In this, the Season 1 Finale, Jessica talks to Matt Grimes about punk, scholarship, and Birmingham’s often overlooked music scene. Matt is the General Secretary of the Punk Scholars Network and co-ordinates the PSN International affiliates. He is a member of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) where his research interests include anarcho-punk and DIY punk scenes; ageing within popular music scenes; popular music, memory and nostalgia; DIY music cultures/subcultures and scenes; music industries, innovation and entrepreneurship. Matt sits on the editorial board for the PSN Global Punk book series, Punk & Post-Punk and Riffs: Journal of Experimental Writing on Popular Music. Matt is also Course Director for the BA (Hons) Music Industries and a Senior Lecturer in Music Industries and Radio at Birmingham City University, where he teaches primarily on the BA (Hons) Music Industries course in the Birmingham School of Media, as well as on a range of undergraduate and post-graduate programmes across the Birmingham Institute of Media and English and Faculty of Art, Design and Media. Publications include the co-edited Punk Now! Contemporary Perspectives on Punk (2020) and Punk Identities, Punk Utopias: Global Punk and Media (Intellect, 2021). He also has chapters in the forthcoming edited collection on punk pedagogy entitled ‘A Punk Pedagogies Manifesto by the Riffs Editorial Team’ (with Raine, S., Draganova, A. and Taylor, I.) and Exploring the Spiritual in Popular Music: Beatified Beats entitled ‘“Message from Thee Temple”: Magick, Occultism, Mysticism and Psychic TV’ (with Dines, M).

Listen to the episode for a crucial question Matt asks himself, and perhaps all of us listeners, to contemplate when making tough decisions…

Check out:

https://www.punkscholarsnetwork.com/matt-grimes

https://www.punkscholarsnetwork.com/

https://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/

https://homeofmetal.com/

https://museumofyouthculture.com/

Songs, in order of appearance:

Satanis Takut Hantu - Tabraklari

N.I.B. - Black Sabbath

Blame on Me - Steel Pulse

Girls on Film - Duran Duran

Reject of Society - Crass

Lokomotif - Tabraklari

This episode was produced and hosted by Jessica Schwartz and was edited by Erika Pesca.