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How has the history of rock 'n' roll been told? Has it become
formulaic? Or remained, like the music itself, open to outside
influences? Who have been the genre's primary historians? What
common frameworks or sets of assumptions have music history
narratives shared? And, most importantly, what is the cost of
failing to question such assumptions? "Stories We Could
Tell:Putting Words to American Popular Music" identifies eight
typical strategies used when critics and historians write about
American popular music, and subjects each to forensic analysis.
This posthumous book is a unique work of cultural historiography
that analyses, catalogues, and contextualizes music writing in
order to afford the reader new perspectives on the field of
cultural production, and offer new ways of thinking about, and
writing about, popular music.
The Music Documentary offers a wide-range of approaches, across key
moments in the history of popular music, in order to define and
interrogate this prominent genre of film-making. The writers in
this volume argue persuasively that the music documentary must be
considered as an essential cultural artefact in documenting stars
and icons, and musicians and their times - particularly for those
figures whose fame was achieved posthumously. In this collection of
fifteen essays, the reader will find comprehensive discussions of
the history of music documentaries, insights in their production
and promotion, close studies of documentaries relating to favourite
bands or performers, and approaches to questions of music
documentary and form, from the celluloid to the digital age.
The Music Documentary offers a wide-range of approaches, across key
moments in the history of popular music, in order to define and
interrogate this prominent genre of film-making. The writers in
this volume argue persuasively that the music documentary must be
considered as an essential cultural artefact in documenting stars
and icons, and musicians and their times - particularly for those
figures whose fame was achieved posthumously. In this collection of
fifteen essays, the reader will find comprehensive discussions of
the history of music documentaries, insights in their production
and promotion, close studies of documentaries relating to favourite
bands or performers, and approaches to questions of music
documentary and form, from the celluloid to the digital age.
How has the history of rock 'n' roll been told? Has it become
formulaic? Or remained, like the music itself, open to outside
influences? Who have been the genre's primary historians? What
common frameworks or sets of assumptions have music history
narratives shared? And, most importantly, what is the cost of
failing to question such assumptions? "Stories We Could
Tell:Putting Words to American Popular Music" identifies eight
typical strategies used when critics and historians write about
American popular music, and subjects each to forensic analysis.
This posthumous book is a unique work of cultural historiography
that analyses, catalogues, and contextualizes music writing in
order to afford the reader new perspectives on the field of
cultural production, and offer new ways of thinking about, and
writing about, popular music.
This volume offers a comprehensive range of approaches to the work
of Mark E. Smith and his band The Fall in relation to music, art
and politics. Mark E. Smith remains one of the most divisive and
idiosyncratic figures in popular music after a recording career
with The Fall that spans thirty years. Although The Fall were
originally associated with the contemporaneous punk explosion, from
the beginning they pursued a highly original vision of what was
possible in the sphere of popular music. While other punk bands
burned out after a few years, only to then reform decades later as
their own cover bands, The Fall continue to evolve while retaining
a remarkable consistency, even with the frequent line-up changes
that soon left Mark E. Smith as the only permanent member of the
group. The key aspect of the group that this volume explores is the
invariably creative, unfailingly critical and often antagonistic
relations that characterize both the internal dynamics of the group
and the group's position in the pop cultural surroundings. The
Fall's ambiguous position in the unfolding histories of British
popular music and therefore in the new heritage industries of
popular culture in the UK, from post-punk to anti-Thatcher
politics, to the 'Factory fiction of Manchester' and on into Mark
E. Smith's current role as ageing enfant terrible of rock,
illustrates the uneasy relationship between the band, their
critical commentators and the historians of popular music. This
volume engages directly with this critical ambiguity. With a
diverse range of approaches to The Fall, this volume opens up new
possibilities for writing about contemporary music beyond
traditional approaches grounded in the sociology of music, Cultural
Studies and music journalism - an aim which is reflected in the
variety of provocative critical approaches and writing styles that
make up the volume.
This volume offers a comprehensive range of approaches to the work
of Mark E. Smith and his band The Fall in relation to music, art
and politics. Mark E. Smith remains one of the most divisive and
idiosyncratic figures in popular music after a recording career
with The Fall that spans thirty years. Although The Fall were
originally associated with the contemporaneous punk explosion, from
the beginning they pursued a highly original vision of what was
possible in the sphere of popular music. While other punk bands
burned out after a few years, only to then reform decades later as
their own cover bands, The Fall continue to evolve while retaining
a remarkable consistency, even with the frequent line-up changes
that soon left Mark E. Smith as the only permanent member of the
group. The key aspect of the group that this volume explores is the
invariably creative, unfailingly critical and often antagonistic
relations that characterize both the internal dynamics of the group
and the group's position in the pop cultural surroundings. The
Fall's ambiguous position in the unfolding histories of British
popular music and therefore in the new heritage industries of
popular culture in the UK, from post-punk to anti-Thatcher
politics, to the 'Factory fiction of Manchester' and on into Mark
E. Smith's current role as ageing enfant terrible of rock,
illustrates the uneasy relationship between the band, their
critical commentators and the historians of popular music. This
volume engages directly with this critical ambiguity. With a
diverse range of approaches to The Fall, this volume opens up new
possibilities for writing about contemporary music beyond
traditional approaches grounded in the sociology of music, Cultural
Studies and music journalism - an aim which is reflected in the
variety of provocative critical approaches and writing styles that
make up the volume.
As with many aspects of European cultural life, film was galvanized
and transformed by the revolutionary fervor of 1968. This
groundbreaking study provides a full account of the era's cinematic
crises, innovations, and provocations, as well as the social and
aesthetic contexts in which they appeared. The author mounts a
genuinely fresh analysis of a contested period in which everything
from the avant-garde experiments of Godard, Pasolini, Schroeter,
and Fassbinder to the "low" cinematic genres of horror,
pornography, and the Western reflected the cultural upheaval of
youth in revolt-a cinema for the barricades.
As with many aspects of European cultural life, film was galvanized
and transformed by the revolutionary fervor of 1968. This
groundbreaking study provides a full account of the era's cinematic
crises, innovations, and provocations, as well as the social and
aesthetic contexts in which they appeared. The author mounts a
genuinely fresh analysis of a contested period in which everything
from the avant-garde experiments of Godard, Pasolini, Schroeter,
and Fassbinder to the "low" cinematic genres of horror,
pornography, and the Western reflected the cultural upheaval of
youth in revolt-a cinema for the barricades.
Hotbeds of Licentiousness is the first substantial critical
engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s,
including the "Summer of Love," the rise and fall of the Permissive
Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing
on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent
during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin
Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations
and opportunities which point to radical changes in British
society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic
with which to consider recent cultural and social history.
Cine-literate and single-minded, Michael Reeves took on
exploitative film production companies, the British censors, and
even Vincent Price to create a unique vision of savage poetry and
lacerating despair: Witchfinder General. He died aged 25 in 1969,
between the end of Swinging London and the collapse of the British
film industry - an apt candidate to represent all that could have
been. This critical biography claims Reeves as the great, lost
auteur of British cinema and traces his conception of film back to
his childhood and formative experiences. Benjamin Halligan examines
Reeves's films in the context of the times, citing The Sorcerers
and Witchfinder General as foreshadowing and critiquing the
psychedelic and revolutionary zeitgeist. Reeves's earlier work on
the fringes of the freewheeling European exploitation cinema is
also covered, with particular emphasis on his Revenge of the Blood
Beast. Drawing on recollections from colleagues, friends and
family, many speaking here for the first time, draft scripts,
correspondence and original documentation pertaining to the
controversial censorship of Witchfinder, and Reeves's struggle with
his own private demons, Halligan creates a complete picture of this
elusive, driven figure and his films. He speculates on what Reeves
would have gone on to achieve, and why this should still matter. --
.
Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's
celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of
the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that
cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and
political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They
raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in
contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist
philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and
value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist
thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and
emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics,
crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their
recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the
world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking
series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical
constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional
vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from
its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and
the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The
contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and
emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna
Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin
Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano
Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.
The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment is the first
sustained engagement with what might said to be - in its melding of
concert and gathering, in its evolving relationship with digital
and social media, in its delivery of event, experience, technology
and star - the art form of the 21st century. This volume offers
interviews with key designers, discussions of the practicalities of
mounting arena concerts, mixing and performing live to a mass
audience, recollections of the giants of late twentieth century
music in performance, and critiques of latter-day pretenders to the
throne. The authors track the evolution of the arena concert,
consider design and architecture, celebrity and fashion, and turn
to feminism, ethnographic research, and ideas of humour, liveness
and authenticity, in order to explore and frame the arena concert.
The arena concert becomes the "real time" centre of a global
digital network, and the gig-goer pays not only for an immersion in
(and, indeed, role in) its spectacular nature, but also for a close
encounter with the performers, in this contained and exalted space.
The spectacular nature of the arena concert raises challenges that
have yet to be fully technologically overcome, and has given rise
to a reinvention of what live music actually means. Love it or
loathe it, the arena concert is a major presence in the cultural
landscape of the 21st century. This volume finds out why.
The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment is the first
sustained engagement with what might said to be - in its melding of
concert and gathering, in its evolving relationship with digital
and social media, in its delivery of event, experience, technology
and star - the art form of the 21st century. This volume offers
interviews with key designers, discussions of the practicalities of
mounting arena concerts, mixing and performing live to a mass
audience, recollections of the giants of late twentieth century
music in performance, and critiques of latter-day pretenders to the
throne. The authors track the evolution of the arena concert,
consider design and architecture, celebrity and fashion, and turn
to feminism, ethnographic research, and ideas of humour, liveness
and authenticity, in order to explore and frame the arena concert.
The arena concert becomes the "real time" centre of a global
digital network, and the gig-goer pays not only for an immersion in
(and, indeed, role in) its spectacular nature, but also for a close
encounter with the performers, in this contained and exalted space.
The spectacular nature of the arena concert raises challenges that
have yet to be fully technologically overcome, and has given rise
to a reinvention of what live music actually means. Love it or
loathe it, the arena concert is a major presence in the cultural
landscape of the 21st century. This volume finds out why.
Noise permeates our highly mediated and globalised cultures. Noise
as art, music, cultural or digital practice is a way of intervening
so that it can be harnessed for an aesthetic expression not caught
within mainstream styles or distribution.
This wide-ranging book examines the concept and practices of noise,
treating noise not merely as a sonic phenomenon but as an essential
component of all communication and information systems. The book
opens with ideas of what noise is, and then works through ideas of
how noise works in contemporary media, to conclude by showing
potentials within noise for a continuing cultural renovation
through experimentation. Considered in this way, noise is seen as
an essential yet excluded element of contemporary culture that
demands a rigorous engagement. Reverberations brings together a
range of perspectives, case studies, critiques and suggestions as
to how noise can mobilize thought and cultural activity through a
heightening of critical creativity.Written by a strong,
international line-up of scholars and artists, Reverberations looks
to energize this field of study and initiate debates for years to
come.
The diva – a central figure in the landscape of contemporary
popular culture: gossip-generating, scandal-courting,
paparazzi-stalked. And yet the diva is at the epicentre of creative
endeavours that resonate with contemporary feminist ideas, kick
back against diminished social expectations, boldly call-out casual
sexism and industry misogyny and, in terms of hip-hop, explores
intersectional oppressions and unapologetically celebrates
non-white cultural heritages. Diva beats and grooves echo across
culture and politics in the West: from the borough to the White
House, from arena concerts to nightclubs, from social media to
social activism, from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter. Diva: Feminism
and Fierceness from Pop to Hip-Hop addresses the diva phenomenon
and its origins: its identity politics and LGBTQ+ components; its
creativity and interventions in areas of popular culture (music,
and beyond); its saints and sinners and controversies old and new;
and its oppositions to, and recuperations by, the establishment;
and its shifts from third to fourth waves of feminism. This
co-edited collection brings together an international array of
writers – from new voices to established names. The collection
scopes the rise to power of the diva (looking to Mariah Carey,
Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, Grace Jones, and Aaliyah), then
turns to contemporary diva figures and their work (with Beyoncé,
Amuro Namie, Janelle Monáe, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Shakira,
Jennifer Lopez, and Nicki Minaj), and concludes by considering the
presence of the diva in wider cultures, in terms of gallery
curation, theatre productions, and stand-up comedy.
Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's
celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of
the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that
cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and
political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They
raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in
contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist
philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and
value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist
thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and
emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics,
crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their
recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the
world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking
series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical
constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional
vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from
its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and
the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The
contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and
emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna
Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin
Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano
Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.
Resonances is a compelling collection of new essays by scholars,
writers and musicians, all seeking to explore and enlighten this
field of study. Noise seems to stand for a lack of aesthetic grace,
to alienate or distract rather than enrapture. And yet the drones
of psychedelia, the racket of garage rock and punk, the thudding of
rave, the feedback of shoegaze and post-rock, the bombast of thrash
and metal, the clatter of jungle and the stuttering of electronica,
together with notable examples of avant-garde noise art, have all
found a place in the history of contemporary musics, and are
recognised as representing key evolutionary moments. Noise
therefore is the untold story of contemporary popular music, and in
a critical exploration of noise lies the possibility of a new
narrative: one that is wide-ranging, connects the popular to the
underground and avant-garde, fully posits the studio as a musical
instrument, and demands new critical and theoretical paradigms of
those seeking to write about music.
Noise permeates our highly mediated and globalised cultures. Noise
as art, music, cultural or digital practice is a way of intervening
so that it can be harnessed for an aesthetic expression not caught
within mainstream styles or distribution. This wide-ranging book
examines the concept and practices of noise, treating noise not
merely as a sonic phenomenon but as an essential component of all
communication and information systems. The book opens with ideas of
what noise is, and then works through ideas of how noise works in
contemporary media, to conclude by showing potentials within noise
for a continuing cultural renovation through experimentation.
Considered in this way, noise is seen as an essential yet excluded
element of contemporary culture that demands a rigorous engagement.
Reverberations brings together a range of perspectives, case
studies, critiques and suggestions as to how noise can mobilize
thought and cultural activity through a heightening of critical
creativity. Written by a strong, international line-up of scholars
and artists, Reverberations looks to energize this field of study
and initiate debates for years to come.
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