Popular Music History 

About: Popular Music History is an academic journal published by Equinox Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Popular music & Music industry. It has an ISSN identifier of 1740-7133. Over the lifetime, 195 publications have been published receiving 884 citations.

Constructing histories through material culture: Popular Music, Museums and Collecting

Abstract: This article examines how popular music has been represented within museum exhibitions and considers the specificities of collection and display relating to popular music artefacts Using a number of recent exhibitions as examples, it considers how very particular versions of popular music history are constructed through the display of material culture In effect, the institutional logics of museums and art galleries mean that the conceptual underpinning of popular music exhibitions tends to take the form of either canonic representations, the contextualisation of popular music artefacts as art or the presentation of popular music as social or local history The article argues that these types of approach represent a problem for the researcher/curator attempting to reconstruct a truly social history of popular music as they tend to replicate dominant hegemonic versions of history The article then suggests ways in which the popular music curator can actively learn from private collectors in order to give a more balanced representation of a variety of popular music practices Drawing on interviews with private collectors it considers how the material culture of popular music can offer an avenue through which to explore personal and social histories, memory, affect and identity in the exhibition context

Heavy metal as controversy and counterculture

Abstract: Social scientific studies of metal music and culture have tended to focus on two distinct aspects of the phenomenon: Firstly, scholars have analysed the social reactions to metal music—especially in the ‘moral panics’ genre. Secondly, the creation and reproduction of different metal subcultures, or ‘scenes’, has been an increasingly popular approach. This article brings together these two aspects of scholarship by arguing that ‘controversy’ is an integral aspect of creating metal ‘countercultures’. That is, the transgressive aspects of metal make it antagonistic in different social contexts—whether or not this is the intention of scene members themselves—and the metal scene is in turn shaped by these controversies. The first part of the article presents a theoretical approach to controversies and examines the meaning of metal as ‘counterculture’ in a globalizing world. The second part discusses how the other articles in this special issue each in their own way contribute to the understanding of metal as controversy and counterculture.

It was easy, it was cheap, so what?: Reconsidering the DIY principle of punk and indie music

Abstract: Today, the words ‘indie’ and ‘independence’ are commonly taken only to be connotative of a musical style, yet during an earlier punk/post-punk period they were used to denote a specific economic separateness from the major labels. This article examines the development of the indie sector in this earlier period, challenging a tendency to reify certain proponents of punk’s DIY principle (Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP, Desperate Bicycles) by noting some significant antecedents and continuations of the indie ‘Do It Yourself’ impetus. Contrasting the Rough Trade label against anarcho-punks Crass, the article also highlights the ‘cutie’ or ‘C86’ period in which indie is sometimes said to have become more about music and less about politics. The significance of MySpace and other recent technological developments are also considered. In conclusion, the article interrogates the political efficacy of the ‘anyone can do it’ principle associated with punk/indie’s DIY ethic.

Popular music, mapping, and the characterization of Liverpool

Abstract: Liverpool is widely recognized for its iconic ‘Three Graces’—a trio of grand buildings that stand along the city’s River Mersey waterfront. In this article we argue that there are a similar kind of iconic ‘three graces’ in Liverpool’s popular music and heritage landscapes: the Cavern Club, Eric’s Club, and Cream. These three venues have taken on broader symbolic meanings as representative of entire musical styles and eras. As such they dominate the histories of the city’s music-making cultures, producing (and reproduced through) a variety of representations, texts and mappings of the city’s musical past. This paper draws from ethnographic materials gathered through a two-year research project to decentre this ‘master page’ or ‘master map’ of the three graces with a series of mappings of Liverpool’s popular music heritage that calls attention to hidden or alternative histories of the city that are less often mapped.