Daniel Boone Regional Library: How did you get involved in creating this book? It’s part of the 33 ⅓ series, which are short books about popular music albums. Are there other books from that series that inspired you?
Donna Kozloskie: 33 ⅓ has an open call process for proposals which I saw posted online. I sat down, thought about what album I feel is its own microcosm, wrote the first chapter about “Moon Pix,” and sent that in. I was seriously shocked when I got an acceptance, it was late Feb 2020/pandemic-eve so the whole thing was pretty surreal!
I looked at some of the other books in the series (the library has a few of them!) but I didn’t want to be derivative so I tried not to think about them too much! When doing research I came across Megan Milks’ incredible “Tori Amos Bootleg Webring,” which is part of a series on internet culture called Remember the Internet, and it really inspired me — it felt personal but also like a document of a similar era in music and digital connection. It made me really think about how people define and explore their identity through cultural narratives and the web. I felt connected to Milks’ insights and approach — highly recommend this book!
DBRL: This would have been an easy album to over-analyze and pick apart, but I was surprised that you were able to approach it in unusual ways that not only kept the mysteries of the album intact, but also added to its mythic allure. How did you develop your approach to this book?
Kozloskie: I don’t think it is possible to read about something and leave with, “Got it! I know everything there is to know about this thing now!” I struggled a bit with how to deal with that reductive tendency, especially in music journalism where some super-fans are very keen to know exactly what amp was used on what song. The time period also made information scarce and contradictory — the Internet Archive had three versions of the same Pitchfork review of the album! This led me to the question: How do you make a rock legend? And my answer was through stories.
Narratives seem like fully formed ideas but are actually always responding to other things (medium, time period, audience, etc.). This idea of having many perspectives inform a history felt even more pronounced when this album was being made, the late 90s, at a time when digital and early social media were suddenly changing the access to writing and publishing stories, especially in music culture with things like music review sites and fan-based web forums. This was the beginning of a proliferation of available narratives which, as we’ve seen, has had both good and bad consequences…
For what it’s worth, my background is primarily in documentary storytelling, I originally moved to Columbia to work for the True/False Film Fest (after having an animated film in the fest years ago) and I now teach intro journalism classes at the J-school, so these issues of medium and message, myth-making and history have always preoccupied me!
DBRL: This book brings forth a lot of cultural context of the mid to late 1990s when this album was released. Did this look back change your feelings towards that era or illuminate things you hadn’t previously noticed?
Kozloskie: As I was researching, the one thing that really stood out was the budding of celebrity internet culture whose seeds were really planted in this era. Cat Power wasn’t just a musician, she became an idea. She was an “It Girl,” a fashion muse, a rumor, a vibe that spread quickly not just from word of mouth but, for the first time, through the internet. The conflation of image/brand/person was quietly exploding. As a teenage web-user and media consumer, like I was when “Moon Pix” came out, I was freely swimming thoughtlessly in this sea and it is weird to think about how pivotal this moment was culturally, societally — it makes me wonder: What seeds are we unknowingly planting now with artificial intelligence?
DBRL: What do you think makes a good breakup album?
Kozloskie: One of my exes, who didn’t make the book chapter where I talk to exes about this genre of albums but who had a lot to say about Bruce Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” (I am from New Jersey), was in a band and, naturally, he wrote a break-up song about us. I remember first hearing it at a dusty basement show that smelled like Pabst and mildew, standing next to another one of his exes (and probably a future one — it was college!), and just feeling a bit of relief, “Whew, that’s over! Now what?” A great breakup album expresses a feeling of closure but also excitement about what’s to come. There is pathos, of course, but also a shedding of the skin. I very much feel like “Moon Pix” was that for Cat Power, a declaration of her own voice. I think this book is a little bit of that for me, personally, after having been subsumed in creative relationships for far too long.
DBRL: Cat Power is making a local appearance for Summerfest this August. Any favorites from her back catalog that you hope she plays at the show?
Kozloskie: If you ever see me driving around in my 2002 Toyota, my CD player (yes, I said CD player) will most likely be blasting “Rockets” off of 1996’s “Myra Lee” as I howl along, “Where do the rockets find planets? Where are the dreams of the babies going? … Did you know they’re all good?” Every time I hear that song it feels like a new day full of possibilities, with an exciting edge of uncertainty: Will today be hopeful or hopeless?
DBRL: Have you read/listened/viewed anything good lately you’d like to recommend?
Kozloskie: “Saint Omer” is the best film I’ve seen in a long, long time. It is an eerie coming-of-age story meets courtroom drama, meets meditation on motherhood — it is undefinable, really — chilling is probably the best word. As I mentioned before, I come from documentary and this is nonfiction director Alice Diop’s fiction feature debut. It is based on an actual court case about a woman who was accused of abandoning her child on a beach in France and even uses real-life transcripts in the story — it perfectly plays with that blurry line of narrative vs. fact, a clash that naturally leads to questions of self, identity, legacy.
DBRL: Where can readers get a copy of your book?
Kozloskie: The Daniel Boone Regional Library, of course! Someone sent me a pic of my book at Skylark Bookshop downtown, it might still be there?! A lot of little bookstores and record stores carry Bloomsbury’s 33 ⅓ music series. I keep telling people to shop local and to patronize their library, we need to keep these places around so they can keep telling stories, in all their versions.
