Dave Laing

Bio: Dave Laing is an academic researcher from All Saints' College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Popular music & Dance. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 15 publications receiving 133 citations.

'Sadeness', Scorpions and single markets: national and transnational trends in European popular music

Abstract: Among the biggest international hits of 1991 was ‘Sadeness’, a piece of music created in a studio in Spain by Michael Cretu, a German-based, Rumanian-born producer using samples from recordings of Gregorian chants This followed the chart successes of dance records created in Belgium by Technotronic and Snap, in Italy (Black Box) and Sweden (Dr Alban)

A voice without a face: popular music and the phonograph in the 1890s

Abstract: While the rock'n'roll era, dance bands, country and the blues have been the subject of detailed and analytical histories, the 1890s, those formative years of music-recording, still await adequate and rigorous scrutiny. The standard (and only) history of the recording process remains Roland Gelatt's The Fabulous Phonograph, whose first edition appeared in 1955. But while Gelatt's foreword promisingly notes that ‘the history of the phonograph is at once the history of an invention, an industry and a musical instrument’, his book seldom rises above a journalistic narrative. It is also marred by an ill-concealed bias towards the classical repertoire and against popular musics.

Scrutiny to subcultures: notes on literary criticism and popular music

Abstract: In 1993 several of the British national newspapers published obituaries of a Liverpool schoolteacher, Alan Durband. He had been a key figure in the establishment of the Everyman Theatre in the city and he was the former head of English teaching at the Liverpool Institute, the school which is shortly to be reopened as the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Among Durband's students in the 1950s were Paul McCartney and George Harrison. 'His love of the English language was infectious', wrote one of Durband's obituarists and it is tempting to imagine a link between this enthusiasm and the lyricist who produced 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'For No One'.

Introduction to ‘Gender and Sexuality’ special issue

Abstract: Academic work on popular music has had a difficult and intermittent relationship with work on gender and sexuality. Bursts of intense debate have been followed by years of scholarly silence, and questions that were raised in the early days of rock writing remain unresolved today. Is rock a male form? And if so, is this achieved through the gender of the performers? of audiences? through the sexuality of the performance, or the discourse of the songs? Is rock's ‘serious’ status guaranteed by its binary definition as the opposite of ‘pop’, seen as ‘for the girls’? And if a rock/pop divide now seems absurdly outdated, do we not see its gender divisions reconstituted within the new forms? On the other hand, what happens to these divisions when boys, too, decide they ‘just want to have fun’? And why have musicians been so much happier ‘flirting’ with gay identities than coming out as gay?

Crosscurrents, crosstalk: Race, ‘Postcoloniality’ and the politics of location

Abstract: (1993). Crosscurrents, crosstalk: Race, ‘Postcoloniality’ and the politics of location. Cultural Studies: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 292-310.

Co-Evolution of Firm Capabilities and Industry Competition: Investigating the Music Industry, 1877-1997

Abstract: This paper proposes that rival firms not only search for new capabilities within their organization, but also for those that rest in their competitive environment. An integrated analysis of these search processes at both firm and industry levels of analysis shows how their interaction makes industries and firms co-evolve over time. To contribute to an enhanced understanding of the concept of co-evolution, a dynamic and integrative framework crossing meso and micro levels of analysis is constructed. This framework is applied to a longitudinal study of the music industry with a time-span of 120 years. The first part, a historical study, covers the period 1877-1990. The second part, a multiple-case study, covers the period 1990-1997. We conclude that search behaviour drives co-evolution through competitive dynamics among new entrants and incumbent firms and manifests itself in the simultaneous emergence of new business models and new organizational forms.

Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and Franco-Maghrebi Identity

Abstract: In the aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, Western Europe has been forced to rethink its identity. If in the recent past its conception of itself as a haven of democracy and civilization depen...

Voice and the Victorian storyteller

Abstract: 1 'The best man of all': mythologies of the storyteller 2 When good speech acts go bad: the voice of industrial fiction 3 Speech on paper: Charles Dickens, Victorian phonography, and the reform of writing 4 'Done to death': Dickens and the author's voice 5 Unuttered: withheld speech in Jane Eyre and Villette 6 'Hell's masterpiece of print': voice, face, and print in The Ring and the Book 7 A voice without a body: the phonographic logic of Heart of Darkness

Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music

Abstract: The hidden material histories of music.Music is seen as the most immaterial of the arts, and recorded music as a progress of dematerialization?an evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. In Decomposed, Kyle Devine offers another perspective. He shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before. Devine uncovers the hidden history of recorded music?what recordings are made of and what happens to them when they are disposed of. Devine's story focuses on three forms of materiality. Before 1950, 78 rpm records were made of shellac, a bug-based resin. Between 1950 and 2000, formats such as LPs, cassettes, and CDs were all made of petroleum-based plastic. Today, recordings exist as data-based audio files. Devine describes the people who harvest and process these materials, from women and children in the Global South to scientists and industrialists in the Global North. He reminds us that vinyl records are oil products, and that the so-called vinyl revival is part of petrocapitalism. The supposed immateriality of music as data is belied by the energy required to power the internet and the devices required to access music online. We tend to think of the recordings we buy as finished products. Devine offers an essential backstory. He reveals how a range of apparently peripheral people and processes are actually central to what music is, how it works, and why it matters.