E12
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[00:00:00] Mike Walker: Welcome to the second season of the HigherEdJobs Podcast. Let's rejoin host Andy Hibel at the museum of post punk and industrial music. As we wrap up our conversation with iconic rockstar turn professor turn curator, Martin Atkins.

[00:00:18] Andrew Hibel: We let you off the hook for matrimonial advice. Okay. But this one, I won't let you off the hook for.

Which is advice to job seekers. For somebody who has served to hire folks, as well as somebody who has looked for jobs themself, what would your best advice be to somebody who's looking for a job in higher education?

[00:00:38] Martin Atkins: Okay, so you can interpret this in a higher ed way, but my easy answer is don't and at the same time always be looking.

So, if you're on a linear path and you've been concentrating on this one thing, cuz back in my granddad's day. He did one thing his whole life, and then got a clock [00:01:00] and retired when he was 65. Now, if you can do five things, six things, and two of those can be outward facing giving. Then when it comes time and, and I don't mean to be glib about this, then either you will slowly mutate if that's the right word into a different area, a different position.

And something will find you, or you'll reinforce the path that you're on anyway, by some of the people you'll meet. So you might meet the people you'll end up working with next, doing two of the things that there's no reason for you to be doing them, which is precisely why you should be doing them. Why you need to go and stay at the ACE hotel a day before you're supposed to do anything to experience that other stuff.

I think once you need a job, then it gets really tough. I think that's, that's a [00:02:00] bad situation to be looking for a job in, if that, if that makes sense. And once again, I don't mean to be like, so don't ever look for a job, just have five, but I've got six, you know? So, if one of my hustles let's call 'em hustles, one of my hustles becomes obsolete.

What are you doing? Cassette tape manufacturing. Yeah. It's over, you know, or what do you, what's one of your jobs. My Roledex I'm indexing. Rolodexes. Yeah. Yeah. Bye bye it's done right. Well, that's great. That's one of my things. I've got five other things, so I can. Fine tune my radar, cuz like I've lost one of my five things and now I've got I'm down to four.

I don't wanna go down to three and I better accentuate, I better boost the signal, but that's what I'm thinking. I didn't intend to be a museum creator or curator. But like, oh, here I am. I'm learning that I guess. And these [00:03:00] things are just mutating and merging into each other and out of each other. And so it's a path of my interest.

So there's a lot in there. Like, so follow your heart, do all that stuff, but do things. Like I'm helping the, I think I'm helping the Decatur community. And, um, my one advantage there is that I'm not in it. You know, it's obviously important to me. I'm doing things down there I don't need to be doing. Um, it's very easy to do events on campus, but it's more fueling to me and harder for students to interact with entities that aren't nice to students, you know, so they get to interact with real businesses with real consequences.

I think theres benefits of doing things that are unnecessary. And so I advise everybody to do that and, and find, I think I met you. Well, it's a really good case point. I met you when I was speaking in Evanston at a thing that I've forgotten what it [00:04:00] was. That's where we met, right?

[00:04:02] Andrew Hibel: Yeah close. Yes. Okay.

Pretty darn close. Yeah. Well,

[00:04:05] Martin Atkins: what it wasn't in Evanston.

[00:04:06] Andrew Hibel: Well, I'm not gonna tell you where we met now. You don't remember. So um, I think that's wonderful advice. I, love, you need to be connected and looking for a job while at the same time, not doing it be before and try not to do it under duress. Yeah. The, the place where you have to start looking for a job, because you must is a much harder place to find that.

And more importantly, and I think your advice is really good if you're kind of doing your work all the way along. Your next opportunity to go find the job you're wanting to look for as opposed to finding a job, cuz you have to find a job are two different searches. And I think that that's a really, really solid piece of advice to, to be thinking about you don't always have that luxury, but when you do.

The stars are gonna align in a way that's gonna make your decision that much easier. Right. Kind of talking about doing things you're, you're not supposed to be doing. I [00:05:00] believe that there's a Midwest music expo that you're putting on in Decatur coming up. Can you just share just a, a few things about that.

[00:05:06] Martin Atkins: But I need to make another point. Let, let me embroider on that a little bit, cuz I think this is the same thing, but slightly different. It might be, might be easy to understand. I think I'm a pretty good drummer. And even if I'm not, I've done enough where somebody who wants a drummer would have me do some drums just to put my name and all the bands I'm connected to on there.

But I don't really talk about that. How many times have I showed up? I've got my drumsticks. Boom, boom, boom. Let's go. Never. I never do that. But what I might do is like, you should try my coffee. Boom, boom, boom. Right. Or have a cookie, or have you seen this T-shirt here's a book. I did something with a VCA company in, in Chicago.

And so sometimes people at South by Southwest would look at me and I'd reach into my pocket and they're thinking. Oh, no, he's gonna [00:06:00] give me a demo. Oh no. And I'd give them a little bottle of vodka or my voodoo doll or a bag of coffee. And people were so surprised and thrilled to not get the thing they thought they were gonna get from you.

That it changed their perception of me. So if all I said to people was, hi, I'm Martin its drums. They'd like, oh no, right. But when I'm like coffee, coffee, what's going on? Well, let me tell you, and you know, sandpaper bags and these beans are what are caramelized. Suddenly there's a breadth to the conversation.

So create a breadth to the things that you're doing. If you are all about something that's, uh, computers and digital, then do something that's dirty and, and analog, right. Create those things. So you can, you can bounce around between subjects. When you're talking to people, you might find an interest that's completely different.[00:07:00]

If you're concentrating on one thing, when it goes off the rails, it's gonna go off the rails bad. And what we say about liberal arts, creative media education is we're learning the skills for the jobs. We don't know what they are yet. So if you understand that, then like you have to make a leap to understand you are training yourself for a job that you don't know what it is yet.

Nobody knows what it is. So how are you gonna do that? And if you can do that, then you're golden. But it's difficult because we're used to, here are the five things you need to know to do this job. Here are the seven things you need to be fluent in to do this other job, but you also need to be fluent in yourself, your skillset and your comfort level with chaos.

So you asked me about the Midwest music expo. Speaking of chaos, you might say students organizing an event. Okay. There's 20 artists on a stage. Alright, well, we've got a logistical problem, [00:08:00] but we're doing that across three stages. There's a simultaneous release party for an album on the in-house record label.

First step records that involves community down there, students and some artists from Chicago. So there's a responsibility to that. There's a supply chain issue for that because we need it the day off May 7th to maximize sales. I think we could sell 300 day off while we're waving it in people's spaces, analog rather than looking for streams on Spotify.

Um, there's five different t-shirts that we're making for the event. There are speakers. With panels, uh, keynote speakers, Wendy Day, who's responsible for signing Eminem getting him his deal. There are local businesses, about 32 local businesses on the expo floor that we can help. We might say what your business needs is a bunch of lamps.

Let's make some for you. Oh, maybe just a table skirt. [00:09:00] You know, and I, I had a lesson in the value of that because before the first one, this is the fifth second in person. Before the first one, we had a local record store. Um, Gaelynn Lea had performed there and, um, it's just a great space, a coffee shop next door.

So I'd take students to the record store. We'd get coffee, have a class, the place burned to the ground. I actually stood there and I'm like, that's what that phrase means. It burnt to the ground. It was two weeks before the first event, which became a kind of a rallying point for this guy who store burnt to the ground.

So I said to people, bring some vinyl to give to Brian, to sell, show your support, you know, or come or buy some vinyl or give him some vinyl. And the community kind of rallied around him. And if we hadn't been doing MMX. We wouldn't have had the, the meetings and the, the email chain [00:10:00] to support him and, and try and lift him up through that, which is a great lesson in the preparedness piece.

[00:10:06] Andrew Hibel: That sounds wonderful. We'll make sure to include some links to the expo in the podcast. So if people wanna learn more, they can quick follow up question on that. How much of this is student run?

[00:10:18] Martin Atkins: I think that's the thing that I'm getting better at. Is because it doesn't work. I could do all of that stuff I I've been doing, but that like me giving instructions to students, it's like, Hey, can you be a robot?

You know, we've got robots. Um, so it's a dance, it's an absolute dance between stress levels and intensity, things get adrenalized and accelerated. And so. My professorial tone can become sharp. So sometimes I'll check in with a couple of people say, Hey, whoa, was I a little bit accelerated there? And I'll try not to say, was I rude?

Or [00:11:00] I'm trying to have them understand, Hey, people go out of business when things don't go well, press loves, you know, catastrophic event at Millikin puts a question mark over Martin Atkins. Was he really a good performer anyway? You know, like, yeah, yeah, bring it on. But there are so many ways that I give the students choice, which you have to, but that's also a problem in education because if you give students choice, like, oh, what are they gonna do?

Well, they're gonna do something really interesting that you didn't think of. Right? So what I do, what I'm doing with this event, a Millikin, there's an album with 20 songs. I suggested a couple of them, the students suggested the rest. So you might not like me. You might not like the class, but you love that band and you got them on that disc.

You might not like music at all, but this one disc we're doing is called the five way split, which is actually a seven way split with a picture of a hand, that's got six [00:12:00] fingers, right? So it's like every one of these is a schema. Like it's the five voice, there's seven causes that we're helping.

They get to choose that. So you might not like music me the class, the university, but we can all get behind the red cross in Ukraine or Brian from the speakeasy records, trying to build an outdoor stage, whether it's global or local pick one. So all of these are ways for me to say to the students that don't care about grades.

I mean, I do, but the way that I care about grades is by not caring about grades and engaging the students in things that they've got a choice to care about

[00:12:41] Andrew Hibel: In that experience, they can display what they've learned. And judge from an academic standpoint, whether or not they've acquired the education that, that you're hoping they will have.

[00:12:51] Martin Atkins: Well, and that's the reflection piece. So I'll say to them, whew, you did it. Nevermind the result that you know, your grade at the [00:13:00] end of the term, but you did that. What's that gonna look like on your resume, but then we'll reflect and I'll ask them to think about themselves and think about the advice they give themselves 16 weeks earlier.

They could go back and that seems to unlock the gates. So then the students get to read through those reflections before they start the next one. So allegedly we're learning from everybody else's mistakes and we get to make new mistakes.

[00:13:32] Andrew Hibel: You’re spot on there. The mistakes are a big part of learning as an entrepreneur.

I can tell you, I've learned way more from my, my screw ups than I have from anything that's been remotely considered a success. I also think it's interesting. The barometer always seems to be well, how will that look on a resume? Remember the resume gets you a job interview, right? Resume does not get you a job, resume will never get you a job, right?

Your interview gets you a job. Telling your career story, that [00:14:00] story talking about that story and talking about the, the details of that story or the fact that the lamp that they made for the museum of post punk and industrial music is not just a lamp with a screen printing on the, on the lampshade. But it's also a screen printing on what looks to be like a Jameson bottle.

Like if you look at that and you can tell the story of how you did that and the number of units that were sold and the point where you sold it to somebody who was a huge fan of post punk music, that in an interview, being able to tell that story and tell your career story effectively, but also having those career stories to tell. Well, I went to a class. I did a paper on making a lamp,

[00:14:40] Martin Atkins: …right. Or I see this as well. If I was to do graphics for an advertising company that was trying to sell a car, this is what it might look like. I'm like, well, you know, anybody can do decent graphics, but when you're on a deadline, when there's a somebody screaming at you, then it's real.

So there's another thing that [00:15:00] happened. We mentioned my band Pig Face. Sometimes we have trees on stage. Sometimes we have eight drum kits, sometimes whatever. I, I remember talking to one of my crew guys, it wasn't Jim, pedal Jim. It was somebody else. And I said, could you, uh, could you help? I don't know what we were doing, renovating a loft space or doing put in a rehearsal space.

I'm like, could we, can we do this? Can you do this? Can you help me? And they just looked at me and said, we did 42 shows in 42 days with Pig Face, I can do anything. And I just thought, holy, that, that it's not a swagger, but kind of a swagger, you know, like I can do. Yeah, I can do that. That, that. That feeling that whatever life throws at you. Oh, I did this. I can do that. Like, oh, here we go.

[00:15:59] Andrew Hibel: For [00:16:00] folks out there who don't necessarily know the full depth of the music, could you try to succinctly explain what you would consider post punk and industrial music?

[00:16:09] Martin Atkins: Okay. Well, uh, so let's explain punk first. Because I think that's an interesting part of the chaos I talked about.

So I spent from the age of nine till the age of 16, working for four hours a day to get better at my craft of drumming, to be a faster, better, cooler, all of those technical yard sticks. And I think I did a pretty good job of that. Then punk comes along and one of the punk memes was here's a chord. Here's another, here's a third start a band.

What? No. No. Don't you mean here's a chord, here's a, here's a book with another thousand chords practice for two years then think about maybe start. No, just go. Just do it. So there you got Nike right there. Just do it. That was punk. So it was threatening because it felt like it was undermining the skilled level that I [00:17:00] already had, but it was too compelling not to start surfing on that chaos.

And so. I felt it was convenient for me because I could say along with Johnny rotten, screw it smash the system talent doesn't count. Cuz I was pretty talented. You know, I think if I'd been a terrible drummer, I would've been fired, you know? So, um, so then you get involved in punk and it, and punk was honestly DIY, do it yourself.

That's what punks did. There's no sound system. Oh, we'll build one, borrow speakers from put a speaker in this washing machine. You know, we just did it. We, we did shows where there shouldn't have been shows and we came up with configurations of music that were. Different. And some of those songs written by people who didn't know how to write songs, who didn't know how to play like, uh, uh, Reckless Eric whole wide world was just in a commercial with, with the guy from Trainspotting for [00:18:00] Expedia.

Like would, would you think you'll regret not buying a thin a TV or not going somewhere? Although the whole. I saw him play that song in 1979. And I thought, well, this guy can't play. What is this song? And 40 years later, he just made a hundred grand on that commercial. So punk exploded everything for me, and then very quickly, and it also went into fashion and you see evidence of that all around here, but very quickly, punk disappeared.

In the innovative sense by 1978. So 76 to 78 79 punk exploded. And then post-punk happened. I would argue would be the first album from public image limited. Johnny Rotten’s band after the sex pistols. So that's kind of a convenient before and after SP you know, very different sound, dub, reggae, bass, different different viewpoint.

[00:19:00] Public image limited was a limited company like a corporation, you know, so then people started to experiment. Industrial was the result of a bunch of that experimentation, where we would use. Like bang on a piece of metal, boom B boom, boom, boom. Right? Which doesn't sound that crazy. Now in 1982, it did. And then.

The use of electronics. So you didn't have to carry oil drums around with you. You'd have a little disc with a Bing bong, Bing bong oil drum sound number one, B bong, you know, please, uh, pneumatic drill too, Baba, you know, and, uh, uh, also samples for movies. You, you know, the movie Platoon. There's 15 songs have used the movie Platoon.

I still can't hear you. You know, so, um, but we, we started to use samplers and, and actually the [00:20:00] people who developed the touch screen were electronic musicians. They were just trying to, how can we bank bank? How can we bash this without destroying it with our fingers? And they created the touch screen for Apple eventually.

So industrial is this kind of journey of exploring new and different things in new and different ways. And sometimes you end up back where you started. Now you have people like Butch VG, who, who took the sampling technology further, and then sampling came into the mainstream where you go in the studio.

Boom, BA boom bump. Yeah. I want this kit to sound more John Bon and more Led Zeppelin. Boo, Don. Ready? Boo. Just go grab those sounds that somebody recreated. So now it's like Lego for the music industry and it all started with punk, but then you learn, been hanging out at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa or Woody Guthrie said three chords are too many.

And when you're [00:21:00] educator, you go, wow. I wonder if some kids in 1975 had a class on Woody three chords are too many. So Woody Guthrie turns out to be a innovative punk. You know, so that, that goes both ways.

[00:21:16] Andrew Hibel: Last but not least. We've had a lot of guests offer up songs to put on our Spotify playlist for job searchers.

Every job search deserves a soundtrack, and we're trying to put one together. You're the first guest who I can say absolutely unequivocally is musically qualified to play something on our Spotify playlist. What would you put on our Spotify playlist for, uh, for a job searcher to be listening to while they conduct their job search.

[00:21:41] Martin Atkins: Okay. I need to find the correct title for this song. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was about to do that. Well, to cut me out, do that's a song called ‘Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun’ by Gaelynn Lea. I'm [00:22:00] trying to find the lyrics. I love this song for a bunch of reasons. One it's Gaelynn Lea, and she's just this relentless individual.

If I can kind of tell a story about Gaelynn. Absolutely. So there's so much about her that that might be inspirational for a job searcher. I love her music and that this one song is called someday. We'll linger in the sun. Her, her voice goes straight to my call and reminds me that there's other things other than the Hubb of, of, of whatever we're involved.

And, uh, I met her at the conference at the Congress Hotel thousand people hanging out. And, um, she said, uh, Bob Boylan said, I should talk to you thinking about going on the road. She just won the tiny desk competition, thinking about going on the road and, um, selling my house and buying a van and going on the road.

I'm like stop don't no, you, no, you can't do [00:23:00] that. Um, Gaelynn Lea is brittle boned and plays fiddle from her chair was told by a music teacher. You can't, you can't play violin. So she plays her violin like a fiddle or like a cello, her arms can't support the violin. So just that right there. Yeah, thanks for your opinion. Screw you. I'm doing this anyway, you know, and then she did the same thing to me, basically like, look, it's great that you've won a tiny desk competition, not dissing on you. Bob Boylan huge thing, but maybe you do a gig. See how it goes. Do another gig before you sell your house. And I, I think I thought I really got through to her with that advice and she called me up a week later.

She's like, thank you so much for your advice. Selling the house. And I'm like, oh, and all I could do was say, well, just let me know how I can [00:24:00] help in any way, you know? And next thing you know, she's in a field in Ireland with a cow and I'm like, you know, I've never done that. You know, she's just like, I don't know.

You know, and, and she doesn't like to be called inspirational, but she's so inspirational. We had to come out on tour with Pig Face. And, um, she said she needed a ramp for her chair to get on and off the stage. I'm like, yeah, of course just put it in the rider. But then she'd tell me, after a few weeks, the club in Cleveland, they've got six security guys who will lift me onto the stage, but I don't want to be lifted on stage or lift it off.

I'm a performer in my own right. I want to get on and off stage. But they could get a ramp. And I found five places in the greater Cleveland area that could provide a ramp. And, and, and I'd go to look at the conversation on email and it was 15 pages long over the course of a month, just to try and get the situation in which she could play.

And [00:25:00] eventually she played at an art gallery down the street, and I stood on stage. I'm like everybody. Remember where you're standing, we're all going to an art gallery down the street to watch Gal, you know? And so, so just by sticking to her guns and being so relentless and being such an awesome performer, she's changing the landscape.

Her music just touches me. There's there's a song lyric that I couldn't find it's from another song talking about like, we're all just weeds. And, uh, flowers, I guess that spoke to me as well, because my Instagram is flowers fight for sunshine. This idea that even flowers fight. And, uh, sometimes it's just simple as a little bit of sunshine, you know?

Wow. Each episode of this podcast comes with a package of Kleenex tissues.

[00:25:53] Andrew Hibel: I think that's a, a wonderful way to kind of sum up the spirit of the conversation and the experience of [00:26:00] being in this amazing space is to kind of look at that, like that place that returns you back from the hubub of day to day life, which the job search is very much part of and bring back to what's important and what is real and for somebody to have to look at life that way and make a choice against some very solid advice of try some gigs out first, before you sell the house and buy the van.

[00:26:24] Martin Atkins: Sounded reasonable to me. And I'm a lunatic,

[00:26:28] Andrew Hibel: but, but, but life has to be lived. Yeah. And the journey is, is the only thing you have. It's not a destination. And. What a wonderful song to summarize that spirit.

And we look forward to adding it to the Spotify playlist we have for the podcast. Good deal, Martin. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you for spending so much time with us. And as always, we look forward to the next time we can talk

[00:26:48] Martin Atkins: Good deal. It's nice to see Andrew.

[00:26:51] Andrew Hibel: Thanks for listening to the HigherEdJobs Podcast.

Please feel free to email us at highered…. Please feel free to email us at…

[00:26:58] Martin Atkins: podcast higher ed pod… [00:27:00] What is it?

[00:27:00] Andrew Hibel: Please feel free to email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or tweet us @HigherEdJobs. Thank you for listening.

[00:27:11] Martin Atkins: Ooh.