalyst for the Britpop movement of the 90’s. Noel Gallagher would later comment that although he loved The Beatles, The Smiths were his band.
The Queen is Dead was The Smiths at the peak of their power and provided a huge catalyst for the Britpop movement of the 90’s. Noel Gallagher would later comment that although he loved The Beatles, The Smiths were his band.
April 21 was a dark day- for the music business, for creativity and, most visibly for the millions of people around the world who had been affected by the work of Prince Rogers Nelson. Coupled with the equally shocking passing of David... more
April 21 was a dark day- for the music business, for creativity and, most visibly for the millions of people around the world who had been affected by the work of Prince Rogers Nelson. Coupled with the equally shocking passing of David Bowie earlier in the year, public grieving and shock dominated the media. Why does losing both of these greats, specifically Prince, hurt so badly? Dr Jennifer Otter Bickerdike explores the role of pop icon in our lives, and how their deaths impact our own identity and mortality.
Hosted by Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike – a media and music academic specialising in fan culture, the cult of dead celebrity, pop culture and music. Originally from California, Jen spent time at a variety of record companies, including... more
Hosted by Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike – a media and music academic specialising in fan culture, the cult of dead celebrity, pop culture and music. Originally from California, Jen spent time at a variety of record companies, including Sony Music, MCA Records and Universal Music and Video Distribution before becoming the West Coast Marketing Director for Interscope Geffen A&M Records at 25. Jen has toured with and devised marketing and branding campaigns for major international acts including Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Dr. Dre, Gwen Stefani, U2 and Eminem. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Production at Falmouth University and her latest book, The Importance of Ian Curtis and Fan Culture will be published in July 2016. In this talk, Jen will explore the role of pop icon in our lives, and how their deaths impact our own identity and mortality.
An exploration into our relationship with the mortality of ourselves and the celebrities we worship.
Like It Never Happened: Faux Nostalgia and the Branding of Joy Division Though existing as an active band for less than four years, Joy Division are arguably one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Yet much of the cache... more
Like It Never Happened: Faux Nostalgia and the Branding of Joy Division
Though existing as an active band for less than four years, Joy Division are arguably one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Yet much of the cache of Joy Division has been built upon a handful of carefully posed, mostly black and white images and two albums. These are hailed as modern masterpieces-standing for a set of values, ones that have been arguably imposed and projected onto the group via the vehicles of social media and the vacuum left by Curtis’s untimely demise. Like It Never Happened: Faux Nostalgia and the Branding of Joy Division examines not who Joy Division were, but what they have become within the 2.0 economy, contrasting the often romanticized and accepted attributes of the group within the current marketplace.
The key elements of what is now considered ‘Joy Division,’ I will argue, have been transformed by mass production and replication, often stripped of the very ethos which have been posthumously splayed upon them, making the former symbols of outsider and maligned now little more than fashion statement and hipster posing. This idea is substantiated by the now inescapable Joy Division goods in stores such as Urban Outfitters and even the most manufactured of bands, One Direction, having numerous snaps circulated with members clad in ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ tops.
Is this new fascination with Joy Division and post-punk authentic, or just an illustration of cultural branded demise? Or is Joy Division just one of a lexicon of icons who have been only fulfilled their potential- socially, artistically and financially- in a post-economy?
Though existing as an active band for less than four years, Joy Division are arguably one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Yet much of the cache of Joy Division has been built upon a handful of carefully posed, mostly black and white images and two albums. These are hailed as modern masterpieces-standing for a set of values, ones that have been arguably imposed and projected onto the group via the vehicles of social media and the vacuum left by Curtis’s untimely demise. Like It Never Happened: Faux Nostalgia and the Branding of Joy Division examines not who Joy Division were, but what they have become within the 2.0 economy, contrasting the often romanticized and accepted attributes of the group within the current marketplace.
The key elements of what is now considered ‘Joy Division,’ I will argue, have been transformed by mass production and replication, often stripped of the very ethos which have been posthumously splayed upon them, making the former symbols of outsider and maligned now little more than fashion statement and hipster posing. This idea is substantiated by the now inescapable Joy Division goods in stores such as Urban Outfitters and even the most manufactured of bands, One Direction, having numerous snaps circulated with members clad in ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ tops.
Is this new fascination with Joy Division and post-punk authentic, or just an illustration of cultural branded demise? Or is Joy Division just one of a lexicon of icons who have been only fulfilled their potential- socially, artistically and financially- in a post-economy?
Research Interests:
From an expert in Fandom, learn the five ‘commandments’ behind acquiring and retaining fans. Through a combination of tapping into an attendee’s personal identity and identifying a market gap, you can create a sustainable event with... more
From an expert in Fandom, learn the five ‘commandments’ behind acquiring and retaining fans. Through a combination of tapping into an attendee’s personal identity and identifying a market gap, you can create a sustainable event with invested participants that will become your dedicated fans!
Research Interests:
Smooth, well-produced, meticulously written: soft rock had a bad reputation in the DIY 80s and 90s. But today it has renewed relevance. An aficionado explains
Research Interests:
To be shot and aired for major British TV channel in 2015/16, this six part show which Otter Bickerdike presents and produces examines a range of fan communities around the world.
Documentary airing on Channel 4 Christmas Day 2015 at 5pm about the fans and phenomena of the Disney film
Cultural commentator Paul Gilroy (http://bit.ly/1puw0fU) will play and discuss a selection of recordings on the legendary audiophile sound system at Brilliant Corners, thinking about ways of making sense of the present and past of... more
Cultural commentator Paul Gilroy (http://bit.ly/1puw0fU) will play and discuss a selection of recordings on the legendary audiophile sound system at Brilliant Corners, thinking about ways of making sense of the present and past of recorded music, and the relationship of musical experimentation to political radicalism and utopianism. Respondent: Jennifer Otter (UEL). Chair: Jeremy Gilbert.
Music courtesy of the Sarava! crew, and normal restaurant service, will continue into the evening.
Free, all welcome, no need to book
Presented by the Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London
Music courtesy of the Sarava! crew, and normal restaurant service, will continue into the evening.
Free, all welcome, no need to book
Presented by the Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London