Mark Kemp
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Mark Kemp, a graduate of East Carolina University, has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks. In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by '60s protest singer Phil Ochs. His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004. Kemp began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter and later as an editor at the science magazine Discover. In the late 1980s, he began writing for the alternative music and culture magazine Option. The Los Angeles-based publication was one of the chief chroniclers of the post-punk independent alternative rock, hip-hop, contemporary jazz and avant-garde scenes, as well as a rich source of information on musical styles and trends from other countries and cultures. Kemp became the editor of Option in 1991, the year Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind stormed the pop charts. Option's visibility in the early '90s led to Kemp's hirings at Rolling Stone and MTV. Disillusioned by the mainstream music industry, Kemp left MTV in 2000 to focus on his social/cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby. In 2002, he returned to his home state of North Carolina where he continues to write about music and culture for the Charlotte Observer and other publicatioins.
