Sites of Popular Music Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places: 04 (Routledge Studies in Popular Music) [1 ed.] 0415824508, 9780415824507

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Sites of Popular Music Heritage

This volume examines the location of memories and histories of popular music and its multiple pasts, exploring the different ‘places’ in which popular music can be situated, including the local physical site, the museum storeroom and exhibition space, and the digitized archive and display space made possible by the internet. Contributors from a broad range of disciplines such as archive studies, popular music studies, media and cultural studies, leisure and tourism, sociology, museum studies, communication studies, cultural geography, and social anthropology visit the specialized locus of popular music histories and heritage, offering diverse set of approaches. Popular music studies has increasingly engaged with popular music histories, exploring memory processes and considering identity, collective and cultural memory, and notions of popular culture’s heritage values, yet few accounts have spatially located such trends to focus on the spaces and places where we encounter and engender our relationship with popular music’s history and legacies. This book offers a timely re-evaluation of such sites, reinserting them into the narratives of popular music and offering new perspectives on their function and significance within the production of popular music heritage. Bringing together recent research based on extensive fieldwork from scholars of popular music studies, cultural sociology, and museum studies, alongside the new insights of practice-based considerations of current practitioners within the field of popular music heritage, this is the first collection to address the interdisciplinary interest in situating popular music histories, heritages, and pasts. The book will therefore appeal to a wide and growing academic readership focused on issues of heritage, cultural memory, and popular music, and provide a timely intervention in a field of study that is engaging scholars from across a broad spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical perspectives. Sara Cohen is Professor in the School of Music at the University of Liverpool, UK and Director of the Institute of Popular Music. Robert Knifton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston University, UK. Marion Leonard is Senior Lecturer in the School of Music at the University of Liverpool, UK and a member of the Institute of Popular Music. Les Roberts is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Routledge Studies in Popular Music

1 Popular Music Fandom Identities, Roles and Practices Edited by Mark Duffett

3 Lady Gaga and Popular Music Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture Edited by Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall

2 Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity The Making of Modern Britain Irene Morra

4 Sites of Popular Music Heritage Memories, Histories, Places Edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts

Sites of Popular Music Heritage Memories, Histories, Places Edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts

First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Taylor & Francis The right of Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sites of popular music heritage : memories, histories, places / edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts. pages cm. — (Routledge studies in popular music ; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Popular music—Social aspects. 2. Musical landmarks—Social aspects. 3. Heritage tourism—Social aspects. I. Cohen, Sara, 1961– editor of compilation. ML3918.P67S58 2014 781.6409—dc23 2014014468 ISBN: 978-0-415-82450-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-51452-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

1 Introduction: Locating Popular Music Heritage

1

SARA COHEN, LES ROBERTS, ROBERT KNIFTON, AND MARION LEONARD

PART 1 Problematizing Popular Music Heritage 2 Popular Music and the ‘Problem’ of Heritage

15

ANDY BENNETT

3 The Heritage Obsession: The History of Rock and Challenges of ‘Museum Mummification’. A French Perspective

28

PHILIPPE LE GUERN

PART 2 Mapping, Music and Memory 4 Mapping the Politics of ‘Race’, Place and Memory in Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage

45

BRETT LASHUA

5 ‘Still Here?’: A Geospatial Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music

62

CRAIG OWEN JONES

PART 3 Archives and Virtual Sites of Memory 6 ‘Fillin’ in Any Blanks I Can’: Online Archival Practice and Virtual Sites of Musical Memory

81

JEZ COLLINS AND PAUL LONG

7 Locating the ‘Bristol Sound’: Archiving Music as Everyday Life MICHELLE HENNING AND REHAN HYDER

97

vi Contents 8 Saving ‘Rubbish’: Preserving Popular Music’s Material Culture in Amateur Archives and Museums

112

SARAH BAKER AND ALISON HUBER

9 Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Women’s Liberation Music Archive

125

DEBORAH M. WITHERS

PART 4 Nostalgia and Heritage Practices 10 ‘You Had to Be There’: Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience

143

KENNY FORBES

11 Engaging Nostalgia: Popular Music and Memory in Museums

160

MARION LEONARD AND ROBERT KNIFTON

12 The Remembering: Heritage-Work at US Progressive-Rock Festivals, 1993 to 2012

174

TIMOTHY J. DOWD

PART 5 Pilgrimage and Sacred Sites 13 Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation: The Real and Imagined Geography of the Grateful Dead in Song, on Tour, and in Cyberspace

193

JOHN V. WARD

14 Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography: Tom Vague’s Musical Mapping of Notting Hill

207

ALEX LAWREY

15 Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques as In/tangible Markers of Popular Music Heritage

221

LES ROBERTS AND SARA COHEN

16 Why I Didn’t Go Down to the Delta: The Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism

239

MARK DUFFETT

Contributors Index

257 263

1

Introduction Locating Popular Music Heritage Sara Cohen, Les Roberts, Robert Knifton, and Marion Leonard

Sites of Popular Music Heritage examines the location of memories and histories of popular music and its multiple pasts. The book developed out of a symposium organised by the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, the aim of which was to explore the places and spaces where people encounter and engage with popular music histories and legacies. The event attracted academics and practitioners who were interested in the study of popular music heritage and the different and new perspectives and approaches that this might involve. As with the topic of popular music heritage itself, those attending the symposium were representative of a range of disciplines (including musicology, geography, museum studies, cultural sociology) and fields of practice (including museums and archives and music and tourism industries). While ideas of heritage, memory and nostalgia play an increasingly important role in popular music historiography, the spatial and geographic frameworks underpinning the production of popular music histories have until now remained comparatively underexamined. Focusing on these frameworks helped to ‘locate’ popular music heritage as a site of critical discourse, and prompted reflection on five key and recurrent questions and related themes and issues. These may broadly be summarised as: ‘what is popular music heritage?’; ‘where is it located?’; ‘why does it matter?’; ‘whose popular music heritage?’ and ‘when does popular music become heritage?’ The first obvious and basic question concerns how such a fluid, intangible and ephemeral cultural form has been put to work as heritage (Bennett, 2009), developing notions of music heritage as a focus for the heritage industry, whilst the second, related question brings the spatial and geographic contexts underpinning emerging music heritage practices and discourses to the fore. Participants at the symposium presented research on a broad and diverse range of sites, particularly the physical site and public space, the museum storeroom and exhibition space, and the digitised archive and display space made possible by the internet. Most of this research involved case studies on popular music heritage in Europe, Australia and the US, where an explicit focus on place and location has been evident in narratives that attach popular music to local, regional and national identity. Drawing on the work of various scholars, Brandellero and Janssen (2012: 4) thus emphasize the territoriality of heritage.

2 Sara Cohen et al. Over the past three decades the growth of official and commercial interests in popular music heritage and tourism in the UK and beyond has been evident in the proliferation of monuments and plaque schemes, tours, trails and maps connected to a broad range of styles, from jazz to techno (Gibson and Connell, 2005; Cohen, 2012; Roberts and Cohen, 2014). The sites involved include those dedicated to particular musicians or music ‘scenes’ and sounds (whether the homes of well-known musicians or venues for sound recording or live music performance) as well as those immortalised in songs, videos or on album sleeves. Such initiatives have depended on collaboration between governing bodies and industries concerned with tourism and heritage, music and the media. The music industries, for example, have played a central role in framing, preserving and commercializing the heritage of popular music. This is clear from the industrial clout afforded of tribute acts, classic albums, the commercialisation of rock and pop memorabilia, literary or audio-visual histories of groups, artists or music genres, or of music ‘heritage’ magazines such as Mojo and Classic Rock. As physical record sales have declined and the music industries have sought to expand their revenue streams from other areas such as the live music experience, notions of music heritage have been further exploited from the promotion of ‘heritage acts’ to the trend for bands playing concerts where they perform one of their ‘classic’ albums live. It is not insignificant that in recent years the vast majority of top grossing live acts both in Europe and the US have been those who released their first albums from the 1960s to the 1980s. For example, in 2010 seven out of ten of the top grossing acts in terms of worldwide concert sales were acts of this kind (Reinartz, 2010). This indicates both the increasing commercial significance of the consumption of popular music heritage to the music industries and the central importance of personal and cultural history in the way in which mass audiences engage with popular music. Over recent years museums have also engaged with popular music heritage, as evidenced by a proliferation of exhibitions on particular popular music performers as well as popular music museums. They have ranged from exhibitions and museums focussed on canonic or commercially successful artists in popular music history (such as the commercial museums dedicated to the Beatles in Liverpool and Hamburg, ABBA in Stockholm and the high-profile exhibitions on Kylie Minogue and David Bowie hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, to more locally based exhibitions which include lesser known (but nevertheless significant) artists. These initiatives have provided sites and spaces of representation inviting critical reflection on the multidimensionality of popular music heritage as an affective, material, symbolic, or performative site of memory. This trend has encompassed a variety of different institutions and approaches, each revealing key issues relating to the way in which popular music heritage is constructed and mediated. For instance, during the early 2000s the failure of high profile national attractions such as the National Centre for

Locating Popular Music Heritage 3 Popular Music in Sheffield and the Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame in Dublin, illustrate the difficulties in successfully delivering commercial ventures which capture the experiential nature of key popular music practices and convey often complex and diffuse narratives to a broad audience. Perhaps more successful has been the proliferation of local and regional exhibitions that have proliferated over the past decade. The UK, for example, has seen successful temporary exhibitions in major cities such as Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Liverpool and Newcastle, and popular music has also found a presence in the permanent displays within many city museums. These museums and exhibitions illustrate efforts to engage visitors through objects, sounds and images as well as written text, and to explore not only how music is represented but how it is also used to represent social histories and personal, collective and local identities (Leonard, 2007; Leonard and Knifton, 2012). Indeed, it is perhaps instructive that more recent museums with a national remit, such as the British Music Experience in London and the Rockheim Museum in Trondheim, have striven to make social history a key part of their remit. At the same time heritage practices have proliferated in the digital age, with an array of social networking sites, blogs and web pages devoted to dimensions of popular music heritage, and organised and defined by, amongst other things, genre, artist, period and geography. With regard to the latter, sites dedicated to the popular music of cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Coventry, Bristol, Woolongong, Brisbane or Detroit speak simultaneously to the hyper-local and global quality of popular music culture. The tensions and ambiguities between the local and the global are also replicated in the sites of popular music heritage that can be found in abundance on video sharing platforms such as YouTube. While many of these attest to the local heritages and histories surrounding specific music cultures, their ‘place’ within the otherwise nonspatial and virtual geographies of Web 2.0 delocalises these histories and reframes them within a qualitatively different spatial context than those operative ‘on the ground’, in localised cultures of popular music heritage. The nature of these and other online practices raise questions about the ontology of the archive as a spatial entity, and of the digital ‘artefact’ and collective memory. In light of the challenges presented to the music industries by digitisation, key questions concern the role of music and related intellectual property in online vernacular or ‘folk’ histories. Questions surrounding the ‘where’ of popular music heritage have vied with those confronting the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of heritage: the shifting meanings, definitions and understandings of what it is or what it does in any given context. This was evident during the symposium where participants discussed not only how popular music heritage was located or sited but also ways of conceptualising and theorising popular music as heritage. In England popular music has been increasingly categorised as ‘heritage’ by individuals, groups and institutions operating across a broad range of

4 Sara Cohen et al. sectors, yet as Lowenthal and others have observed, ‘heritage today all but defies definition’ (Lowenthal,1996: 94). Roberts (2014b) points to some of the difficulties involved in untangling the different values and meanings attached to ideas of ‘heritage’, such as the close intertwining of heritage with memory, nostalgia and tradition; the tautological notion of ‘cultural heritage’ (Ashworth et al., 2007: 7); and the at times perplexing (and in many respects misleading) distinction between ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ heritage. In 2003 UNESCO accepted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC), which formally recognised the ‘intangible’ as a third category of heritage within international policy. Nevertheless Smith argues that the definition of heritage as ‘material (tangible), monumental, grand, “good”, [and] aesthetic’ dominates within what she terms the ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (AHD), a set of Western ideas that is supported by elite social groups and official organisations and policies, and therefore has power and influence. Drawing on examples from the UK, the USA and Australia she shows how this AHD represents a ‘canon’ in that it produces and reproduces ideas about what is worth being classified and promoted as heritage and where its value lies. She illustrates not only some of the practices involved but the ways in which this discourse is responded to and the struggles over who controls it and how. For Smith, therefore, what heritage is and does is defined through discourse, and this challenges the notion of heritage as something that has intrinsic value (2006: 54). Other scholars have similarly highlighted the contested and dissonant character of cultural heritage, and how it attracts differing and often conflicting perspectives and interpretations (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). Heritage is thus highly politicised, hence the promotion of ‘alternative’ heritages and the notion of ‘heritage activism’. Several participants in the Sites of Popular Music Heritage symposium highlighted the radical potential of reclaiming spaces through mnemonic practices centred on the popular music archive. Feminist identities (Withers, Women’s Liberation Music Archive); nation-state construction (Jones, Welsh-language popular music practices); community initiatives (Henning and Hyder, Bristol Sound), and political groupings (Lawrey, Vague) were just some instances where popular music archives could be mobilised in this way. These examples help to show how the language and discourse of heritage is used in many different ways and serves various interests, and papers presented at the symposium illustrated the diversity of people, institutions and sites involved with popular music heritage. This helped to highlight a variety of legitimizing discourses of popular music as heritage, ranging from personal and collective attachment and memory to commercial endeavours aimed at rebranding and canonising the musical past. For some papers, particularly those focusing on the personal memories and histories of music audiences, the term ‘heritage’ wasn’t particularly meaningful because their focus was on people (music audiences, for example) for whom the category of ‘cultural memory’ rather than ‘heritage’ was typically deemed to be more

Locating Popular Music Heritage 5 relevant (see Forbes, this volume; Roberts and Cohen, 2014). However, there were also papers exploring how official and commercial organisations have used the term ‘heritage’ for marketing purposes, or to construct a sense of shared identity and history (see Bennett, this volume). Moreover, the economic imperatives that have driven, with various shades of success, urban regeneration initiatives in post-industrial towns and cities in the UK have sought to capitalize on an understanding of music as cultural heritage that is predicated (however tenuously) on an intrinsic embeddedness in the place of the local. In this regard, as Roberts (2014a) argues, the appeal of popular music heritage from a tourism and place-marketing perspective can in part be attributed to the ‘contagious magic’ factor: the tapping of symbolic or totemic value associated with well-known musicians, and the interweaving of these narratives into the wider place-myths attached to a particular location as part of boosterist and regeneration strategies. Linked to the ‘why’ of heritage are questions regarding ‘whose heritage’. During the symposium these were addressed by papers relating popular music heritage to the politics of race, gender or dialect, which in turn prompted discussion about hidden, marginal or minority heritages, and histories from below. The relationship between heritage and cultural diversity has increasingly provided a focus for scholarly research and public debate. For Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge (2007: 36), ‘the creation of any heritage actively or potentially disinherits or excludes those who do not subscribe to, or are not embraced within, the terms of meaning attending that heritage’. The same point is made by Stuart Hall in relation to the creation of ‘The National Heritage’ (2005: 24),’ and echoed by Littler and Naidoo (2005: 1) who question key sites and symbols of British heritage, such as the St George Cross, afternoon tea and stately homes, which use ‘white (and often upper- or middle-class) Englishness to define the past’, and obscure ways in which this heritage ‘has been shaped by waves of migration and diaspora, wide-ranging imperial histories and contemporary flows of globalisation’. Recognition of ‘intangible heritage’ has grown in countries and regions with significant indigenous and migrant populations, and in response to constructions of ‘official’ heritage that focus on material sites. It is a heritage not yet recognised by British government, but in his seminal keynote address for the 1999 Arts Council conference ‘Whose Heritage?’, Hall noted the emergence of ‘new diasporic forms’ evident within African and Asian communities in England (2005: 34), including emerging music genres such as ragga, jungle, rap and electro-funk, describing them as examples of cutting-edge cultural phenomena that allowed Afro-Caribbean and Asian musicians to assert a transgressive, modern identity. Music reissues such as Honest Jon’s London Is the Place for Me series illustrate Hall’s thesis, whilst offering alternate historic discourses on popular music heritage: in this instance, the significance of the Empire Windrush presaging Caribbean immigration to the United Kingdom, and the importance to the evolution of British popular music of the sounds and styles Calypsonians such as

6 Sara Cohen et al. Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner brought with them. The performance of the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra at the 1951 Festival of Britain crystallises this interplay of tangible and intangible heritages, by placing this popular music in the symbolic site for the reinvention of British cultural heritage. The potential of popular music to articulate or erase ‘unofficial’ or vernacular histories and identities has been explored through recent projects that inspired the Sites of Popular Music Heritage symposium. They include a European research project entitled ‘Popular music heritage, cultural memory, and cultural identity: Localised popular music histories and their significance for music audiences and music industries in Europe’, hereafter referred to with the acronym POPID. This three-year collaborative and interdisciplinary project, which started in 2010, was financed under the Humanities for the European Research Area (HERA) and examined the increasing importance of popular music in contemporary renderings of cultural identity and local and national cultural heritage. It did so through a comparative perspective and research conducted in the Netherlands, the UK, Austria and Slovenia.1 For generations of Europeans born after 1945 popular music forms such as rock and punk have become a potent symbol of national or local identity and heritage. By exploring the dynamics of meaning and identity formation around popular music, POPID considered how local popular music histories and their remembrance challenge any consensus that has been created around a ‘narrative of nation’ (Burgoyne, 2003: 209). As noted in the introduction to a special journal issue based on the first phase of the project, ‘individual and community understandings of popular music heritage are created via their interaction not only with institutional discourses but also local articulations of cultural memories. Popular music heritage is thus an ‘‘act of negotiation’’ (van Dijck 2007) in which individual, collective and institutional cultural memories around the local are produced’ (Brandellero et al., 2014: page 222). Other recent work has studied the collection and representation of popular music in museums and in what Baker and Huber (this volume) call ‘DIY institutions’, offering valuable insights on the role that popular music and its associated material culture plays in the social, cultural and political lives of people. This includes Leonard and Knifton’s 2010–2011 research project on museums and the collection and curation of popular music histories, which was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Beyond Text strategic programme (Leonard and Knifton, 2012; Leonard, 2013), and Bennett’s three-year research project on popular music and cultural memory that also began in 2010. The latter project involved a research team from the universities of Griffith, Monash and Macquarie and was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). Baker and Huber’s research on amateur-run collecting organisations was one of the outcomes of this project and in turn led to Baker’s international comparative study of DIY popular music archives supported by the ARC (2013–2015). These and

Locating Popular Music Heritage 7 other projects informed papers and discussions during the symposium and chapters within this book. The fifth and final question that emerged from the symposium concerned how popular music heritage is or should be located temporally, and the relationship between popular music pasts, presents and futures. ‘When is heritage?’ is a question that looks critically askance both at a seemingly irrepressible culture of ‘retromania’, and at a future-oriented musical and creative praxis that draws on the past as a productive resource by which to mobilise the present rather than to ‘museumify’ it as soon as it slips into the past. As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett notes, ‘As the retro clock speeds up, life becomes heritage almost before it has a chance to be lived’ (2012: 200). Indeed, the subtitle of Reynolds’s prescient study of retro culture—‘Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past’ (2011)—provides a telling diagnosis of a condition that appears, at times, almost to be endemic within contemporary discourses of popular music culture. To pose the question of ‘when is heritage?’ is therefore to cast critical focus on the temporalities of popular music heritage, and to explore more closely the progressive or preservationist/conservative impulses that underpin specific forms of music heritage practice. THE INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS The key questions that emerged from discussions during the symposium informed the structure of the book and its division into five sections, each highlighting a specific theme or issue. Thus the first section problematizes popular music heritage in order to address the fundamental question of how popular music has become attached to notions and sites of heritage, and a focus for the heritage industry. In Chapter 2 Andy Bennett argues that mainstream late 20th century popular music heritage has largely been dictated through an Anglo-American axis of influence as a heritage project that is essentially white, middle class, middle aged and rockist. He thus describes how issues of generation, genre, production, art and culture have forged together into dominant narratives supported by powerful institutions, which threaten to expunge vast tracts of musical production, performance and reception from popular memory. Philippe Le Guern likewise focuses on the construction of rock as heritage in Chapter 3, but this time from a French perspective. Examining the construction of rock history and heritage in France, he asks whether the specificities in the development of popular music heritage from a French perspective have been given due attention in the archiving and exhibition processes of French institutions. He outlines how these processes of archiving, exhibition-making and narrative-building focused on popular music may either elide or elucidate our understanding of the multiple storylines possible within popular music—reinforcing a dominant ‘Rockist’ Anglo-American narrative, or permitting tales of myriad experiences.

8 Sara Cohen et al. Metaphors and practices of ‘mapping’ proliferated throughout the symposium, providing a focus for the second section of the book, which explores geographies and cartographies of the popular music past. In Chapter 4 Brett Lashua discusses contested and competing popular music heritages and spaces in Liverpool. By mapping the cultural geographies of young Black musicians in the city, particularly spaces of Liverpool’s ‘urban’ music (e.g. soul, R’n’B, hip-hop, rap, grime and dubstep), he raises questions about the representation of the city’s Black musical heritage and considers the circulation of popular memory through sites of local music making, where heritage is made and remade as lived practice. Whilst Lashua relates maps of music heritage in Liverpool to racial discrimination, in Chapter 5 Craig Owen Jones presents maps larger in scale that highlight the marginalisation of Welsh-language popular music. His ‘Geospatial Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music’ raises questions about the notion of a Wales-wide ‘scene’ during the 1980s and 1990s, by showing how such activity has not necessarily been associated with historical and existing concentrations of Welsh speakers. Rather, the maps reveal shifting geographies of local and regional Welsh-language popular music activity, highlighting transient clusters of activity and localised ‘scenes’ in discrete geographic areas. This provides a basis for reflection on how Welsh-speaking musicians negotiate senses of local identity and regional identity within a constructed Welsh ‘scene’ that does not always recognise them. Equally prominent throughout the symposium were metaphors and practices of ‘archiving’, and this inspired the third section of the book, which considers how institutions have constructed sites where memories of popular music are gathered and archived. In Chapter 6 Jez Collins and Paul Long examine the proliferation of community curators of online archives, identifying them as part of the ‘memory boom’ in contemporary culture. Whilst acknowledging the located nature of many online archival popular music sites anchored to physical places, scenes, and cities, Collins and Long consider the fluidity of online materials: the potential for ‘mash-ups’ and remixing calling into question the fixity of notions such as the archive and the artefact. Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder’s discussion in Chapter 7 focuses on one such localised archive—the Bristol Live Independent Music Archive (BLIMA). Henning and Hyder consider the archive as a technique for reflection upon the role of musical production and performance on the lives of musicians, promoters and audiences in Bristol. They argue that the popular music archive can allow us to move away from the more celebrated names associated with the ‘Bristol Sound’ such as Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky, and instead offer everyday experiences of live music via relatively unstable institutions such as small record labels, venues and promoters. By archiving this material, they argue, BLIMA offers rich ways to critique and challenge existing debates on subcultures, scenes and genres. Chapter 8 presents case studies from Alison Huber and Sarah Baker’s wider sociological research on the growing number of amateur-run collecting

Locating Popular Music Heritage 9 institutions being established globally. Terming them DIY institutions, they examine their role in assembling a material record for popular music, salvaging material from the ‘garbage heap’. Deborah Withers similarly examines an amateur archiving process in her study of the Women’s Liberation Music Archive (WLMA) in Chapter 9. She contends that the WLMA is useful as an ‘archive of process’ that offers invaluable insight into the process of ‘doing’ music, offering alternate and anti-commercial music practices that contrast and contest with dominant narratives available elsewhere in popular music heritagisation. The idea of sites that are not simply attached to histories and memories of popular music but imbued with ‘nostalgia’ also came to the fore during the symposium, providing the theme for the fourth section. In Chapter 10, Kenneth Forbes discusses audience memory in relation to one specific venue, the Glasgow Apollo. Forbes reflects on how memory work is undertaken in relation to the now demolished site, the absence of the venue reinforcing personal memories caught within a collective memory framework centred on the gig experience at the Apollo. In Chapter 11 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton examine how nostalgia is provoked by popular music museum exhibitions. Drawing on interviews with museum professionals they explore how curatorial approaches and exhibition design can revive memories or encourage forms of ‘vicarious’ nostalgia. They contest perspectives that devalue nostalgic response in the museum, and argue instead for its potential to emotionally involve and engage the visitor. Tim Dowd identifies a further site for ‘remembering’ in Chapter 12: the US prog-rock festival. Dowd contends that these festivals offer a fleeting, ephemeral site for heritage processes, forming a dialectical relationship between past memory and present performance. The theme for the fifth section of the book, ‘pilgrimage’, was inspired by papers that focused on the significance of journeys and visits to specific popular music locations, and considered the sacral and spiritual qualities and psychogeographic characteristics of such sites. John V. Ward envisages the website as a new place for pilgrimage in Chapter 13. His case study focused around US rock group the Grateful Dead uncovers a complex matrix of real and imagined ‘sites’, found across lyrics, concert venues and archives. He argues that the experience of the Grateful Dead’s music is expressed spatially, and that this journey has moved online, reconstructed by communities of fans. Whilst Ward discusses a US touring band’s online geography, in Chapter 14 Alex Lawrey explores the real world locations inhabited by Notting Hill–based writer Tom Vague. He discovers a psychogeography rich with popular music heritage, radical politics and Situationist spirit. In Chapter 15 Sara Cohen and Les Roberts take a closer look at the heritage phenomenon of ‘Blue Plaque’ schemes, using them as a lens through which to uncover processes of legitimisation and authority that underpin different music heritage practices in the UK. They interrogate categories of official ‘authorised’ heritage and ‘self-authorised’ heritage found with blue plaques,

10 Sara Cohen et al. and also question what occurs when previously authorised sites of popular music heritage become discredited and need to be unauthorised. The final journey of pilgrimage analysed is to the crossroads, with Mark Duffett discussing the myth, memory and reality of blues tourism in Chapter 16. Duffett theoretically locates the role of fans who visit blues heritage sites, unravelling the complex social, cultural and racial factors imbued in a music pilgrimage that could be construed as a form of ‘dark tourism’. As this collection attests, sites of popular music heritage can be defined and discovered in many places—real or imagined; at many times—past, present, future; and for many genres across global music practices. In gathering these perspectives together, we hope to stimulate further debate, discussion and scholarship on the role that popular music will play in the construction of heritage for future generations. Whether it is located in geographically specific sites, museum collections and exhibitions, or in the virtual space of the web, popular music frequently inflects our experience of everyday life and significant events. As such, its presence in the heritage discourses we create to commemorate and recollect our shared pasts should not be overlooked. NOTE 1. The project was supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www. heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007–2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme. It was led by the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University, and a partnership with the University of Liverpool, the University of Ljubljana and the University of Vienna.

REFERENCES Ashworth, G. J., Graham, B., & Tunbridge, J. E. (2007). Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies. London: Pluto Press. Bennett, A. (2009). ‘ “Heritage rock”: Rock music, representation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37: 474–489. Brandellero, A., & Janssen, S. (2014). ‘Popular music as cultural heritage: Scoping out the field of practice’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 224–240. Brandellero, A., Janssen, S., Cohen, S., & Roberts, L. (2014). ‘Popular music memory, cultural memory and cultural identity’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 219–223. Burgoyne, R. (2003). ‘From contested to consensual memory: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’. In K. Hodgkin & S. Radstone (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory. London: Routledge. Cohen, S. (2012). ‘Musical memory, heritage & local identity: Remembering the popular music past in a European capital of culture’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 19 (5): 576–594.

Locating Popular Music Heritage 11 Gibson, C., & Connell, J. (2005). Music and Tourism: On the Road Again. Clevedon: Channel View. Hall, S. (2005). ‘Whose heritage? Un-settling “the heritage”, re-imagining the postnation’. In J. Littler & R. Naidoo (eds.), The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’. London: Routledge. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (2004). ‘Intangible heritage as metacultural production’. Museum International, 56 (1–2), 52–65. Leonard, M. (2007). ‘Constructing histories through material culture: Popular music, museums and collecting’. Popular Music History 2 (2): 147–167. Leonard, M. (2013). ‘Staging the Beatles: Ephemerality, materiality and the production of authenticity in the museum’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (4): 357–375. doi:10.1080/13527258.2012.754367 Leonard, M., & Knifton, R. (2012). ‘ “Museums of sound”: Collecting and curating everyday popular music experiences’. In R. Snape, H. Pussard, & M. Constantine (eds.), Recording Leisure Lives: Everyday Leisure in 20th Century Britain (pp. 67–83). Eastbourne: Leisure Studies Association. Littler, J., & Naidoo, R. (eds.). (2005). The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’. London: Routledge. Lowenthal, D. (1996). Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. New York: Free Press. Reinartz, J. (2010, December 29). Top Tours 2010. Retrieved from www.pollstar. com/blogs/news/archive/2010/12/29/751701.aspx (accessed February 15, 2014). Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber. Roberts, L. (2014a). ‘Marketing musicscapes, or, the political economy of contagious magic’. Tourist Studies 14 (1): 10–29. Roberts, L. (2014b). ‘Talkin bout my generation: Popular music and the culture of heritage’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 262–280. Roberts, L., & Cohen, S. (2014). ‘Unauthorizing popular music heritage: Outline of a critical framework’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 241–261. Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Tunbridge, J. E., & Ashworth, G. J. (1996). Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester: Wiley. UNESCO. (2003). Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/culture/ich/doc/src/01852-EN.pdf (accessed February 15, 2014). van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Part 1

Problematizing Popular Music Heritage

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2

Popular Music and the ‘Problem’ of Heritage1 Andy Bennett

In July, 2011 I spent four weeks in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, collecting data for an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project focusing on the theme of popular music and cultural memory.2 One evening during my visit I was invited to Freemantle, a coastal port city very close to Perth, to view the High Street West End Spray Chalk Star Walk of Fame, a temporary installation dedicated to local arts associated with Freemantle’s popular music history. The invitation came from an organiser of the Star Walk who gave me a personal tour of the installation, which comprised a collection of pictures and accompanying memories and reflections by musicians and others associated with the local music scene, past and present. For a relatively small city, Freemantle boasts a rich history of local popular music: among its most famous exports are Bon Scott, singer with AC/DC during the band’s initial rise to fame; and, more recently, alternative rock band Eskimo Joe. At one point on my tour of the Star Walk, I asked my guide about the reaction of local residents to the installation. She said that generally the response had been very positive, although some small acts of vandalism—notably the scrubbing out of one of the chalked names on the pavement—suggested that the installation was not to everyone’s liking. My guide suggested that the vandalism was probably a result of the inclusion—or exclusion—of a name that someone in the city had taken exception to. I questioned this, putting it to her that the vandalism could have been random. She had her doubts. It struck me, not for the first time in my career as an academic researching aspects of local popular music culture and history, exactly how subjective, contested and conflicting notions of musical history and heritage—as these map onto notions of space, place, identity and authenticity—can be and often are. Indeed, I was reminded of a comment made to me a number of years earlier, in Canterbury, UK, a place on the other side of the world, by a local music shop owner in response to my asking him about his views on the idea of a ‘Canterbury Sound’ or ‘Scene’ (a term loosely applied by music journalists in the late 1960s to a handful of progressive and jazz rock groups with varied, and sometimes quite tenuous, connections to the city; see Bennett, 2004a). The music shop owner was roundly sceptical in his reply. Thus,

16 Andy Bennett he observed: ‘I think it’s been blown up and exaggerated quite a bit to be honest. I’ve lived in Canterbury all my life and I was never aware of it’. He then went further, suggesting that for him ‘Canterbury’ music was a mixture of many things that were ‘really’ local—for example, the street musician culture of the city (and the colourful characters associated with this) or the Sunday afternoon brass band concerts in Dane John Park (see Rootes, 1997) that he remembered watching as a child—something incidentally that was clearly of importance to a number of others too as, with the turn of the new millennium, the Dane John Park bandstand was renovated and the Sunday afternoon brass band performances restored. The comments of the shop owner about the Canterbury Sound are in stark contrast to an observation made by Richard Sinclair, one-time vocalist and bassist with Caravan, one of a handful of progressive rock and experimental jazz groups who positively benefitted from their association with the ‘Canterbury Sound’. Speaking with the voice of authority afforded him by performing with one of the more well-known ‘Canterbury’ groups, Sinclair had the following to say about the Canterbury Sound: People say, what is the Canterbury scene? I think you have to come to Canterbury and see it and hear it! I think Kent has got a particular sound. We’ve sung in our schools here, we were all at school in this sort of area. I was part of the Church of England choir: up to the age of sixteen I was singing tonalities that are very English. Over the last three or four hundred years, and even earlier than that, some of the tonalities go back. So they are here, and they are a mixture of European things too. The history is very much that. A very historical centre of activity is Canterbury for the last hundred years. So it’s quite an important stepping stone of whatever this thousand years have covered. I think it’s not to be mocked because it’s a centre of communication here and it’s a meeting point— many nations come here to visit the cathedral, so you get a very unique situation happening.3 Posted on Calyx, the official Canterbury Sound website, in 1999, this comment aligns with a more populist version of the Canterbury Sound, shared by many journalists, music critics, musicians and music fans alike. Indeed, Sinclair’s attempted narrative definition of the Canterbury Sound is a highly romanticised construct that randomly weaves together affective notions of place—past and present—underpinned by an arbitrary reworking and combining of national, regional and urban identity (as illustrated by the way in which Sinclair rehearses notions of Englishness, Kentishness, and Canterburyiness in quick-fire succession). But Sinclair’s observation also throws into sharp relief another critical element at play here, namely the vested commercial interests ingrained in the defining and positioning of popular music history and heritage. Particularly in the field of rock, although by no means exclusive to that genre,

Popular Music and Heritage 17 the placeness of music is often regarded as an important benchmark of its ‘authenticity’ (see, for example, Cavicchi, 1998; Kahn-Harris, 2006). As I have argued elsewhere, the implicit message in such representations of rock is that ‘it [is] an organically created music, rooted in real communities’ (Bennett, 2008a, emphasis added). As such, these kinds of association of rock with place are also a critical marketing tool, something that has been evident in a global popular music marketing sense since the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll, but with antecedents in earlier forms of music, such as country, jazz and blues (Peterson, 1997; Grazian, 2004) and, perhaps most stridently, in folk (MacKinnon, 1994). To all of this one can also add the interests of the tourism and heritage industries, together with various other interests engaged in what has come to be termed civic boosterism (Frost, 2008; Baker et al., 2009). To return to the example of Canterbury, at the point when I initially conducted research on the Canterbury Sound, during the late 1990s, the city was not directly on the UK music tourism map. But the telltale signs of things to come were already in place. In the year 2000, the first ‘Canterbury Sound’ festival was staged, featuring a specially re-formed Caravan plus a host of non-Canterbury Sound groups and artists who have become late sixties ‘favourites’—including Welsh progressive rock outfit Man and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. In the same period, the launching of the aforementioned Calyx, the official Canterbury Sound website, renewed interest in the idea of the Canterbury Sound and provided the impetus for a form of proto-music tourism as individuals from different parts of the world began visiting Canterbury looking for traces of the Canterbury Sound (see Bennett, 2002; 2004a). Partly in response to this emergent brand of local music tourism, a specially commissioned four-volume CD series, The Canterburied Sounds, was put together by a group of local Canterbury Sound enthusiasts including Brian Hopper (brother of Hugh Hopper, who had been a member of local group The Wilde Flowers along with Richard Sinclair and Robert Wyatt before going on to form Soft Machine with Wyatt). Sold in several local record shops, The Canterburied Sounds was a collection of rediscovered early recordings made during the early 1960s by The Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine and others often using little more than domestic reel-to-reel tape recorders. The Canterburied Sounds was released by Voiceprint, a then relatively small label at the forefront of an emerging marketing trend that has now become firmly established as ‘heritage rock’ (see Bennett, 2009; 2013). In recent years Voiceprint has grown into a major international distributor of heritage rock product; recent releases include Tony Palmer’s 17-part documentary series on the history of 20th century popular music All You Need Is Love (see Huber, 2011) and a Voiceprint ‘original’ DVD series, Classic Festivals Under Review. Palmer’s All You Need Is Love was originally screened in 1977 and until now has not been available as a DVD set. It is in

18 Andy Bennett many ways a unique, if dated, insight into a pre-punk popular music world.4 Classic Festivals, taking its lead from the established and highly successful Classic Albums series, combines never or rarely seen archive footage of performances from events such as the 1976 Knebworth Festival with new material, drawn largely from interviews with festival organisers, promoters and so on about their reflections on events they were involved in over thirty years ago. The music industry has never been slow to realise the commercial gains to be made from putting a heritage stamp on its product, but the significant increase in use, and visibility, of the ‘heritage’ label is clearly suggestive of the increasingly complex array of interests that are coming into play around the definition and ascription of heritage as this applies to popular music. POPULAR MUSIC AND HERITAGE Conventionally speaking, the term ‘heritage’ has been used to refer to specific canonical representations of custom, tradition and place that are presented as an integral part of collective identity in particular regional and national contexts (see Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1992; McDowell, 2008). For this reason, ‘heritage’, like ‘history’, has long been considered a deeply problematic term—one that is inherently charged with sociopolitical interests and thus simultaneously ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’. Recent research on the concept of heritage has attempted to challenge more conservative definitions and representations of the term, maintaining that through greater access to media and cultural resources, communities and broader social groups are empowered to define and promote their own representations of history and heritage—in some cases offering narratives and representations that transcend locality, region and nation to encompass new, often affective, categories of heritage grounded in, for example, generation, diaspora and trauma. Indeed, as Atkinson observes, the concept of heritage is now both highly contested and increasingly multi-layered. Inevitably, this has led to criticism from some commentators that ‘anything and everything from the past is now celebrated uncritically and indiscriminately’ (2008: 381). Atkinson, however, takes issue with this view, arguing that such a recasting of heritage could also be seen to represent a ‘more far-reaching re-engagement with collective pasts’ (ibid.). Such shifts in the way heritage is now being rearticulated and applied also have significant ramifications for what is understood—and indeed is open to interpretation—as heritage. As the foregoing description suggests, in its conventional definition heritage was not something readily applied to popular music (at least in the contemporary sense of the term), nor indeed other aspects of contemporary popular culture; the mass-produced, commercial and global cultural properties of the latter rendered them the antithesis of anything deemed to be of authentic historical and cultural value as

Popular Music and Heritage 19 this was conceived in conventional heritage discourse. Likewise, a number of institutional biases served to block the incorporation of contemporary popular cultural forms into heritage discourse. This is seen, for example, by the way in which state subsidy for the ‘arts’ and ‘culture’ was until relatively recently directed towards more highbrow tastes and preferences. However, such high culture / low culture distinctions are increasingly unsustainable in a late modern context where aspects of ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ or ‘popular’ culture frequently merge (Storey, 1993). Indeed, as a growing body of literature attests, critical reviews of a variety of popular cultural forms including popular music (van Venrooij and Schmutz, 2010), television (Bielby and Bielby, 2004) and literature (van Rees et al., 1999) routinely draw on high art discourses (Janssen et al. 2008). Aligned with this shift is the changing nature, and perception, of the term ‘culture’ itself in late modernity. Chaney (2002) has argued that a key impact of mediatisation and the increasing centrality of consumerism in daily life since the end of the Second World War has been a gradual fragmentation of everyday culture and the rise of new, differentiated forms of lifestyle orientation—grounded in, for example, fashion, music, television and film—that have begun to replace traditional forms of lifestyle, grounded in community and tradition, as key resources through which individuals frame identities in the context of late modernity. This is not to suggest that these previous forms of social life have disappeared altogether. On the contrary, instances of what Williams (1965) refers to as ‘residual culture’, for example, language, local dialect, particular mannerisms and so on, continue to influence notions of cultural identity to a fair degree. But these are tempered by more recent, mass-produced cultural forms. Indeed, such is the centrality of mass-produced culture in the context of contemporary everyday life that it has effectively become intertwined with residual cultural forms. In naming what they consider to be the key aspects of their cultural milieu, individuals regularly conflate residual and mass cultural elements into seamless narratives of national and regional distinctiveness (in the context of popular music, a recent and relatively clear example of this can be seen in the case of Britpop; see Bennett and Stratton, 2010). The intertwining of popular culture with broader cultural narratives in this way also gives rise to new understandings of popular culture’s role in the shaping and trajectory of culture. Through its appropriation and use in everyday, vernacular contexts, popular culture ceases to be regarded as something set apart from culture per se (which, as previously argued must in any case be regarded as an increasingly artificial distinction) but as an integral part of culture, its production and reproduction over time. At the same time, the new significance attached to popular culture, and music in particular, has given rise to new understandings of its ‘cultural’ value. Thus, rather than merely associating the cultural value of music with aspects of locality and national identify (though these issues retain importance; see for

20 Andy Bennett example, Regev, 1996; Bennett, 2000), those who invest in popular music as an aspect of cultural heritage are equally apt to articulate this in translocal, generationally based terms. Popular music thus comes to be regarded as something that bonds and shapes individuals through specific instances of cultural memory tied to their collective associations with particular music scenes and associated cultural groups as these manifest themselves at an affective, trans-local level (Bennett, 2006; Bennett and Hodkinson, 2012). WHOSE HERITAGE? The recasting of heritage as an affective and often intangible discourse that can be played out around more ‘official’ and tangible representations of heritage brings a new level of complexity to how we understand and account for the value of heritage in late modernity. For even as new possibilities appear for the democratisation of heritage and heritage discourse, these quickly become embedded in fresh power struggles centred upon issues of ‘ownership’ and the ‘right’ to define heritage. The discourse around contemporary popular music genres such as rock as forms of late 20th cultural heritage is a salient case in point. In an important, mainstream (and thus highly visible) sense, popular music heritage is largely dictated through an Anglo-American axis of influence as a heritage project that is essentially white, middle class and rockist. As evidenced in everything from former US President Bill Clinton’s cameo appearance in Martin Scorsese’s 2009 Rolling Stones’ film Shine A Light to the various knighthoods of rock and roll ‘dignitaries’ in the United Kingdom, ‘rock’ is now embedded firmly in the cultural memory of a socioeconomically and culturally empowered ageing baby-boomer generation, not merely as something particular to their youth, but rather as a key element in their collective cultural awareness of themselves as a generation. Within this, the rock establishment, a term once used by punk inspired music journalists to criticise what they perceived as the aloof posturings of groups such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Queen, can now be legitimately applied to an ageing rock audience who, in addition to their economic power, often hold influential positions in the media and cultural industries, and also in various government and public sector concerns. Popular music heritage then is at one significant level a self-serving exercise, committed among other things to the uncritical reproduction of a heritage canon inextricably bound up with a white, middle class baby-boomer understanding of musical authenticity—in which issues of generation, genre, production, art and culture are forged together into dominant narratives that threaten to expunge vast tracts of musical production, performance and reception from popular memory (Bennett, 2009). As outlined above, a number of critical antecedents have assisted the baby-boomer generation’s

Popular Music and Heritage 21 collective reclassification of rock from the music of their youth to a fundamental aspect of late 20th century cultural heritage. Most importantly, this generation’s own representatives, in the fields of television, film, journalism and other cultural industries, have drawn on their institutional power and status to engage in this process. Useful in exploring this issue is the concept of ‘retrospective cultural consecration’ (Allen and Lincoln, 2004; Schmutz, 2005). As Schmutz observes, consecrating institutions increasingly operate across the sphere of contemporary popular culture, conferring critical acclaim, historical importance and cultural value on particular texts. In the context of popular music, print and visual media have performed an incisive role in the process of retrospective cultural consecration. In particular, Rolling Stone magazine, together with more recent ‘retro’ music magazines, such as Mojo, Classic Rock and Rock and Folk (the latter being the first French language retro music magazine on this topic) have collectively assembled a canon of rock artists deemed worthy of retrospective cultural consecration. As Jones observes, contributing authors to such magazines are ‘the same authors who write books on individual albums and general histories of rock, and are therefore able to reinforce their values in other secondary material’ (2008: 94). Film and television have also played their part in serving up and reinforcing critical canons through which baby-boomers have come to reclassify rock as an aspect of late 20th century heritage. For example, 1994 saw the release of Woodstock: The Director’s Cut, which restored a number of classic Woodstock performances, notably by Canned Heat and the Jefferson Airplane, edited from the original version of the film of the festival released in 1970 (see Bennett, 2004b). The four-disc DVD set includes a special feature ‘The Museum at Bethal Woods: The Story of the Sixties and Woodstock’. Essentially a promotional trailer for the museum, built at the site of the original 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair (to use its official title), the short film, despite being presented by Vernon Reid (guitarist and founder of African American rock-metal-funk fusion outfit Living Colour), presents the museum’s patronage as predominantly white Anglo and middle class. The presentation of the ageing Woodstock generation and their offspring in this way is made all the more striking by the film’s featured photos and movie footage from the 1969 Woodstock festival which clearly illustrate that the event per se was by no means a purely white, middle class affair—both festival performers and audience comprised a discernible multi-ethnic, multicultural dimension. The Classic Albums television series similarly presents as a celebration of white, baby boomer supremacy in the popular music heritage stakes. Now in its twelfth year, a total of 36 episodes of the occasional series have thus far been made; in addition to the original television broadcasts, each episode is available as a DVD which in most cases contains extra features, dialogue and sequences not shown on TV. Classic Albums brings together musicians, studio producers and engineers to talk about their contributions to what

22 Andy Bennett are critically judged, within established canons of the music industry, to be landmark recordings (see Bennett and Baker, 2010). Indeed, the series is a telling illustration of what French sociologists Glevarec and Pinet (2009) refer to as a ‘new highbrow’ aesthetic. True to a process originally outlined by Walter Benjamin (1973) in his seminal work on film, through the discourses of art and creative technological vision employed in Classic Albums, the mechanically produced object is transformed into the primary object, whose meaning and significance is revealed through a form of educated listening and appreciation supported by the opinions and reflections of the critically endorsed ‘expert’ voice. Moreover, the albums selected as worthy of such critical acclaim and expert dissection and analysis fall within a distinct and relatively narrow pattern. Albums thus far featured in the series include Cream’s Disreali Gears, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced, the Who’s Who’s Next, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Queen’s A Night at the Opera (all of which were recorded between 1967 and 1975 during what is now commonly presented as the classic era of rock music; see Bennett, 2008b). Taken as a whole, of the 36 episodes of Classic Albums currently in circulation, 27 fall squarely with the category of rock, only 4 are albums by non-white artists, and—with exception of Bob Marley’s Catch a Fire—all featured albums are by Anglo-American artists. Admittedly, the Classic Albums concept has inspired several local spin-offs, including Classic Australian Albums and a small series produced in the Netherlands focusing on the albums of several leading Dutch artists. Such initiatives and their resulting products remain, however, very much on the periphery and, as such, have had far less impact on the global perception—and understanding—of the classic album artefact than their Anglo-American counterpart. The role of print and audiovisual media has been supplemented through the emergence of what could be termed ‘prestige-granting’ bodies and institutions. For example, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, bolsters the critical acclaim of a select body of pop and rock artists through featured exhibitions and permanent displays. Many of those artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame each year first rose to prominence during the 1960s (for example, more recent inductees include British jazz-rock guitarist Jeff Beck, whose early career was spent playing with the Yardbirds alongside fellow rock guitar pioneer Jimmy Page). What could be termed the ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ effect fans outwards to the global periphery. An AC/DC exhibition at the Museum of Western Australia in Perth in 2011 attracted far more attention than Freemantle’s High Street West End Spray Chalk Star Walk of Fame, despite the fact that the iconic presence of Bon Scott was registered in each site (in addition to the Star Walk, Scott is also remembered in a dedicated memorial site located at Freemantle Harbour). Indeed, although the museum exhibition in Perth featured various pieces of Bon Scott memorabilia—largely in the form of personal letters and postcards sent by the singer to relatives and friends, together with some archive

Popular Music and Heritage 23 interviews and concert footage—the centrepiece of the exhibit was a large video screen flanked by mocked up speaker cabinets and cannons (to replicate a live AC/DC show) and featuring a loop of live performance cuts from the 1980s and 1990s. By this time British singer Brian Johnson had replaced Scott (who died in 1980) as lead vocalist and the band had entered its critical phase as an arena rock act, particularly in the US where AC/DC came into its own following the release of the Back in Black album and supported by the then new mediums of video and MTV (Kaplan, 1988). THE PROBLEM OF HERITAGE There are then some critical problems associated with current representations and discourses of popular music heritage as these play out in mainstream popular culture, not least of all the hegemonic grip of white, Anglo-American, middle class values when it comes to defining notions of heritage in this particular sphere of contemporary cultural life. There is undoubtedly, significant work to be done in order to begin to create a more balanced understanding and appreciation of the nature, significance and sheer breadth of musical production, performance, and reception—in its myriad forms—that assumes value as ‘heritage’ in a world that is so locally and globally complex. And there are also a number of questions that need to be addressed regarding the factors at play in determining the qualities and parameters of popular music heritage. In the aforementioned ARC project ‘Popular Music and Cultural Memory’, the research began from the premise that official representations of popular music history and heritage—that is those representations that play out in documentaries, film, and popular literature—may not map onto everyday vernacular understandings of popular music history and heritage in any direct or uniform manner. My trip to Perth in 2011 is illustrative of this point. For many of those I interviewed, Perth’s musical heritage cannot be accurately measured purely in terms of its most successful exports to the global popular music market— Rolf Harris, Bon Scott, Eskimo Joe or Jebodiah. Rather, for these people Perth’s musical heritage is inextricably woven into other, more intangible, mundane and matter-of-fact aspects of everyday life in the city. For example, from the point of view of one of my interviewees, his memories of the rock and roll dances of his youth, staged on local beaches during the summer months, are a pivotal element of Perth’s popular music heritage. For other local people, the ‘rock masses’ of the early 1970s which they either attended themselves or heard about from those who did, and the site of the church in which these took place, are a centrally important part of Perth’s musical heritage (see also Bennett, 2014). Similarly, Perth’s romanticised representation, not as the ‘Liverpool of the South Seas’, as Brabazon (2005) terms it, but as the most geographically isolated city in the world is very important for understanding the way in which locals talk about and

24 Andy Bennett perceive the history and heritage of popular music in their city (there are, in fact, a number of cities around the world that are more geographically isolated than Perth, examples of which include Honolulu, Reykjavik and Anchorage). The one official attempt thus far to document Perth’s popular music and its history, WMBC’s ‘Something in the Water’ has met with a decidedly mixed reception among members of the local community, many of whom feel that the documentary barely scratches the surface of what Perth music is about and why Perth is, and has been for many years, an important centre for popular music. Perth’s geographical isolation (which today is, in truth more of a ‘felt’ than ‘actual’ isolation) is routinely reported by locals to be key to the rapid growth of a largely DIY popular music scene in the city from the 1950s onwards. Excited and inspired by rock and roll and the musical and cultural developments that followed, but seldom exposed to the live spectacle of globally established popular music artists (given that on Australian tours many international artists regularly missed out Perth), local Perth artists filled this critical gap through providing the live spectacle and spawning along the way a number of local legends, including the Triffids and the Scientists (see Stratton, 2008). For many locals, these artists are the true heroes of Perth popular music and the ones who deserve to be remembered and celebrated in local expressions of popular music heritage. Of course, such stories about the importance of local music are numerous, not merely in Perth but in cities, provinces and regions around the world. Over twenty years ago Ruth Finnegan (1989) and Sara Cohen (1991) demonstrated in separate studies the importance of locality, and local structures of feeling, in revealing the significance of musical life—and the connectedness of music to other aspects of local history, heritage and culture. Theorists such as Thornton (1995) were quick to argue that such studies of local music scenes closed off any consideration of the impact of global media on constructions of local identity and culture as articulated through music and other, related forms of popular culture. Arguably, however, such criticism in turn largely missed the point. Neither Finnegan nor Cohen, nor indeed a number of other researchers who have looked at the importance of the ‘local’ in relation to popular music, have wanted to dismiss the local–global interplay. Rather, such work has been concerned to address the importance of the local as a space in which individuals make connections with and understand the everyday value of music, including mass-produced, globally circulated music, as something important in their lives. In 1997, I published an article on local pub rock scenes in the northeast of England. A good part of the piece was spent discussing my experiences as a gigging musician working in pubs and clubs in the city of Kingston upon Hull in East Yorkshire. I noted then the iconic importance of some of those spaces in the local cultural memory of musicians and audiences because of the way they allowed for a sharing of regional knowledge, regional jokes, and contemporary regional historical references intimately understood by local performers and their local audience. The

Popular Music and Heritage 25 significance of the local pub gig, I argued, could not merely be gauged in terms of its value as a night’s entertainment. Rather, I suggested, it was an important form of ritual remembering—a means through which a community could celebrate its history and heritage through the medium of a music largely borrowed from the Anglo-American global popular music world but reinterpreted in a way that only really made sense in the local context of its performance (Bennett, 1997; see also Bennett, 2000). CONCLUSION In this chapter I have addressed what I consider to be some key problematic issues associated with the concept of heritage as this is now being applied to contemporary popular music. I began by discussing the way in which more recent renderings of heritage, although loosening the term from its previous connotations with often highly conservative notions of custom, tradition, art and culture, have simultaneously engendered new hierarchical definitions of heritage linked with new forms of cultural authority. In this respect, it was argued, the ageing baby boomer generation, empowered by the media and cultural industries together with other prestige-giving institutions, have enshrined specific, generationally endorsed artists, their music and associated spaces of production and consumption with a mantle of cultural heritage. This process of popular music heritage-making, I have suggested, has served to produce a deeply ingrained notion of what ‘counts’, culturally and historically speaking, in the popular music of the last fifty years. This highly selective canon of popular music heritage, I have argued, threatens to expunge a range of other ways in which popular music is remembered and celebrated, particularly in local and peripheral contexts. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter previously appeared in articles published in Media, Culture & Society (see Bennett, 2002), Poetics (see Bennett, 2009) and in a chapter featured in Ian Inglis’s edited volume Popular Music and Television in Britain (see Bennett & Baker, 2010). 2. The broader project is called Popular music and cultural memory: Localised popular music histories and their significance for national music industries. It was funded under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Project scheme for three years (2010–12, DP1092910). Chief Investigators on the project are Andy Bennett (Griffith University), Shane Homan (Monash University), Sarah Baker (Griffith University) and Peter Doyle (Macquarie University), with Research Fellow Alison Huber (Griffith University). 3. Source: Calyx—The Canterbury Website: www.alpes-net.fr/~bigbang/ 4. Palmer is also credited with directing other, one-off rockumentaries such as the highly acclaimed Irish Tour ’74, a unique historical insight into the life and work of deceased Irish blues-rock guitarist Rory Gallagher at the very peak of his career.

26 Andy Bennett REFERENCES Allen, M. P., & Lincoln, A. E. (2004). ‘Critical discourse and the cultural consecration of American films’. Social Forces 82: 871–894. Atkinson, D. (2008). ‘The heritage of mundane places’. In B. Graham & P. Howard (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Baker, S., Bennett, A., & Homan, S. (2009). ‘Cultural precincts, creative spaces: Giving the local a musical spin’. Space & Culture 12 (2): 148–165. Benjamin, W. (1973). Illuminations (H. Arendt, ed.; H. Zohn, trans.). London: Fontana. Bennett, A. (1997). ‘Going down the pub: The pub rock scene as a resource for the consumption of popular music’. Popular Music 16 (1): 97–108. Bennett, A. (2000). Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Bennett, A. (2002). ‘Music, media and urban mythscapes: A study of the Canterbury Sound’. Media, Culture and Society 24 (1): 107–120. Bennett, A. (2004a). ‘New tales from Canterbury: The making of a virtual music scene’. In A. Bennett & R. A. Peterson (eds.), Music Scenes: Local, Trans-Local and Virtual. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A. (2004b). ‘ “Everybody’s happy, everybody’s free”: Representation and nostalgia in the Woodstock film’. In A. Bennett (ed.), Remembering Woodstock. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bennett, A. (2006). ‘Punk’s not dead: The significance of punk rock for an older generation of fans’. Sociology 40 (1): 219–235. Bennett, A. (2008a). ‘Popular music, media and the narrativisation of place’. In G. Bloustien, M. Peters, & S. Luckman (eds.), Sonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bennett, A. (2008b). ‘ “Things they do look awful cool”: Ageing rock icons and contemporary youth audiences’. Leisure/Loisir 32 (1): 259–278. Bennett, A. (2009). ‘ “Heritage rock”: Rock music, re-presentation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37 (5–6): 474–489. Bennett, A. (2013). Music, Style and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully? Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bennett, A. (2014). ‘Popular music, cultural memory and the peripheral city’. In A. Barber-Kersovan, V. Kirchberg, & R. Kuchar (eds.), Music City: Musikalische Annäherungenan die “kreativeStadt”. transcript: Bielefeld. Bennett, A., & Baker, S. (2010). ‘Classic Albums: The re-presentation of the rock album on British television’. In I. Inglis (ed.), Popular Music on British Television. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bennett, A., & Hodkinson, P. (eds). (2012). Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity. Oxford: Berg. Bennett, A., & Stratton, J. (eds). (2010). Britpop and the English Music Tradition. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bielby, D. D., & Bielby, W. T. (2004). ‘Audience aesthetics and popular culture’. In R. Friedland & J. Mohr (eds.), Matters of Culture: Cultural Sociology in Practice (pp. 295–317). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brabazon, T. (ed.). (2005). Liverpool of the South Seas: Perth and Its Popular Music. Perth: University of Western Australia Press. Cavicchi, D. (1998). Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans. New York: Oxford University Press. Chaney, D. (2002). Cultural Change and Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Classic Albums Live (2006). Niagara’s Cultural Treasure. Brock University Centre for the Arts.

Popular Music and Heritage 27 Cohen, S. (1991). Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Finnegan, R. (1989). The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frost, W. (2008). ‘Popular culture as a different type of heritage: The making of AC/ DC Lane’. Journal of Heritage Tourism 3 (3): 176–184. Glevarec, H., & Pinet, M. (2009). ‘La “tablature” des goûtsmusicaux: un modèle de structuration des préférences et des jugements’. Revue française de sociologie 50 (3): 599–640. Grazian, D. (2004). ‘The symbolic economy of authenticity in the Chicago blues scene’. In A. Bennett & R. A. Peterson (eds.), Music Scenes: Local, Trans-Local and Virtual (pp. 31–47). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (eds.). (1992). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huber, A. (2011). ‘Remembering popular music, documentary style: Tony Palmer’s history in All You Need is Love’. Television and New Media 12 (6): 513–530. Janssen, S., Kuipers, G., & Verboord, M. (2008). ‘Cultural globalization and arts journalism: The international orientation of arts journalism in American, Dutch, French and German newspapers’. Sociological Review 73: 719–740. Jones, C. W. (2008). The Rock Canon: Canonical Values in the Reception of Rock Albums. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kahn-Harris, K. (2006). ‘ “Roots?”: The relationship between the global and the local within the extreme metal scene’. In A. Bennett, B. Shank, & J. Toynbee (eds.), The Popular Music Studies Reader (pp. 128–134). London: Routledge. Kaplan, E. A. (1987). Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. London: Methuen. MacKinnon, N. (1994). The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity. Buckingham: Open University Press. McDowell, S. (2008). ‘Heritage, memory and identity’. In B. Graham & P. Howard (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Peterson, R. A. (1997). Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Regev, M. (1996). ‘Musicamizrakhit, Israeli rock and national culture in Israel.’ Popular Music 15 (3): 275–284. Rootes, A. (1997). Images of Canterbury. Derby: Breedon Books. Schmutz, V. (2005). ‘Retrospective cultural consecration in popular music’. American Behavioral Scientist 48 (11): 1510–1523. Storey, J. (1993). An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (2nd ed.). London: Prentice Hall. Stratton, J. (2008). ‘The difference of Perth music: A scene in cultural and historical context’. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22 (5): 613–622. Thornton, S. (1995). Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. van Rees, K., Vermunt, J., & Verboord, M. (1999). ‘Cultural classifications under discussion. Latent class analysis of highbrow and lowbrow reading’. Poetics 26: 349–366. van Venrooij, A., & Schmutz, V. (2010). ‘The evaluation of popular music in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands: A comparison of the use of high art and popular aesthetic criteria’. Cultural Sociology 4 (3): 395–421. Williams, R. (1965). The Long Revolution. London: Pelican.

3

The Heritage Obsession The History of Rock and Challenges of ‘Museum Mummification’. A French Perspective Philippe Le Guern

As a sociologist of popular culture and former professional musician, I’m struck by the recent exponential rise of interest in rock history from various stakeholders. In France, this has seen increased engagement from public authorities, museums and scholars. Naturally, scholarly attention to this history has a notable lineage. Nevertheless, French scholarship specifically addressing rock heritagisation and its challenges is almost nonexistent, with the exception of the important work of Marc Touché (1998; 2007). How might we explain this turn to what Andreas Huyssen (2011)—in the contrasting context of post-Nazi Germany—described as heritagisation obsession? How should we contextualise this phenomenon, which strongly resembles a sudden interest in the history and heritagisation of this music? Are we witnessing the emergence and establishment of a market for memory? Or, following the critical sociology advanced by Bourdieu, who are the stakeholders and what are the interests involved in this subfield of rock heritagisation? Finally, does this relationship to memory and heritage correspond to an idiosyncratically French form? I will analyse these questions by describing a few telling configurations: the recent interest in rock culture and its past in local politics; the history of rock seen from the point of view of a southern French city; and an emblematic exhibition on rock in a provincial town. THE FOUNDATION OF THE ROCK HERITAGE OBSESSION How can we explain this current obsession for new types of heritage? What motivates it? To address these questions we must consider aspects of technology, sociology and anthropology. To first consider technology, I should emphasise the highly active role of digitisation in reorganising cultural and memorial practices related to archives. I recall finding, at the age of twenty a bootleg recording of the Police at the very bottom of a dark record shop in Italy. I was not particularly passionate about the band, but was fascinated by the object: a sleeveless vinyl, with no information other than Live at Zellerbach written in felt-tip pen on the round sticker in the middle of the

The Heritage Obsession 29 otherwise completely white record. It felt like I was in possession of a true collector’s item, a unique piece of work from contemporary pop culture, a forbidden and homemade object. This vinyl instantly occupied a very special place in my record collection. Yet if I now check on the internet this bootleg is readily available. There is no need to go to Italy anymore to unearth such a nugget. Anyone could find out about its existence and its content, order it and even download it instantaneously. The digital landscape has trivialised such scarcity. Accessing what seemed to me as true incunabulum has become an ordinary experience for contemporary fans, unsurprised that Google and YouTube provide a continuous, free torrent of esoteric underground content. Today rare recordings are instantly provided in a single click. We should not feel saddened by such possibilities: their democratic benefit is obvious and significant. Many filters that used to be relevant lack validity today (cost, scarcity, necessary cultural capital, etc.) and our personal and collective knowledge is broadened. However, abundance and gratuitousness are necessary conditions that may nonetheless be insufficient to guarantee the democratic triumph of knowledge. Regardless, digital technology encourages us to turn contents into archives, thus increasing the importance and value of vernacular objects and deeply modifying our relationship to cultural memory. The second reason which seems to explain our current taste for rock heritage is sociological and is linked to generational factors. As Esteban Buch told me recently as we were discussing the heuristic value of the generation argument, ‘we are old for the first time! By that I mean that for the first time, the fact of getting old is affecting a generation which thought of itself right from the beginning as the youth, with its young music’ (personal communication). For generations who grew up with rock, two components commingle: there is an unavoidable urge to look back on one’s own past, where the memory of what used to be rock music and feelings related to it are still palpable—to such an extent that businesses and advertisers exploit this in a cynical and typically postmodern manner: ‘from youth counterculture to shop counterculture’, in the droll phraseology of Simon Frith (1991: 250). Secondly, new distinctive uses of rock culture are no longer solely limited to those of the omnivorous type but are now also evident in the snobbish type, as this music becomes a component of the new legitimate culture, representing an exploitable cultural resource within the background of cultivated and popular culture hybridism. In such circumstances, marked by nostalgia as well as a sense of erudition, rock acquires heritage value. Furthermore, rock has become an element in the promotion of place, giving rise to many exhibitions staging the local history of this music. The last and most important reason underlies our keen interest in rock heritagisation. From an anthropological perspective, rock reflects our deep relationship to modernity (or more accurately post- and hyper-modernity) envisaged through the dual perspective brought by the reorganisation of our sense of space and time. To begin with time, we may refer to Andreas Huyssen, who claims that by affecting individual and collective memory as well

30 Philippe Le Guern as our sense of temporality (due to material and media life being accelerated) modernity is the source of our new sensitivity to memory (2011: 118). This theory is relatively common among diverse authors (see, for example, Virilio, 1990; Giddens, 1994; Lipovetsky and Charles, 2005; Rosa, 2010). In summary, speed destroys space and erodes time distances. Apprehension of ‘before’ and ‘after’ is replaced by the synchronous presence of all time dimensions—simultaneity—aided by digital technologies. Further, within capitalism the present becomes affected by entropy inflected with continual novelty, ensuring it abides by conditions of programmed obsolescence. To quote Huyssen’s elegant formula (2011: 119), ‘the temporal aspect of such planned obsolescence is certainly amnesia. However amnesia simultaneously generates its opposite: the new museum culture becomes its reactional production’. Similarly, Régine Robin claims that the world tends to become an eternal present (2003: 425). Likewise Jean-François Lyotard (1979) views such ‘presentness’ as indicative of the postmodern condition. In other words: to be increasingly inclined toward amnesia due to constant time acceleration creates, as its antidote, an ever-increasing taste for the past and its preservation. The contemporary urge for heritage is the consequence of our increasing dependency on the there and then. In an environment where electronic media and digitisation proliferate, the material quality of objects acts as an antidote, as evidenced in the current revival of vinyl records. As Lipovetsky and Charles observed, Celebrating the slightest object from the past, invoking the duties of memory, remobilizing religious traditions, hypermodernity is not structured by an absolute present, it is structured by a paradoxical present, a present that ceaselessly exhumes and ‘rediscovers’ the past. [. . .] From the museum of pancakes to the museum of the sardine, from the Elvis Presley museum to the museum of the Beatles, hypermodern society belongs to an age where everything is made into part of our heritage and duly commemorated. (2005: 57) If we add to this the crisis of history embodied since the 1970s by the diverse variants of postmodernism or, at another level, the crisis of the welfare state losing its authority and leading the hyper-modern type to the individualistic paradigm, as well as the crisis of an ‘homogenous national temporality’ (Robin, 2003: 418), we understand why appealing to heritage may seem a credible solution to the malaise caused by the increasing acceleration of social change. In other words, the heritage obsession could be both an answer to and a symptom of a generalised process where ‘in the end, change is no longer perceived as the transformation of stable structures but as fundamental and potentially chaotic indecision’ (Rosa, 2010: 139). If heritage is experienced as what fills the gap between generations, then no wonder it is seen as a primary resource to deal with the effects induced by

The Heritage Obsession 31 the shift from an intergenerational modernity to a transgenerational hypermodernity. It is in this sense that heritage rock may provide a solution of continuity between past and present. The present increasingly appears fragmented and aesthetic trends are increasingly subdivided for specific niche markets. According to Georges Balandier, this ability to provide images, and therefore a generational fantasy, characterises our postmodern society of fluidity, ongoing change, instantaneousness and anxiety—as distinguished from modernity (2012: 173–177). ROCK HERITAGE, IDENTITIES AND TERRITORIES Public policies in France have adopted the history of rock in specific ways. Indeed, although local bands have claimed their territorial rooting for many decades (in the 1980s for example, one could hear about Rennes rock or Lyon rock), it is only recently that territorial policies incorporated strategies of city marketing in which culture, and more specifically rock, play a major role. Cities like Reims and Clermont-Ferrand for instance have utilised their local scenes within identity promotion. Successful local bands, and also memories related to local scenes, are used as a way to differentiate between competing cities. In a national context where it is increasingly expected that cities should attract visitors and distinguish themselves, music can function as a component of brand identity. Angers is a good example: surrounded in the Western regional area by cities with much higher economic and cultural influence like Nantes and Rennes, Angers’s local institutions decided to use its modern music as a promotional vehicle via international twinned cities, such as Austin in Texas.1 It would be interesting to investigate specifically the way city councillors and marketing operations view rock music. Beyond pride in the city’s significant contribution to rock history, perhaps they also hoped that the energetic connotations of these musical styles would emphasise the dynamic entrepreneurial spirit sought by many cities, departments and regions in the context of greater decentralisation and economic crisis. The decision of Angers, discussed here as an example, to opt for English in a recent promotional slogan—Angers Loire Valley—prompted a number of mocking or hostile reactions. Likewise the presentation of the city’s modern music and local artists as ambassadors for its new principle of economic openness to foreign partners, and their central role in Angers’s international policies, is indicative of the emphasis laid today on rock in the toolbox of contemporary local policies. Aside from public authorities, federations such as Fedurok (the regional centre for modern music in the Loire Valley) have opened heritage commissions. As a significant example, the project Folk Archives was set up in 2008 by the regional centre for modern music in the Loire Valley to ‘promote the cultural activism of the past thirty years in the region in an identity and recognition dynamic’.2 The Folk Archives project raises many questions:

32 Philippe Le Guern is it about digitising archive collections to make them more accessible to the public? Such an intention would be generous and certainly useful. The most common questions address choice of collections, their interpretation, and the attribution of metadata. However, the main issue is how to take into account the stakeholders themselves: the very producers and users of these archives. The Folk Archives project reminded me of family photos that a great-grandnephew, suddenly passionate about the family genealogy, gathers without being able to put a name to the faces. Rounding up excessive collections of documents without connecting them to plural contexts, practices and meanings seems to be the main pitfall of this type of enterprise. The danger is one of freezing documents of all sorts (such as posters, music instruments, record sleeves, radio archives) in a monosemy which does not do justice to the complexity of rock culture as a social sphere, as though the document had a meaning in and of itself. That is why it seems useful to plead for a complementary and necessary device such as an ethnographic casebook collating approaches in the broadest sense of the word (including speeches, controversies, etc.) to link up stakeholders with artefacts. As another major stakeholder structuring the music landscape, Fedurok— a national federation of French venues—has linked to more than 70 music venues across France. For the past four years notions of heritage have become a priority in its activity. Again, this recent interest in heritage is indicative of a new sensitivity to memorial aspects and may be explained in different ways: the connection between Fedurok and the FSJ (Jazz Scenes Federation) has drawn attention to the heritage value of the considerable private collection of jazz records belonging to the head of the FSJ, who wanted to transform it into a public collection via donation. Further, surveys of Fedurok members showed that many of them were preserving archives. For example, the Florida (a music hall turned into a gig venue during the 1980s) had not only preserved films of all its concerts, but as a site it was integral to entire eras of music memory since the Golden Twenties. As a result Fedurok has at its disposal an abundance of material which can be utilised. Beyond this, the interest in heritage was also relevant to the impetus built by the Ministry of Culture’s scheme for archive digitisation. Although Fedurok decided not to be involved in this process, it is clear that the Ministry itself, by emphasising the importance of new archives to be digitised, was integrating rock culture—among other current cultural expressions—into a new legitimacy order. Finally, within Fedurok itself, the project of archive preservation occurred at the precise moment when issues of transfer were raised between the generation of pioneer stakeholders of modern music as structured around national territory (venue managers, promoters, and so on) and their next generation of successors. In such a context, archives could function as a mechanism for the passing on of a cultural legacy previously only championed by a few dedicated specialists. Moreover, the preservation of memory was particularly welcome since several disbanded historic sites were being destroyed. At a time when the very history of Fedurok origins

The Heritage Obsession 33 and the roots of modern music’s structure in France was potentially threatened by partial erasure, the interest in archives provided continuity between older fans and modern ones, ensuring memorial continuity. Following the creation in 2010 of the Live DMA Network—a European network of six modern music organisations from five countries (France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Denmark)—one of Fedurok’s managers had the opportunity to visit the museums of Barcelona and Roskilde3 in order to identify what was being done in neighbouring countries in terms of heritagisation. As he told me two years later, ‘there is still a great deal to be done’ (personal communication). MAKING THE HISTORY OF ROCK As I indicated in a previous article (Guibert and Le Guern, 2008), the historiography of rock in France noticeably differs from that written in the United Kingdom. One reason is that in France each discipline has focussed on a specific aesthetic area: jazz was mainly studied by anthropologists and musicologists, traditional music by ethnomusicologists, music hall and chanson by historians, and rap or rock by sociologists. Another reason is that the various aesthetic families do not simultaneously benefit from the same degree of recognition and legitimisation. Having only recently been studied within universities, rock as a style has been historically situated at a relatively late stage. Rather than explaining the specificity of research on rock history in general, I would like to show—through the example of early rock in the city of Avignon—how such historical research is also possible through the use of material culture. As detailed in a previous work, influenced to a large extent by the sociology of translation in Akrich, Callon and Latour (2006), the simple string of an electric guitar, because it is the waypoint, the necessary mediation between diverse and intermixed stakeholders such as violin makers, amplifier manufacturers, members of a rock band, practices and gigs, city or state policies in favour of modern music, record companies, record players, couples dancing in a club or at a party, promoters, and even fans of the Cure and Joy Division, including my 18-year-old self, concentrates in itself a whole social world where technologies and stakeholders are closely connected (Le Guern, 2012: 11) Working on rock history presents several challenges: vocabulary mutations and shifts of meaning must be considered, as well as the numerous language-games which evidence a world in constant change. For example, an article in a local newspaper from Southern France from 1956 discusses ‘The young leader of a gang of rascals subject to a mental test at the magistrates’ court of Avignon’. The word rascal had a very strong pejorative

34 Philippe Le Guern connotation in 1956, referring to juvenile delinquents brought to justice and given prison sentences—the same individuals later termed greasers. This term has a very moderate meaning nowadays. Furthermore, most research on French rock history neglects central dimensions such as the connection between music practices and its side issues such as alcohol, drugs and sex, as well as the relationship to instruments—the musician’s tools—including their everyday nature. One impression is that rock historiography narrativises specific musical practices without taking into account these additional dimensions. There is also the problem of dividing rock history into periods. Marc Touché once mentioned to me an original article found in a magazine from the mid-1930s about the accordion—the famous instrument that used to liven up bal-musette with old popular songs. This text is a rare and enlightening item: it describes the journey of some French accordion specialists who travel to America to discover the electric guitar which they say has ‘a very promising future’ and emits sounds that evoke the saxophone and the organ. Thus, to date the birth of rock to 1954, as suggested by Richard Peterson (1990) for example, is problematic. Rock is not a pure form created by a spontaneous generation but is the product of progressive differentiation from other styles of music. This point is particularly obvious if we look at audiences. In the 1950s, performers like Gilbert Bécaud and Sydney Bechet that we would not label rock musicians nowadays were triggering audience behaviour (such as broken chairs and screaming) that places them on the rock spectrum. In the press of the late 1950s, rock is a blurred genre defined less by stylistic features and more by moods and its sensory impact on audiences. In 1956, when the Rock’n’Roll Club was created in Avignon, rock was described as a ‘feverish dance’ and music, close to ‘trance’. In an article entitled ‘A successful entry for rock and roll in feverish Avignon’, which summarizes an R’n’R night at the Ambassy Club, we read about ‘Swing, Be Bop, Jitterbug, Boogie Woogie’ and an ‘almost feverish, even anxious wait for the newcomer could be none other than Rock & Roll. [. . .] Everyone talks about R’n’R without knowing what it is exactly. [. . .] We heard that R’n’R was not art but simply normal music in reverse’ which ‘has a terrific effect on crowds, [. . .] puts people over the edge’ (Le Provençal, 11 December 1956).4 Within grand narratives of rock we are used to the idea that its pioneers asserted their autonomy from styles of music and artists (such as Sinatra and big jazz bands) which did not speak to the young and were considered unhip. This point warrants further analysis and considerably varies whether one comes from Paris or the provinces, in the mid-1950s or at the beginning of the 1960s. Most musicians from the 1950s–1960s and even the 1970s whom I interviewed combined jazz or variety with rock. It is rare to find a band solely calling itself a ‘rock band’ before the mid-1960s. Boundaries were not clearly established and were flexible—a case in point is Roger Blanchard, a famous musician in Avignon from the mid-1950s. Although his band’s name, the New Orléans, implies a jazz style, his role in

The Heritage Obsession 35 creating the Rock’n’Roll Club in 1956 indicates his interest in rock. Over the same period, we also find Rock-Jazz bands such as Jean-Pierre and his quintet using more traditional instruments like the accordion—an instrument generally associated with variety and bal-musette.5 The practice of balmusette speaks volumes from this perspective. Contrary to the conventional view of bal-musette in which the accordion is the main instrument, many bands had diverse repertoires significantly based on pop or rock, at least until the early 1980s when mobile discos began to compete with them. While bal-musette is typically described as a place to dance, many testimonies indicate that people also went to bal-musette to listen to the ‘hits of the time’. One musician related how ‘astonished’ he was to hear a bal-musette band perfectly cover Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum, suggesting the bond that developed between audiences and the best bal-musette bands. It was important for these bands—which would play for five consecutive hours and had mastered a repertoire of around a hundred songs—to insist on sound quality and their ability to play an authentic cover of the original. Another musician, one of the first artists to play the keyboard in Angers, described to me the feeling of wonder and shock experienced by audiences when the first Mellotrons appeared within popular bal-musette. This mirrors Roland Barthes’s discourse on the wonder caused by photography in its early stage (Barthes, 1980). At that time very few places in France were adapted for rock concerts, and bal-musette was the most obvious way to perform in public and make a living from one’s music, as evidenced by the Shouters in Laval and the Atlas in Angers. Narratives from bal-musette musicians about their occupation are similar to those of rock bands: touring in a Renault Estafette van, two or three gigs every weekend, a promoter managing contracts, a very generous income and sometimes fan clubs and support slots for major stars. The development of gear (amps, guitars, PAs) also gives evidence of nascent professionalization. While American made guitars (Gibson and Fender) are nowhere to be found in 1950s France and in the case of provincial cities until after the 1960s, German (Framus and Hofner guitars, Echolette PAs) as well as Northern European instruments (Hagström guitars) and also handmade or French guitars produced by craftsmen (Garen amps, Stimer mics or Jacobacci guitars) are generally responsible for the sound of the period. Rock mythology was built on ideas of direct opposition between generations and the emergence of a youth or yé-yé culture, as phrased by Edgar Morin (Morin, 1963a, b). Within this context, cinema—The Wild One from 1956 with Marlon Brando for example—contributed to emerging social representations of rock: ‘This film is coming to France after a considerable buzz; it was utterly successful in America and unfolded spectacular scenes of mass hysteria in London’ (Le Dauphiné Libéré, 12 June 1956). Another example is the film Rock Around the Clock: Fans of Rock Around The Clock try to assault a Belgian police station; the film was banned in Mons in Belgium following turbulent scenes on

36 Philippe Le Guern the street. [. . .] Young people who watched the film with a slightly delirious frenzy then wanted to keep expressing their enthusiasm after the screening. After earning themselves ‘paternal’ reprimands from police officers they started to assault the police station by throwing potatoes, tomatoes and eggs. In the end, power obviously remained in the hands of the authorities. And to avoid any similar incidents in the future, they decided to ban this overly suggestive film. (Le Dauphiné Libéré, 11 January 1956) Although the greaser personality inflected the rock’n’roll fantasy for a long time, as confirmed in previous research, it remains in fact an epiphenomenon as youth embraced values and lifestyles conveyed by rock only very gradually. This is supported by the particulars of advertisements from the mid-1950s, with listening to the radio and music as generationally determined practices. For example, in an article entitled ‘The war of waves will not take place or the life of a united family in 1954’ (Le Dauphiné Libéré, 13 December 1954), we see how the represented family is centred around differentiated cultural practices. The father quietly listens to the radio while the young daughter energetically dances to the music of a vinyl record with friends gathered around a record player. Each generation certainly seems to be endowed with specific cultural practices but this distribution of tastes according to age is shown as a contributor to domestic balance and harmony and not to antagonisms between conservative parents and rebellious offspring. The research carried out by both Marc Touché and myself has shown that embracing rock does not necessary lead to conflicts between adults and young people or, to be more accurate, generational oppositions are not about the music itself but about certain aspects of the lifestyle that goes with rock’n’roll. Thus, following hundreds of interviews, Marc Touché listed only two cases of conflicts where parents destroyed the electric guitars of their children. In addition, I collected many more narratives of parents explicitly encouraging their children or giving tacit consent rather than discouraging them. Criticism levelled by parents more often related to inappropriate hairstyle or clothing than to the music played or listened to. We may need an even more nuanced picture: rebellious looks only appeared in the 1960s. Prior to that, bands commonly wore suits. In some cases the adoption of certain fashions could be regarded favourably depending on social background: the ‘Pompadour’ hairstyle adopted by youngsters coming from working-class backgrounds was not perceived negatively. Overall, the collected testimonies suggest that parents were tolerant towards rock’n’roll. This tolerance extended across a large portion of society and can be seen for instance in the support provided by many priests to emerging rock bands; church halls were often used as practice rooms or even gig venues.

The Heritage Obsession 37 STAGING THE HISTORY OF ROCK: A CASE EXHIBITION Rock does not escape the common difficulties of any historiographical undertaking. As Michel de Certeau rightly pointed out, ‘historiography is not what comes to us from the past at all but what comes from us and tends to provide some kind of comprehensibility of what we receive or establish as past’ (2002: 206). As far as rock is concerned, this applies to interpretations focusing on the revolt discourse which may be seen today as the streamlined exploitation by capitalism of the rebellious position that gives credibility and justifies the dominant ideology (Chastagner, 2011: 145 et seq.). This conception of historiographical work appears especially apposite for rock, and it appears that the staging of rock history within exhibitions helps significantly to demonstrate it. To discuss this I will use as an example the exhibition Rock in Laval (November 2009–February 2010).6 I will focus on two sections: first, the reconstruction of a teenager’s bedroom from the 1980s, and second, the reconstruction of a practice room. In the first case, the visitor stands in front of a female music fan’s room which includes posters and a tape player. Common reference points to a teenager’s living environment are present. However what confuses me as a visitor is the fact that this space is misleading about the average French teenager’s way of life at the time. Listening to music as a teenager largely depends on the family’s lifestyle, the available space, and the possibility or not to isolate oneself and consequently to listen to music at higher volumes. In short, it depends on social background and material conditions. Listening to music is not an activity divorced from the social sphere. Naturally, an exhibition is a form of presentation that unavoidably creates shortcuts in terms of what is signified. The social scientist who was advisor to the exhibition commented: The bedroom and the rock practice room are not reconstructions; they are installations of works entirely created for the exhibition. In short, it is fiction, tableaux that are arranged in a certain way following some exchanges. For instance, the bedroom corresponds to the room of a rock fan girl, especially fond of a band from Laval; we are in the 1980s in Laval . . . The issue of social background has always been difficult since we (sociologists) are thought of as pains in the neck . . . It seems that this exhibition corresponds to a middle-class background. In a nutshell then, this room had two main assets: it addressed the issue of gender and the issue of fans. (personal communication) The other example—the practice room—is interesting since it claims to be highly objective. The public does not know whether it is a reconstruction or the presentation of a real practice room formerly owned by a band, and this is not made clear in the information provided. It is not only the issue

38 Philippe Le Guern of authenticity which is problematic but how the exhibited room reduces the range of possible interpretations. Being a musician myself, and having practised in the attic of the family house with my keyboards and a beatbox, I feel excluded from this value system that prioritises rock, the mythology of the guitar, the band practice, playing at high volumes and drinking beer. All of these were completely alien to me as a musician. In my opinion, this room is the sign of a prevailing, ‘rock-centred’ conception of what rock is or should be and excludes anything too far from the represented norm. How this made this practice room problematic was exactly what the exhibition’s scientific adviser emphasised in our discussion: For the practice room, we had to present the reconstruction of a punk rock room . . . [it is] a fictional installation of a room that could have existed in the 1980s–1990s in Laval. I set up a steering committee composed of musicians belonging to these generations. They lent their gear, the team collected egg boxes on markets as bands used to do. We established and confirmed collectively what we needed for presenting this one perspective among others of band practice but a perspective which appeared to be indicative of a strong trend in Laval. The musicians made this den as close as possible to their local experience, with locally used gear. A few days before the preview, the musicians spent an evening meeting in the practice room and left traces of their lifestyle, cigarette butts, beer bottles . . . it could have been water . . . and no cigarette . . . Later on, after having received some comments, we prominently indicated that this was one view among others of the band practice and we added a plastic bottle of water . . . it was a creation, an outlook approached by a steering group composed of adult musicians that followed the proposal of a sociologist. (personal communication) This exhibition shows the way public institutions—here the city of Laval and the departement-level Association for the Development of Music and Dance in Mayenne (ADDM)—take an interest in rock heritage nowadays. It also suggests that turning rock into national heritage necessarily implies a specific representation of the citizen, social belonging, individual and collective memory, and what is of value in the narrative reconstruction of local history. One of Rock in Laval’s curators related how, for him, the idea of rock conveyed by the exhibition was overtly dictated by members of a white and educated middle class. This implied an ignorance and denial of music and audiences that did not belong to their cultural sphere, and the staging of a prevailing narrative that corresponds to their conception of aesthetics and social affairs. An exhibition is never a chemically pure space, as Donna Haraway rightly recalls in her essay on the American Museum of Natural History (2007): at first sight, ‘the museum fulfilled its scientific role of preservation, conservation and production of permanence’. However, looking at

The Heritage Obsession 39 it more closely, ‘behind every naturalised, bronze carved or photographed animal’ we can find a ‘history of race, gender and class’ (2007: 147). Likewise, every exhibition on rock history should lead us to wonder how this history would be rewritten if it was produced from a female, black or gay perspective, or even from the point of view of a club manager or a balmusette musician rather than the one of an archetypal rocker. CONCLUSION In exhibitions such as Rock in Laval, all the objects are or seem to be original. The route is carefully signposted; there are instruments in glass cases, pictures of local bands, record sleeves, the reconstruction of a practice room, a Renault Estafette used by musicians on tour. In short, almost everything the visitor may expect to find. Nevertheless, what narrative is suggested to us? Were there other possible narratives for this history of rock? Who does the presented memory belong to? Which type of sign system was prioritised? What meaning does it have for elected representatives and audiences? Was the work of heritagisation subject to compromises? How can simple artefacts render the view of rock as an urge? As the reader may have understood, this chapter was not written by an expert in archives, exhibitions or cultural heritage. Rather, it relays the curiosity of a music and popular culture specialist, awakened by what seems to be an ever-expanding phenomenon of the heritagisation activity in the field of modern music and more generally a present saturated by memory (Robin, 2003: 451 et seq.). As listener and musician, I wonder about the diagnosis made by Simon Reynolds (2012) of our time described as ‘retromanic’. In essence, I am questioning heritagisation policies, what Derrida calls ‘the power of the document, its detention, retention or interpretation’ but also ‘the desire for memory’ (1998). In this respect, the current eruption and generalisation of digital technologies seem to create a fault line at the junction of two tectonic plates and it is still too early to say whether they are drifting and unavoidably moving away or whether they will merge to create a new hybrid entity. On one hand, we witness a world made of often intimidating physical spaces where the expertise of experts—Godard would say ‘the professionals of the profession’—makes itself an undisputed rule and where audiences can observe symbolic constellations mainly composed of artefacts seemingly indicative of a social history that matters (i.e. that has an exemplary value and represents what we call heritage). On the other hand, however, we find uninitiated experts and vernacular memories presented, both of which used commonly available tools. What supposedly had to represent the framework of collective memory is diffracted through a kaleidoscope of intimate, personal and at times contradictory memories. In the end, it may be that the very status of truth, or questions raised by the notion of truth not only in the field of epistemology but also in ethics are changing. Considering diverse contradictory perspectives

40 Philippe Le Guern of history coming from vernacular witnesses, as experienced in exhibitions of rock music, is also a matter of ethics (Jorion 2009). NOTES 1. Retrieved from www.francerocks.net/austin2012/bureau-export-angers-loirevalley-party-at-brush-square/ 2. Retrieved from www.lepole.asso.fr/fichiers/chantiers/Projet_Folk_Archives_ Sept2012.pdf 3. Retrieved from www.fastcodesign.com/1665192/denmarks-new-rockmuseum-is-cooler-than-our-rock-museums#1 4. The two newspapers quoted in this paper are Le Dauphiné Libéré and Le Provençal. They are the two main local newspapers in Avignon. Le Dauphiné Libéré is politically on the right side and covers an area which goes from the North Vaucluse to the Dauphiné. Le Provençal, at the opposite, is politically on the left side and corresponds to the South of Provence (Bouvhes du Rhône, Marseille). Le Dauphiné Libéré is a long-established newspaper which began publication in September 1945. 5. Bal-musette is a style of French traditional music and dance, centred around the accordion and with a strong emphasis on live performance and dancing (waltz, java, etc.). It was mainly, but not exclusively, seen in urban workingclass neighbourhoods and rural village fetes. 6. For further details about this exhibition see www.dailymotion.com/video/ xbfdfv_exposition-rockin-laval-4-novembre_music

REFERENCES Akrich, M., Callon, M., & Latour, B. (2006). Sociologie de la traduction. Textes fondateurs. Paris: Presses des Mines de Paris. Balandier, G. (2012). Carnaval des apparences. Paris: Fayard. Barthes, R. (1980). La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard/ Seuil/Cahiers du cinéma. Certeau (de), M. (2002). Histoire et psychanalyse. Entre science et fiction. Paris: Gallimard. Chastagner, C. (2011). De la culture rock. Paris: PUF. Derrida, J. (1998). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frith, S. (1991). ‘Souvenirs, souvenirs . . .’. In A. Hennion & P. Mignon (eds.), Rock. De l’histoire au mythe (pp. 247–262). Paris: Vibrations/Anthropos. Giddens, A. (1994). Les Conséquences de la modernité. Paris: L’Harmattan. Guibert G., & Le Guern, P. (2008). ‘Faire l’histoire des musiques amplifiées en France’. In H. Dauncey & P. Le Guern (eds.), Stéréo. Sociologie comparée des musiques populaires. France/Grande Bretagne (pp. 23–42). Paris: Irma. Haraway, D. (2007). Manifeste cyborg et autres essais. Sciences—Fictions— Féminismes. Paris: Editions Exils. Huyssen, A. (2011). La hantise de l’oubli. Essais sur les résurgences du passé. Paris: Kimé. Jorion, P. (2009). Comment la vérité et la réalité furent inventées. Paris: Gallimard. Le Guern, P. (2012). ‘Présentation’. Réseaux 172 (2): 9–27. Lipovetsky, G., & Charles, S. (2005). Hypermodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.

The Heritage Obsession 41 Lyotard, J.-Fr. (1979). La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Éd. de Minuit. Morin E., (1963a, July 6). ‘ “Salut les copains”: I. Une nouvelle classe d’âge’, Le Monde. Morin, E. (1963b, July 7). ‘ “Salut les copains” : II. “Le yé-yé” ’, Le Monde. Peterson R., (1990). ‘Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music’. Popular Music 9 (1): 97–116. Reynolds, S. (2012). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber. Robin, R. (2003). La mémoire saturée. Paris: Stock. Rosa, H. (2010). Accélération. Une critique sociale du temps. Paris: La Découverte. Touché, M. (1998). Mémoire vive #1, Annecy, CEF—MNATP—CNRS—Association des musiques amplifiées au Brise Glace, 1998. Rapport des premières enquêtes à Annecy sur l’histoire locale des musiques amplifiées (livre avec 2 cd audio). Touché, M. (2007). ‘Muséographier les “musiques électro-amplifiées”. Pour une socio-histoire du sonore’. Réseaux 141–142 (2): 97–141. Virillo, P. (2010). Le Grand Accélérateur. Paris: Ed. Galilée.

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Part 2

Mapping, Music and Memory

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4

Mapping the Politics of ‘Race’, Place and Memory in Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage Brett Lashua

“ ‘District 8’ is to Liverpool what Harlem is to New York City.” (New Musical Express, 1977: 28–29) “Take my hand, come with me, I will show you to a place . . .” (Kof, “Child of the Ghetto”, 2012)

INTRODUCTION This chapter is concerned with what are, for some, ‘hidden’ sites of popular music heritage. For others they remain starkly visible, if not in a physical sense then at least so in social memory (Misztal, 2003). Taking as its focus sites of Black musical heritage in Liverpool, in the first epigraph, a 1977 advertisement in New Musical Express proclaimed “District 8” as significant to Liverpool’s popular music heritage as Harlem is to New York City. District 8, also called Granby, Toxteth, Liverpool 8 (its post code) or simply “L8”, is the traditional socio-geographic heart of Liverpool’s Black communities (Small, 1991; Zack-Williams, 1997; Christian, 1998; Brown, 2005; Belcham, 2007). However, this area and its communities have not received the attention in popular music studies, cultural geographies or critical heritage studies as they arguably warrant (Brocken, 2010; McGrath, 2010; Strachan, 2010). The chapter is bookended by two songs by Black musicians about growing up in L8. “Children of the Ghetto” (1977) by the rock/soul group the Real Thing provides an initial means of engaging with contested and competing popular musical heritages, social issues and racialised spaces in Liverpool. “Children of the Ghetto” has been referred to as “the anthem of black British ghetto soul” (Vulliamy, 2011: ¶15) and “the anthem of insurgent Liverpool” (Vulliamy, 2011: ¶17) during the urban unrest that swept the city (and other English cities) in 1981. At the close of the chapter, Liverpool rap/soul artist Kof’s “Child of the Ghetto” (2012) echoes similar themes of poverty and challenging social circumstances. This song’s release fell hard on the heels of another summer (2011) of unrest and ‘riots’ in English cities,

46 Brett Lashua 35 years after the Real Thing’s anthem. Together, the songs map out rhythms of unrest in Liverpool’s popular music heritage. Between these songs, the chapter locates a documentary film project, L8: A Timepiece (2010), which I helped to co-produce with Urbeatz, a Liverpool non-profit urban youth culture and media agency. This film focuses on the cultural, geographical and historic ‘musicscape’ (Cohen and Lashua, 2010) of the L8 area from the 1960s through the 1980s. Featuring interviews with local musicians, DJs, and community leaders, the film traces a network of diasporic African and African-Caribbean social clubs (e.g. the Yoruba Club, Nigeria Club, Ibo Club, Somali Club, Ghana Club, Jamaica House, and Sierra Leone Club) that once thrived as sites of music and leisure in L8. Today there is very little in place to remind us of the clubs’ presence, and the heritage of the social clubs remains largely unknown beyond older generations of residents. With a few exceptions (Cohen, 2007; Palmer, 2009; Leonard, 2010; Strachan, 2010), neither the Black musicians (such as the Real Thing) nor the social clubs and other local L8 venues have received much academic attention in terms of the significant popular music heritage they represent. As such, the chapter questions the ‘visibility’ of Black musical heritage (i.e. sites of representation) and the circulation of social memory through sites of local music making where racialised heritage is made and remade, as lived practice (Littler and Naidoo, 2005). TUNING IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: POPULAR MUSIC, ‘GHETTOS’ AND PROTEST Popular music has the potential to communicate the everyday trials, troubles, hopes, and fears of musicians and their audiences (Lewis, 1999). In this regard, part of the ‘magic’ of popular music is that it may articulate individual and collective experiences. Some socially conscious music (Eyerman and Jamison, 1995) calls attention to the socio-historical forces that shape collective social patterns, and how these patterns shape personal experiences. Songs that illustrate this tradition include Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” (1971) and Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” (1973), both of which provided critical social observations of contemporary urban American life. Songs such as these help to locate individual experiences within wider social contexts. Such capacity “to grasp the interplay between individual and society, of biography and history, of self and world” was described by Mills (1959: 4) as the “sociological imagination.” When active, the sociological imagination allows one to see the difference between what Mills described as ‘personal troubles’ and ‘public issues’. For example, when one person experiences discrimination, this may be understood as a personal trouble; however, when social structures systematically exclude or oppress thousands, or millions, of people, then that is a public issue. The ability to see how a personal trouble

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 47 is a product of public issues is the key skill. However, individuals often internalise pubic issues as personal troubles; they cannot see the wider forces at work and “feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles” (Mills, 1959: 3). The sociological imagination allows individuals to bridge the gap between their personal troubles (e.g. agency) and see the socio-historical forces that shape the context (e.g. structure) in which they take place. Using illustrative music lyrics, Lewis (1999) called attention to the personal troubles and public issues voiced in country music, including gender and family issues, drugs and alcohol dependency, crime and corrections, ageing and death, poverty and homelessness, prejudice and racism, and class and economic exploitation. While also taking note of some of these issues, what this chapter does is extend the focus of the sociological imagination to include the politics of place and cultural heritage. How does popular music help to connect individual experiences of place to broader social heritages and public issues? The chapter also directs attention to soul, R’n’B and ‘urban music’ lyrics about childhood places (e.g. ‘the ghetto’) in popular music memory (Lashua, 2011). While links have been made between social issues, popular music and place, for example in rap music (Bennett, 2000; Forman, 2002), this chapter aims to call attention to the transformations and memorialisation (both official and unofficial) of sites associated with Liverpool’s Black popular music heritage in L8. In doing so, the sociological imagination—attuned to questions of place and heritage—may alert readers to changes and continuities in Liverpool’s popular music, racialised relations, and cultural geographies. “TO GET CLOSE TO THE REAL THING, GET FOUR FROM EIGHT”: MUSIC AND LOCALITY Formed in Liverpool 8 in the early 1970s, the Real Thing was the “biggestselling black rock/soul act” (Cohen, 2007: 51) of that decade, comprised of brothers Eddie and Chris Amoo, Ray Lake, and Dave Smith. Writing of the groups that emerged from the “desolation” of Liverpool in the 1970s, Du Noyer (2007: 112) noted that the Real Thing were the city’s “first black pop stars . . . their style was a million miles away from the urgent sweatiness of Northern Soul, being instead a radiant uptown affair in the tradition of the Temptations and Philadelphia funk.” Du Noyer’s phrase “radiant uptown affair” characterises the Real Thing’s sound in their biggest chart hit—the 1976 UK #1 “You to Me are Everything”—a smooth, soulful, disco-infused, mid-tempo love song. In 1977 the Real Thing released their second album, 4 from 8, a remarkable record and a powerful political statement “in the socially-committed vein of latter day Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder” (Du Noyer, 2007: 113). Both its musical content and its striking album art graphically depict the decay and destruction of their L8 neighbourhood.

48 Brett Lashua Although the name Toxteth has become synonymous in social memory with the urban unrest of the early 1980s (Frost and Phillips, 2011), at the time the area was more often known by its L8 postcode, which the “from 8” in the album title is derived.1 That is, the Real Thing are four men from Liverpool 8. Thus the album pays homage to the place from where the Real Thing grew up and practised their craft (Strachan, 2010). A medley of songs on the album’s B-side are given over to the Real Thing’s musical biography, including Stanhope Street, Children of the Ghetto, and Liverpool 8. Because of the medley’s emphases upon biographical and social context, its songs provide an initial case through which Mills’s (1959) sociological imagination can be illustrated in terms of popular music and sites of pop music heritage.

Visualising L8 The Real Thing’s 4 from 8 album artwork is eyecatching; the cover is constructed as a photo-collage of buildings set against a flat black sky arranged in a series of layers. The outer edges of the cover are framed by broken brickwork, as if the cover is seen through a large hole smashed through a wall. Within this frame, furthest against the black background at the uppermost edge of the cover, the city’s enormous Anglican cathedral2 dominates the area’s skyline. On either side of the cathedral’s bell tower is written, in blood red letters, “Real Thing” (to the left of the cathedral tower), and “4 from 8” (to the right). Scanning immediately lower and slightly nearer the foreground, a jumble of buildings hove into view, starting with brick chimneys that descend to broken arched doorways and crumbling graffiti-covered walls. A street sign nearer the left edge of the cover identifies Upper Stanhope Street, just off the area’s major thoroughfare, Prince’s Avenue. Standing beneath the street sign, the four members of the Real Thing are shown, one holding an open umbrella, in front of more graffiti. Across a small open (street) space in the centre foreground, a pub juts into view along the righthand side of the cover. A small black-and-white dog is positioned nearest the bottom brickwork edge of the cover. The colour scheme is dark and foreboding.3 The collaged cover art is stunning in its representation of the decay of L8; however the more visually striking aspect of the album is soon revealed in a nifty trick. The cover art is actually two images, with the black background and cathedral framed via a cut-out window. In theatrical terms this cut-out window might be described as a false proscenium: a frame formed by scenery that surrounds a smaller exposed area of a stage. Opening the album removes the top layer of the cover ‘scenery’ including the buildings, walls, arched windows and the group in the foreground environment. A near-apocalyptic scene of devastation is revealed within. The cathedral, formerly framed by buildings, now appears to stand alone upon a field of rubble—an otherwise utterly destroyed landscape. This rubble represents the remains of townhouses and terraces in the area that were demolished,

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 49 part of wider slum-clearance schemes across many neighbourhoods in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s (Belcham, 2007; Davies, 2011). For example, many houses on Stanhope Street—the eponymous street in the Real Thing’s Liverpool 8 medley—were razed in the 1970s, with one member of the Real Thing commenting on its significance: “Stanhope Street was one of the main thoroughfares in Liverpool 8. When I was a kid we always seemed to end up walking through the streets and then maybe at ten o’clock we’d all end up on some street corner on Stanhope Street getting chips or something like that it. It summed up the whole area for me” (Haslam, 2002: 11). Changes to the built, physical environment and road patterns mean that the street is no longer a “thoroughfare” running from Prince’s Road through to the docks along the River Mersey; it has been broken into disconnected segments. While some Georgian townhouses remain, in other areas grassy lots mark where terraces once stood. Along other segments, blocks of low-rise flats or detached houses were built. During the 1970s, the changes affecting the area were hard felt (Frost and Phillips, 2011). These changes, and the social issues that had accompanied them, are the lyrical focus of the Real Thing’s “Children of the Ghetto”. While these lyrics are copyrighted and not reproduced here, they emphasise the ‘public issues’ endured in a challenging urban context, including poverty, the desolate urban landscape and lack of positive influence or inspiration. The lyrics advise the children of the ghetto—that is, people in L8 but also other ghettos—to maintain hope in an area that is otherwise becoming devoid of it by building on the unity and support that exists in local communities. Explaining that the song was “basically about growing up in Toxteth” (Strachan, 2010: 99), Eddie Amoo had earlier recalled that “[w]e used ‘ghetto’ as a togetherness term really; that was a part of it, it was poetic, in those terms” (Haslam, 2002: 11). “Children of the Ghetto” contextualised the social and political mood in L8 at the time. In 1981 English cities convulsed with urban unrest that swept through UK neighbourhoods including Brixton in South London (Purbeck and Schofield, 2009), Liverpool 8/Toxteth (Cornelius, 2001[1982]), Moss Side in Manchester, and Chapeltown in Leeds (Farrar, 2012). The experiences of Black Liverpudlians in L8 were contextualised in a series of studies and reports that followed in the wake of the 1981 ‘Toxteth riots’. For example, the Gifford report on race relations in Liverpool (Gifford, Brown, and Bundey, 1988, quoted in Frost and Phillips, 2011) was published seven years after the riots. This report concluded that “expressions of outright racial hostility and contempt are used in Liverpool to an extent that would no longer be acceptable in other parts of the country [. . .] in spite of the much longer settlement and greater integration of the Liverpool Black community” (quoted in Frost and Phillips, 2011: 53). In the next section of the chapter, the uniqueness of L8’s Black community, and particularly its network of social clubs is spotlighted against the

50 Brett Lashua hostility and exclusion that many residents endured, and which the Real Thing had set to song. DOCUMENTING L8: A TIMEPIECE Having set the tone in L8 during the 1970s through the Real Thing’s 4 from 8 album, this section of the chapter describes collaborative research carried out with Urbeatz, a Liverpool urban youth music and culture agency. It builds on earlier ethnographic research (Cohen, Lashua, and Schofield, 2009) during which we invited musicians to draw maps of their everyday routes and memories of Liverpool, including contemporary ‘urban’ (i.e. hip-hop, rap, R’n’B, soul, grime and dubstep genre) musicians. Many of these musicians spoke passionately about enduring racism and exclusion from the city centre; this sense of exclusion was expressed in the maps which they drew for us, showing ‘bubbles’ and borders in neighbourhoods set apart from the city centre, largely devoid of music venues or performance sites (Cohen, 2012a). These young musicians not only felt cut off from Liverpool’s city centre and lacking musical opportunities in their local neighbourhoods, but also they knew only a little about the history and heritage of Black popular music in Liverpool (see also Schofield, Kiddey, and Lashua, 2012). At the time, Urbeatz was operating out of offices on Windsor Street in the heart of L8, yet as one of its officers told me, he knew almost nothing of the area’s past and its significance in the history of Black music making in Liverpool. Working in collaboration with Urbeatz, we adopted an oral history interview approach (Tonkin, 1992; Yow, 2005) to produce a documentary film about the former network of social clubs in L8. This project involved young people directly in the research and production processes; four young people (ages 18–25) conducted the oral history interviews with older adults in order to establish an intergenerational dialogue (Chandler, 2005). This dialogue explored questions of what the cultural terrain of the L8 area had once been like and how it had changed. Ten interviews were conducted with noted local musicians, DJs, club owners, and community leaders. The older interviewees were in some cases known to the younger interviewers through family friends or from points of contact in the past (e.g. community celebrations such as Carnival). All of the young people involved contributed to the list of initial interview questions. Two of the young participants acted as interviewers while two operated the video camera and microphone boom. Urbeatz staff helped to organise and facilitate the interviews and edit the film. Three narrative themes were identified and discussed collectively with the young participants during the digitisation and editing of the film. These themes included (1) what the L8 social clubs had been like, (2) what living in Liverpool had been like, and (3) why the L8 area had changed, specifically noting the disappearance of the network of social clubs (Lashua, 2011). The

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 51 young people involved were invited to reflect on what is currently on offer for them in the area (and in the city more generally) in terms of shifting pop musical cultures, sites of musical heritage and opportunities to perform and watch musicians. This reflection, evoked in the narration of the film, provided further commentary on questions of change and continuity in the racialised relations of the city. Finally, the film, L8: A Timepiece (2010) was made to be shared with broader audiences; it is available to view online (http://vimeo.com/16294410) and has been shown at events to celebrate Black History Month, including the 2010 Mobo (Music of Black Origin) awards held in Liverpool.

Mapping the Social Clubs of L8 Today there is little physical evidence of the existence of the social clubs— such as the Sierra Leone Club, the Federal Club, Ibo Club, Somali Club, the Yoruba Club, and Jamaica House—that once thrived in the L8 area. Only two remain—the Caribbean Centre and the Nigeria Centre. Like the Nigerian, the majority of the former social clubs were located in Georgian townhouses that lined Prince’s Road and Upper Parliament Street. Some of these buildings were later demolished; others have been converted into flats. In anecdotal conversations during the project there was an open awareness that few young people knew much of the social clubs that had once operated in the area. Fewer had any idea of what the clubs had once been like, or of the community significance the clubs had. One community leader, Angus, told us: In those days [the 1960s] it was an excuse to refuse most Black people [entrance] into clubs run by white people. So they decided to form their own clubs. We had clubs all over the place. And weekends, and evenings, this area is alive, you know? Nearly every community was running a club. We had the Yoruba club for the Yoruba community, we had the Sierra Leone Club for the Sierra Leoneans, we had the Ghana Club, we had the Ibo Club. All of these were situated along Prince’s Road, Prince’s Avenue. Then, along Upper Parliament Street, you had the Caribbean Centre, and the Nigerian . . . The Federal Club was along Prince’s Avenue. They had the Nigerian Club, and there was also the Somali Club—you wouldn’t believe it, Somalis are Muslims, they had a club themselves, you know. So, as I said, nearly every community had a club. This narrative begins to sketch out the overt racism and exclusion experienced by Black residents in L8. According to the 1988 Gifford report “nowhere else in Britain are Black people so exposed to threats, taunts, abuse and violence if they go outside a confined area of the city; nowhere else is there such a devastating lack of mobility” (quoted in Frost and Phillips, 2011: 53) as in Liverpool. During the oral history interviews for the

52 Brett Lashua documentary film, many respondents spoke of this symbolic “closure” of city centres spaces and racialised constructions of Blackness as “matter out of place” (Hall, 1997: 236) beyond L8. Angus offered further comments on the social exclusion many Black people felt at the time: Now if they [young people] want to enjoy themselves somehow they go to town, but then most Black people did not feel safe and comfortable going into the city. They used to feel comfortable here [in L8], they used to feel safe. They had their own brand of music [. . .] all the various records of those days they would come to the [social] clubs and hear them and dance. The exclusion from the city centre venues also affected Black musicians. Joe, who sang with a five piece vocal group the Chants,4 described his group’s first live venue performance—following time spent rehearsing in the basement of a building on Prince’s Avenue—which was at the Cavern Club being backed by the Beatles. Having met John and Paul after a 1962 Little Richard concert in Liverpool, Joe and the Chants were invited to come “audition” in front of the Beatles on a weekday afternoon. Joe remembered: “John and Paul, they said come down to the Cavern [. . .] we went through town which was a bit of an ordeal, five Black guys walking through town.” Indeed, all of the interviewees mentioned that they were subjected to racist abuse, verbal taunts, and felt the weight of the ‘white gaze’ when in Liverpool’s city centre. Upon arriving at the Cavern, Joe recalled, “they wouldn’t let us in”—they were refused entry by the doorman. Only following the Beatles’ afternoon performance and after the audience departed were the Chants allowed in. The Beatles were so impressed by the Chants’ singing they insisted on acting as their backing band for their first live performances in late 1962. This narrative (also told in Strachan, 2010) provides but one example of the racist environment—and the ways that popular musicians worked to resist and alter it—in Liverpool in the 1960s. Within the L8 social clubs people recollected more tolerant attitudes toward difference: “there was blacks and whites there, all kinds” (Weetah, quoted in Frost, 1999: 212). Frost further claimed the clubs “were important in forging links between different ethnic groups” (1999: 212) within the broader atmosphere of racial exclusion in Liverpool. One DJ, Ivan, similarly remembered that L8 was “the only place we was accepted. [There was] some sort of strange colour line in town” that was subtly enforced when doormen would tell him “ ‘you haven’t got the right tie on tonight’, that sort of thing” to deny entrance to city centre music venues. For Donna and her group Distinction, the city centre was entirely off limits: “we could not go to clubs in town . . . we didn’t venture to certain parts of the city centre.” Even within L8, Donna recalled the Rialto Theatre, whose white patrons’ memories were reported by McIver (2009), was off limits to some local residents with only “certain nights for Black people.” Notoriously burned down in

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 53 the 1981 unrest, the Rialto was for Donna a local landmark “in the middle of the ghetto where [Black] people couldn’t go.” These memories begin to illustrate the intersections of popular music and the racial ‘faultlines’ (Stratton, 2010) in the city. Despite the prevalence of discrimination at the time, Stephen also emphasised the cosmopolitan social mix of the L8 clubs, as well as how these acted as a “magnet” for people from near and far: These clubs were accessible to everyone because it was in the area. You didn’t have to go into the city centre so there were no problems, you know what I mean? And so they were seen as Black clubs but that didn’t mean that other people didn’t go to them because all races went to these clubs. Actually these clubs that we had in the Liverpool 8 area at the time were probably more frequented than most of the city centre clubs in the sense that it was a magnet for people to come in. So people did travel in from all over the place. The social clubs were described to us in various terms, but all respondents noted the great number of clubs and liveliness of the area. For example, the Ibo Club was characterised as “beautifully decorated”, “modern” and “fresh” in “a really nice building [. . .] there was pride in that building” (Stephen). Stephen, a DJ, rapper, and later a choirmaster, also commented on the influence of music in the social clubs for him as a young person growing up in the 1970s: My early experiences of music, again, because of those clubs, I got a fascination with the DJs who used to play in them, um, my step brother, he was one of the DJs at the time. He was playing at the Ibo Club. What becomes clear from this narrative was that the L8 area and its distinctive cultural geography fostered creativity and was important for music making, listening and dancing. However, the late 1970s and early 1980s were a challenging social, economic and political environment that would witness not only the riots/protests in July 1981, but also the subsequent ‘vanishing’ of the social clubs that were an integral aspect of the Black communities in L8. VANISHING SITES OF POPULAR MUSIC HERITAGE In his 1982 book simply titled Liverpool 8 (reprinted in 2001), John Cornelius, then a quick-sketch portrait artist scratching out a living working the local clubs at night, described the L8 area as a “crumbling, cosmopolitan village” that was “dying on its feet” (63). Cornelius (2001[1982]) further noted that the city had pursued a policy of “slum clearance” in Liverpool 8’s

54 Brett Lashua Victorian terraces, creating a scene of urban destruction depicted so vividly on the cover of the Real Thing’s 4 from 8 album. Along Prince’s Avenue and Upper Parliament Street, several clubs, including the original Ibo Club and the Somali Club, were demolished for redevelopment (the Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre now stands on the site of former social clubs). By the 1980s, as Stephen recalled, “the whole scene was dead [. . .] what happened? Thatcher: the individual takes out the community.” He emphasised how the movement of people out of the area had changed L8: “The fabric of the community was decimated [. . .] the [1981] riots broke out because the place was dead broke.” Stephen argued that the decline of the social clubs was a direct outcome of Thatcherism, in particular the restructuring and privatization of housing in the area. With fewer residents to frequent the social clubs, fewer remained in operation. Together with the dramatic decline of shipping and subsequently fewer jobs around the port activities, the area was in crisis. Stephen’s commentary on the “decimated fabric of the community” laments the loss of both physical, built environments and social networks. Furthermore, the loss of physical community spaces meant the weakening of social ties. Charlie also remarked on this physical and social scattering and its effects: “Back in the day people was more together. I think today, people have gone apart. It used to be the community was right there, but I think the community is all dispersed.” Along similar lines, Donna stated that nowadays “there’s nowhere in Liverpool 8 that you can actually socialise, unless someone has a building and sells tickets for a party or something like that. Otherwise you have to go into the city centre.” For Gloria, the closure of the social clubs meant the loss of a physical space where people could meet and talk. This loss has had implications for young people today: We’re not a Black community no more. We haven’t got any place where we can sit down and chat, and talk about things, about politics, about what’s happening in the world . . . You would get younger people feeding off that. We don’t have that no more. What we had they will never have. The feeling of the Black community “dispersed” was echoed in reflections made to Frost and Phillips (2011) in their work marking the 30th anniversary of the Toxteth riots. One respondent told them: “I think one of the things that has changed is there’s much less clear identity in Liverpool 8 community or Granby community, it’s much more spread out” (2011: 131). By the mid-1980s most of the social clubs had closed (or had been forced to close and move, such as the Ibo Club). Today, of the once numerous social clubs, unlicensed “shebeens”5 and other community music sites (e.g. Roy reported that there were over two dozen venues he frequented in the 1970s) along Prince’s Road and Upper Parliament Street, only the Caribbean Centre and the Nigeria Centre remain. Beyond these physical traces, the popular music heritage of the L8 social clubs has been widely overlooked. Even the

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 55 younger residents of the area with whom we worked to produce the L8 documentary film—all of whom, through other projects with Urbeatz were interested in urban music and musical cultures—expressed that they knew almost nothing of the area’s heritage and the significance of the social clubs in the history of Black people in Liverpool. This “social forgetting” (Mizstal, 2003) is perhaps due to the fact that little remains of the physical presence of the social clubs in the area; there is not much to remind young people of what was there. One Urbeatz officer (Yaw) reflected on making the L8 film: Personally I see the documentary as a very real and powerful journey for our team. As we produced it and worked on it, the insight we got into the depth and breadth of the contribution of the L8 social clubs and their members was amazing. I walk past the Nigerian [Centre] every day, but I never knew, never even noticed it really. I feel the history here means there must be more of a legacy that the current generation, including ourselves, need to learn about, promote and build upon. This comment also offers an opportunity to return to Mills’s (1959) “sociological imagination.” For Mills, “no social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history, and of their intersection in society has completed its intellectual journey” (1959: 3). The critical skill, as Yaw demonstrated, is to connect biography to historical processes in order to understand the relation between personal troubles and public issues. Those interviewed for the documentary challenged young people making the film (and by extension, those viewing it) to activate their sociological imagination, to recognise the importance of the popular music heritage that was part of the context that had shaped their young lives. In this regard Angus explained the importance of knowing about the L8 social clubs: “For the young people, their parents and grandparents were heroes and it’s good for them to know where those clubs were because those clubs were a part of our history, the history of Black people in Liverpool.” “CHILD OF THE GHETTO”: THE LEGACY OF THE L8 SOCIAL CLUBS This penultimate section of the chapter frames the legacy of the L8 social clubs within a recent example of songwriting and lyrics about the politics of racism, heritage and music. Discussing the racially motivated murder of Anthony Walker in 2005, the Liverpool rap/soul singer Kof (quoted in Leonard, 2010: 176) stated: Obviously the stuff that happened with Anthony Walker—that was something I definitely felt I needed to speak about, being a young black man in Liverpool. Because, obviously, it’s not just me but a lot of people

56 Brett Lashua have been affected by racism in the city so I think it was good to talk on their behalf and on my behalf. In other words, Kof is expressing his sociological imagination through his songwriting. In his 2012 single “Child of the Ghetto”6 Kof sang of intergenerational dialogue: The old man asked the boy, what’s he fighting for? ‘cause he’s looking like a rebel that’s without a cause. Boy replies ‘you don’t know what it’s like to live here, Surrounded by the guns and drugs and despair.’ So take my hand, come with me, I will show you to a place Where they don’t see no point in dreaming, it just gets thrown back in your face. I’m a child of the ghetto And here I am. The old lady asked the girl what she’s crying for, She says ‘since daddy left, there’s no reason to smile anymore. Can you tell me if he loved me, then why did he leave me? Now I don’t go home ‘cause my new daddy beats me.’ So take my hand, come with me, I will show you to a place Where love is hard to find, you must be blind if you don’t see it in my face Then I’m a child of the ghetto And here I am The road is long and if we’re strong, we make it. Although there’s so much standing in our way. And if one day the chance comes, then I’ll take it. ‘Cause I want to be somebody, be somebody, be. A child of the ghetto And here I am, My ghetto

With its story of struggle and adversity confronted by hope and resilience, the lyrical content and public issues included are strikingly similar to those expressed in the Real Thing’s (1977) “Children of the Ghetto”. Kof’s lyrics also echo memories described by Joe Ankrah of the Chants of the early 1960s: If we went out with our mates we would get on corners, street corners and we would sing. We liked the attention that the singing attracted, you know, because all of a sudden people were taking notice of us. I suppose

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 57 we were all frustrated screaming out for attention really: ‘Look at me. I’m here. I am alive.’ I suppose that is what it was all about. (quoted in Strachan, 2010: 91) However, where once the “children of the ghetto” in L8 had a network of social clubs and other nightclubs (such as the Timepiece, see Strachan, 2010), young musicians such as Kof and his contemporaries do not. While the racial relations and physical spaces for music in the city have changed, continuities remain, such as the exclusion of ‘urban music’ from city centre venues (Lashua, Cohen, and Schofield, 2009). It is important for young people to understand the socio-historical patterns and events that have shaped the individual experiences of their lives, and popular music can help to call attention to the relationships between individual and collective experiences, and biography and history. CONCLUSION: THE CITY AND THE CITY Liverpool is widely represented as a city with a rich popular music heritage, albeit one dominated by the Beatles and the Merseybeat era of the early 1960s (Cohen, 2007). This heritage has been mapped across the city, in Beatles tourism and (often closely associated) cultural regeneration capitalising upon the city’s musical heritage (Cohen, 2012b). Liverpool’s rock music heritage is so dominant in its sites of representation and memorialisation (Bennett, 2009), that other popular music heritages and their associated sites are ‘hidden’ (Brocken, 2010) or—as illustrated above—invisible or vanishing. In this sense, it could be argued (see Bairner, 2008) that there is an invisible city within Liverpool that residents (and tourists) have learned (through the absence in wider social memory) not to see. In his work on heritage spaces in Belfast and Berlin, Bairner (2008) alluded to Miéville’s (2009) The City and the City, a blended science fiction and noir detective story of two cities, one exclusive and the other of the excluded, that occupy the same space. Citizens of either city are forbidden from interacting on city streets that are, bizarrely, of both cities. They have learned how to “un-see” each other; in each city, people, buildings, and heritage are invisible to the other’s city. Liverpool is also two such cities (if not many more) with spaces used differently at different times by inhabitants who did not interact. One is a city of relative affluence and access; one is a city of ‘the Other’, of discrimination, exclusion and disadvantage. One’s popular music heritage has been lauded and landmarked; one’s popular music heritage has been largely ignored and its sites erased (Littler and Naidoo, 2005). In sum, this chapter has argued that popular music—such as the Real Thing’s (1977) “Children of the Ghetto”, Kof’s (2012) “Child of the

58 Brett Lashua Ghetto”, and the popular musical heritage featured in the documentary L8: A Timepiece—may help to alert listeners to hidden or invisible sites of popular music heritage. Songs may act to connect individuals to wider sociohistorical contexts, and the chapter has used Mills’s (1959) “sociological imagination” to illustrate how popular music can articulate the relations between individuals and society, biography and history. The ability to grasp these relations allows the differentiation of ‘personal troubles’ and ‘public issues’. The chapter has highlighted the memories of an older generation of musicians, DJs and community leaders in L8 to further illustrate the significance of sites of popular music heritage; in this case the former network of diasporic social clubs and venues that once thrived in the area in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. While much has changed, especially the physical fabric of the streets, neighbourhoods and social clubs of L8, but also the racialised relations within Liverpool more broadly, for young musicians like Kof, and the older generations of residents we spoke with in L8: A Timepiece, much remains the same. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Urbeatz, particularly Jernice Easthope, Yaw Owusu, and Kofi Owusu for their work on L8: A Timepiece. Thanks also are due to those who agreed to share their memories of L8 via interviews for the documentary film. The film project was made possible by funding from Leeds Metropolitan University’s Carnegie Research Institute, New Researcher Fund. Additional thanks go to Sara Cohen and John Schofield’s AHRC-funded research Popular Music, Cityscapes, and Characterization of the Urban Environment (2007–2009), upon which this follow-up project in L8 was built. NOTES 1. The name Toxteth entered into wider use in the media after the 1981 unrest, and thus to some it signifies the misrepresentation of those events in the national press (see Frost & Phillips, 2011: 68–69). 2. The Anglican cathedral, started in 1877, was completed in 1978, a year after 4 from 8’s release. The cathedral signifies a longer historical arc of material construction in contrast to the large swaths of Victorian terraces and Georgian townhouses in the shadow of the cathedral that had been demolished by 1977. 3. Although copyright protected and not reproduced here, images of the album are readily available online, via search engines (such as Google Images), or on soul and funk music blogs such as http://soulfunk80s.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/ real-thing-4-from-8–1977-cd.html. 4. Eddie Amoo was also a member of the Chants. 5. Unlicensed establishments, often private homes, illegally selling and serving alcohol. 6. Reproduced here with permission.

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 59 REFERENCES Bairner, A. (2008). ‘The cultural politics of remembrance: Sport, place and memory in Belfast and Berlin’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 14 (4): 417–430. Belcham, J. (2007). Liverpool 800. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Bennett, A. (2000). Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place. London: Macmillan. Bennett, A. (2009). ‘ “Heritage rock”: Rock music, re-presentation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37: 474–489. Brocken, M. (2010). Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s–1970s. Aldershot: Ashgate. Brown, J. N. (2005). Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chandler, S. (2005). ‘Oral history across generations: Age, generational identity and oral testimony’. Oral History 33 (2): 48–56. Christian, M. (1998). ‘An African-centered approach to the Black British experience: With special reference to Liverpool’. Journal of Black Studies 28 (3): 291–308. Cohen, S. (2007). Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cohen, S. (2012a). ‘Bubbles, tracks, borders and lines: Mapping popular music, genre and urban environments’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 137 (1): 135–171. Cohen, S. (2012b). ‘Urban musicscapes: Mapping music-making in Liverpool’. In L. Roberts (ed.), Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cohen, S., & Lashua, B. D. (2010). ‘Pubs in the precinct: Music making, retail developments and the characterization of urban space’. in M. Leonard & R. Strachan (eds.), The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (pp. 65–83). Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Cornelius, J. (2001[1982]). Liverpool 8, Midsomer Norton: John Murray. Davies, T. (2011). Of Time and the City [DVD]. UK: British Film Institute. Du Noyer, P. (2007). Liverpool—Wondrous Place from the Cavern to the Capital of Culture. London: Virgin Books. Eyerman, R., & Jamison, A. (1995). ‘Social movements and cultural transformation: Popular music in the 1960s’. Media, Culture, & Society 17(3): 449–468. Farrar, M. (2012). ‘Rioting or protesting? Losing it or finding it?’. Parallax 18 (2): 72–91. Forman, M. (2002). The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Frost, D. (1999). Work and Community Among West African Migrant Workers Since the 19th Century. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Frost, D., & Phillips, R. (eds.). (2011). Liverpool ’81: Remembering the Riots. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage. Haslam, D. (2002). ‘Children of the Ghetto: The Story of the Real Thing’. Retrieved from www.davehaslam.com/control.php?_command=/DISPLAY/16/13//6000&_ path=/102/885 (accessed 21 September 2012). Lashua, B. D. (2011). ‘Popular music memoryscapes of Liverpool 8’. Media Fields Journal 3. Retrieved from www.mediafieldsjournal.org/popular-music-memoriesof-live/ (accessed 20 October 2012). Lashua, B. D., Cohen, S., & Schofield, J. (2009). ‘Popular music, mapping, and the characterization of Liverpool’. Popular Music History 4 (2): 126–144.

60 Brett Lashua Leonard, M. (2010). ‘The creative process: Liverpool songwriters on songwriting’. In M. Leonard & R. Strachan (eds.), The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (pp. 161–181). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Lewis, G. H. (1999). ‘Traps, troubles, and social issues: Country music in the social science classroom’. Popular Music 23 (4): 61–82. Littler, J., & Naidoo, R. (eds.). (2005). The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’. London: Routledge. McGrath, J. (2010, 29 March). ‘A little help from their friends’. Big Issue in the North 18–19. McIver, G. (2009). ‘Liverpool’s Rialto: Remembering the romance’. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 6 (2): 199–218. Miéville, C. (2009). The City and the City. London: Pan Macmillan. Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Misztal, B. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Palmer, D. (2009). ‘The changing club scene of Liverpool 8’. Nerve Magazine 14. Retrieved from www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve14/l8_club_scene.php (accessed 21 September 2012). Purbeck, L., & Schofield, J. (2009). ‘Brixton: Landscape of a riot’. Landscapes 10 (1): 1–20. Schofield, J., Kiddey, R., & Lashua, B. D. (2012). ‘People and landscape’. In R. Skeates, C. McDavid, & C. Carman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Public Archaeology (pp. 296–314). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strachan, R. (2010). ‘The soul continuum: Liverpool Black musicians and the UK music industry from the 1950s to the 1980s’. In M. Leonard & R. Strachan (eds.), The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (pp. 85–104). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Small, S. (1991). ‘Racialised relations in Liverpool: A contemporary anomaly’. New Community 11 (4): 511–537. Stratton, J. (2010). ‘Skin deep: Ska and reggae on the racial faultline in Britain, 1968–1981’. Popular Music History 5 (2): 191–215. ‘To get close to the Real Thing, get Four from Eight’ (1977, 10 July). New Musical Express 28–29. Tonkin, E. (1992). Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Urbeatz. (2010). L8: A Timepiece [Documentary film]. Retrieved from http://vimeo. com/16294410 (accessed 20 October 2012). Vulliamy, E. (2011, 3 July). ‘The Real Thing: Soundtrack to the Toxteth riots’. The Observer. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/03/childrenghetto-real-thing-toxteth-liverpool (accessed 20 October 2012). Yow, V. R. (2005). Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Zack-Williams, A. (1997). ‘African diaspora conditioning: The case of Liverpool’. Journal of Black Studies 27 (4): 528–542.

Discography Gaye, M. (1971). ‘What’s Going On’. What’s Going On. Detroit: Tamla. Kof. (2012). ‘Child of the Ghetto’ [Single]. Liverpool: Playmaker group/Nothin’ but the music. Real Thing. (1977). ‘Children of the Ghetto’. 4 from 8. London: Pye Records. Wonder, S. (1973). ‘Living for the City’. Innervisions. Detroit: Tamla.

Liverpool’s Popular Music Heritage 61 Oral Histories Joe Ankrah, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 17 March 2010. Roy Bernard, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 18 February 2010. Angus Chukwuemeka, Crawford House, Upper Warwick Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 24 May 2010. Donna Elaine, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 17 March 2010. Ivan Jenkins, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 18 February 2010. Stephen Nze, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 18 February 2010. Charlie Sealy, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 18 February 2010. Gloria Thompson, Urbeatz Offices, Windsor Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, 18 February 2010.

5

‘Still Here?’ A Geospatial Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music Craig Owen Jones

What is the nature of Welsh-language popular music heritage? Since the late 1990s, this question has been of particular moment in Wales, for the simple reason that from that time onward, the well-being of the musical scene that had arisen from the principle of singing pop music in Welsh over 30 years previously has been in doubt. This is due in the first instance to the flight from Welsh of bands wishing to emulate the success of Welsh bands such as Catatonia and the Super Furry Animals. The single abiding characteristic of Welsh-language popular music—the fact that it is sung, or otherwise presented, through the medium of Welsh—was, and remains, the primary method of identification as participant and adherent; but if that characteristic is contested, the ways of viewing the heritage on which new bands and artists must be contested also. Musicians in Wales have grappled with such issues for some time. In 1981, the Welsh-language protest singer Dafydd Iwan released the song ‘Yma O Hyd’ (‘Still Here’). Iwan’s tribute to the talent of the Welsh people for survival, physically but also culturally, in the face of overwhelming difficulties has been analysed to exhaustion by cultural commentators in Wales, particularly the song’s defiant chorus: ‘Ry’n ni yma o hyd / Ry’n ni yma o hyd / Er gwaetha pawb a phopeth’ (‘We’re still here / We’re still here / In spite of everyone and everything’). Adopted as unofficial club anthems firstly by the Llanelli Scarlets rugby team, and then subsequently by the supporters of Wrexham Football Club (see later), the song occupies a position of nearubiquity in Welsh culture; its lyrics can be found, either wholly or in part, on T-shirts, greetings cards and even tea towels. The appeal to a people inured to the needs of cultural survival is obvious, but it also obscures an important point. Iwan’s comment is doubly provocative: not only because it underscores the ability of the Welsh to reinvent themselves in the face of adversity, as the Romano-British warriorturned-emperor Macsen Wledig eulogised in the song’s first verse did, but also because it presupposes that the Welsh know both who they are—by dint, in the first instance, of a shared cultural heritage—and where it is that they remain, language issues notwithstanding. It has been through what to language preservation movements is often a most important linguistic

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 63 domain—youth pop culture—that both English and Welsh speakers in Wales over the last 50 years have found expression of their joys and their concerns, and also issues to take up: issues of rights for Welsh speakers, the introduction (or reintroduction) of the Welsh language to new social and intellectual linguistic domains, and the matter of self-determination, all expressed through the creation of a discrete popular music infrastructure for Welsh-speaking artists, including record labels, music magazines, promoters and live opportunities. It was therefore entirely appropriate that Iwan, whose endeavours had by the 1980s broadened to encompass the roles of polemicist, social commentator, ‘left-libertarian businessman’ and politician (Wyn James, 2005), sought to articulate this conceptualisation of Welsh identity through song. But if the Welsh were indeed ‘still here’, then where exactly was ‘here’? And who were the ‘we’ of which Iwan sang? When ‘Yma O Hyd’ was released, the answers to these questions were relatively clear-cut. Iwan’s songs employ a dialectic of protest, and the finer details of his position can sometimes be obscured by polemic, but not in ‘Yma O Hyd’, which exploits the ambiguities of language to great effect. The ‘here’ of which Iwan sings invokes both the geographical and the cultural spaces where the Welsh language resides: it is a reference to Wales as a whole—for Iwan was emphatic about the need to reintroduce Welsh to the Anglicised border counties, in which Welsh speakers have long been outnumbered by monoglot English speakers—and the linguistic domains in which Welsh survived and flourished. The ‘we’ of the chorus represented Welsh speakers in the narrow sense, but, as the song gained a reputation outside Welsh-speaking society, also increasingly came to represent the Welsh more generally; the adoption of the song by the largely monoglot Englishspeaking supporters of Wrexham Football Club in recent years speaks to this point. The ‘everyone and everything’, meanwhile, represented everyone opposed to the survival and flourishing of the Welsh language, both within and without Wales: Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig Adael ein gwlad yn un darn A bloeddiwn gerbron y gwledydd ‘Mi fyddwn yma tan Ddydd y Farn!’ Er gwaetha pob Dic Siôn Dafydd, Er gwaetha ‘rhen Fagi a’i chriw Byddwn yma hyd ddiwedd amser A bydd yr iaith Gymraeg yn fyw! Ry’n ni yma o hyd Er gwaetha pawb a phopeth Ry’n ni yma o hyd We remember that Macsen the Emperor Left our country in one whole piece,

64 Craig Owen Jones And we shall shout before the nations ‘We’ll be here until Judgement Day!’ Despite every Dic Siôn Dafydd [a fictional character who is ashamed of his Welshness] Despite old Maggie [Thatcher] and her crew, We’ll be here until the end of time, And the Welsh language will be alive! We’re still here In spite of everyone and everything We’re still here (Wyn James, 2005: 614)1

In this way, ‘Yma O Hyd’ represented a particularly resonant expression of oneness. In recent times, however, the ideological certainties it expresses have become increasingly blurred. Many of the tenets on which the language revitalisation movement in Wales was based have undergone subtle changes. In spite of the perceived and real inadequacies of the 1993 Welsh Language Act, which was designed to ‘promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language in Wales, and in particular its use in the conduct of public business and the administration of justice on a basis of equality with English’ (Davies, 1993: 98; Jenkins and Williams, 2000: 675), and the continuing decrease in percentages of Welsh speakers in the traditional heartlands of the language in the north and west even as the language gained speakers in the Anglicised areas in the east, by the turn of the millennium there was a growing sense abroad in Wales that the first stage in the language struggle, which had since the 1960s been fought to ensure the recognition of Welsh’s intrinsic worth, its concomitant validity as a medium for use in modern society and its proliferation in all walks of Welsh life, was over. The 1993 act was, in fact, an improvement (albeit a fairly minor one) over existing legislation dating from 1967; and in the intervening quarter century, Welsh had made unprecedented leaps in status and visibility, becoming a permanent and substantial presence in the fields of radio and television broadcasting, print journalism, secondary and tertiary education, literature, drama and music (Jenkins and Williams, 2000: 15–22). As one Welsh-language pop musician put it in the 1990s, ‘Those battles [over the language] have been fought, and most of them have been won, and now we need to look in other directions’ (Llewellyn, 2000: 324). That the place of Welsh at the heart of Welsh culture had been asserted was obvious; the question now was how best to propagate it, and the old exhortations adopted by pressure groups such as Cymdeithas yr Iaith, the Welsh Language Society (WLS hereafter), imploring that Welsh speakers use the language whenever and wherever possible, though losing nothing of their rhetorical force, nevertheless became increasingly difficult to sustain in a Wales where communities containing very high percentages of Welsh speakers were declining, and bilingualism was accordingly the de facto position of all but the very youngest Welsh speakers.2

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 65 For our purposes, one of the most pervasive changes has been that in Welsh-language popular music. The blunt and virtually unanimous refusal of Welsh-speaking popular musicians to sing in English from the 1960s onwards has been replaced in the last fifteen years or so by the so-called ‘bilingual band’, who develop a set list consisting of Welsh-language and English-language songs, and who predicate that decision on the basis that, in today’s globalised society, for much of the time they use English in their everyday lives, even as they consider Welsh to be their mother tongue. In this respect, the success of the so-called ‘Cool Cymru’ bands, such as Catatonia, the Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (Hill, 2007: 190–194), has been influential, but by no means constitutes the whole affair. If Welshlanguage music was indeed ‘still here’ in 1981—that is, in a monoglot social environment, where Welsh-language bands played Welsh-language songs to Welsh-speaking audiences in Welsh-speaking communities—today’s artists, and the audiences to which they play their music, would seem to locate themselves in a somewhat different cultural space, even as they acknowledge the musical heritage of what is still disingenuously referred to, in spite of the multiplicity of genres now on display within it, as the sîn roc Gymraeg (Welsh rock scene). The following, then, will attempt to provide some answers to these issues of perception of heritage and identity. In this, an approach of geospatial analysis has been employed, for both empirical data and popular perception within the sphere of Welsh-language pop music would seem to indicate the existence of what will be referred to here as ‘transient concentration’: the gathering together of infrastructural elements, typically around a core of artists, not necessarily stylistically homogenous ones, that results in the creation of a scene in a particular geographical locale. This is significant in the Welsh example because, as mentioned above, when discussing Welsh pop music heritage, emphasis is placed on the existence of a monolithic national identity, variously known by participants as a byd pop Cymraeg (Welsh pop world), byd roc Cymraeg (Welsh rock world) and so on. While several writers, most notably Sarah Hill in her pioneering study of Welsh-language pop music (2007), have noted the emergence of ‘scenes’ composed of bands and solo artists within particular Welsh towns and villages (see later), the ubiquity, until very recently, of this national signifier (‘Cymraeg’/‘Welsh’) has hitherto been largely unquestioned, and serves to smooth over regional differences that would in other cases be foregrounded. The following seeks to address this issue. Many characteristics of Wales’s artistic endeavours can be attributed to its geographical and demographic properties. Split in the middle by the sprawling Cambrian range, lines of communication in Wales invariably run from west to east—that is, to one of the English towns or cities that lie just beyond the border. There surely cannot be another country in Western Europe which lacks major transport links between its two largest centres of population, in Wales’s case the towns of the industrial north-east and the

66 Craig Owen Jones cities of the south respectively. In demographic terms, the majority of the Welsh population can be found within 30 miles of the English border, and the influence of English culture through television in particular is substantial. Where Scotland’s border with England is short and the border regions sparsely populated, Wales’s border is over 120 miles long; indeed, 35% of the population live within ‘overlap areas’, where they receive English, not Welsh television channels, and until the digital age, television aerials in the north-east pointed not to Welsh TV transmitters, but to those of the northwest of England (Taylor and Thomson, 1999: 29). Yet even in one of the north-eastern counties such as Flintshire, where Welsh is spoken by less than a sixth of the population and 49% of residents were born outside Wales (James, Jones and Lewis, 2006: 3), and where football, not rugby, is the dominant sport, a Welsh identity has persisted. Note, also, the use of the indefinite article in this regard: Welsh historian Dai Smith’s pronouncement that ‘Wales is a singular noun, but a plural experience’ (1984: 1) expresses a truism. As with so many apparently monolithic national identities, multiple Welsh identities can be identified today, and it is for this reason that a geospatial approach to the subject is particularly rewarding. Welsh-language popular music began with the advent of close harmony groups such as Triawd Y Coleg (‘The College Trio’) in the 1940s, and continued to develop in the 1950s, when Welsh-language skiffle was played by Hogia Bryngwran (‘[The] Bryngwran Lads’) and Criw Sgiffl Llandegai (‘Llandegai Skiffle Crew’) among others. By the mid-1960s, not only were the first bands beginning to experiment with the notion of Welsh-language beat and rock music, but numbers of harmony groups and acoustic singers were starting to write in Welsh. The latter musicians, such as Dafydd Iwan, Meic Stevens and Heather Jones, took the protest music of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and others as their model (Hill, 2007: 51–70). Many were members of the WLS, a pressure group formed in 1962 that sought to secure the right for Welsh speakers to use their language in all aspects of Welsh life through nonviolent protest. Heather Jones, Huw Jones and others wrote and released songs about the language struggle, the independence issue and the Tryweryn affair, in which the Liverpool Corporation sought to drown the Welsh-speaking village of Capel Celyn near Bala to provide a reservoir for industry on Merseyside (Davies, 2007: 640). By 1969, Welsh-language record labels, pop magazines, music charts and radio and TV shows had all appeared, and Welsh-language pop festivals were a regular fixture, attracting audiences of 3,000 and more. The early 1970s has been referred to as a ‘golden age’ of Welsh-language popular music, and as Wallis and Malm have demonstrated, the most important Welsh-language label of this period, Recordiau Sain (Sound Records), certainly flourished: total sales increased by almost 400% between 1971 and 1979 (1984: 96). Even so, the total of records sold in the latter year was around 93,000; and as can be inferred from that fact, Welsh-language pop remained overwhelmingly amateur in nature, its music written and performed by performing artists for its importance as

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 67 a cultural contribution rather than as an economically viable career choice for all but a very few of its practitioners. In identifying the geographical centres of activity for this nascent music, the data contained in the Welsh-language music press of the period might usefully be invoked. The map in Figure 5.1 represents the provenance of all Welsh-speaking artists featured in the Welsh-language pop magazine Asbri over its first 10 issues, from May 1969 to December 1970. It need hardly be

Figure 5.1 Welsh-language artists featured in Asbri, May 1969–December 1970, by location.

68 Craig Owen Jones stressed this type of data cannot be utilised without overcoming some obvious problems of interpretation. Firstly, by concentrating on the geographical provenance of bands, it tells us nothing about the state of live music performance (though we may reasonably infer that local bands will have played local gigs). Nor is it revealing on the question of how that band evolved its sense of identity over time, and this is important, because a great deal of Welsh-language acts were formed in colleges and universities, or underwent major changes on relocation to these institutions when their members left school. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this overview the data here give a useful entry point. As can be seen, the preponderance of artists from south Wales is notable, particularly in the south-west in Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion (though it should be noted that Asbri was published in Carmarthen, and so we must make allowances for a possible editorial bias). Also, there are other, secondary concentrations of artists in Cardiff, and in the north-west, in Gwynedd— the village of Trawsfynydd was, for example, home to the hugely successful vocal harmony group Y Pelydrau (‘The Rays’), though incorporation of subsequent issues of Asbri into this map would have yielded Caernarfon, and the town of Llangefni on the island of Ynys Môn/Anglesey, as equally important centres of activity. Finally, there is a strong correlation between the locations shown on the map and areas where a majority of the population speak Welsh, which were (and are) overwhelmingly located in the west of Wales (Davies, 2007: 700). Yet this picture can only be incomplete. The data are noisy—Asbri’s possible parochial outlook has already been noted, and may tip the balance towards bands and artists of the south-west; and the numbers of artists shown, at less than three dozen, is perhaps not large enough to permit the drawing of firm conclusions. A more reliable, certainly a more comprehensive, picture emerges when one examines data from trade directories. The first trade directory to be printed concerning Welsh-language popular music was the Cyfeiriadur Pop, which was published for the first time in 1970, and which listed 104 artists and bands from across Wales. Table 5.1 shows their locations according to unitary authority. What emerges is a very clear picture of geographical distribution that in most respects echoes the picture suggested by the Asbri data. The same concentration of artists in rural Welsh-speaking west Wales, specifically Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Gwynedd, the three areas containing the highest percentages of Welsh speakers, is evident—between them they account for 48% of the total number of artists—and the importance of Cardiff is again underscored, even if it is a little more pronounced here. However, perhaps the more noteworthy element in this example is the way in which the data demonstrate activity in areas which are not primarily Welsh-speaking, but which contain large numbers of Welsh speakers, albeit as a lower percentage of that area’s population. The statistically insignificant instance of a Welsh singer domiciled in Liverpool notwithstanding, the

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 69 Table 5.1 Locations of Artists Listed in the Cyfeiriadur Pop (1970), by Unitary Authority* Unitary authority Caerffilli Cardiff Carmarthenshire Ceredigion Conwy Denbighshire Flintshire Gwynedd Ynys Môn/Isle of Anglesey Neath Port Talbot Pembrokeshire Powys Rhondda Cynon Taf Swansea (Liverpool)

No. of artists represented 1 19 17 14 4 2 2 19 9 3 4 6 3 1 (1)

*Post-reorganisation (1996–) unitary authority boundaries have been used for ease of reference.

example of Cardiff (19 artists) is the most striking manifestation of this, but of equal interest is the presence of small numbers of Welsh-language artists in north-east Wales, particularly in Flintshire, a highly Anglicised county by the turn of the 1970s. Census data on Welsh speakers compiled by Aitchison and Carter (2004) shows that, outside the language’s heartlands in the west and north-west, large concentrations of Welsh speakers can be found in Cardiff, Swansea and its environs and the north-eastern coastal strip, including Flintshire. These areas of activity may be taken as indicators of the increasing interest shown in the Welsh-language pop world outside its traditional heartlands by the early 1970s. In fact, the success of one of the first ‘fringe’ pop concerts, the ‘Noson Bop’ (‘Pop Night’), at the Flint National Eisteddfod of 1969 suggests this process had begun somewhat earlier.3 Indeed, the data present a conundrum. Given that the numbers of Welsh speakers in the Swansea area and the north-east are so high, the question that should be asked is not why Welsh-language artists are seen to be present in those places, but why there are not more of them, particularly in light of the concentration of speakers in Cardiff, a thoroughly English-speaking city in 1970. One possible answer may be found in the distribution of the media in Wales at that time. As Wales’s capital city, Cardiff could boast multiple music venues, as well as two television studios, one of which was the BBC studio where Wales’s answer to Top of the Pops, Disc a Dawn, was filmed. It

70 Craig Owen Jones broadcast 18 episodes a season from 1966 onwards, and became a dedicated pop music programme from 1968. These factors, combined with the presence in the late 1960s of dozens of Welsh-speaking popular musicians at the city’s universities and arts colleges, and the establishing of the first regular Welsh-language disco, Barbarella’s, in the city from 1971 (Wyn, 2004: 147), helped give Welsh-language popular music a presence in Cardiff at this early stage, and could not be emulated in either north-east Wales or Swansea. Certainly, by the mid-1970s Cardiff was increasingly being seen as a locale that was an integral component of Welsh-language popular music heritage; the eponymous title track of the EP Dyn Ni Ddim yn Mynd I Fyrmingham (‘We’re Not Going To Birmingham’, 1972), released by the Cardiff-based rock band Y Tebot Piws (The Purple Teapot), took as its subject matter the decision of the BBC to move production of Disc a Dawn to the newly opened TV studios at Birmingham, rather than maintaining the production at Cardiff (Mei, 1974: 82). Another factor may help to explain the relative lack of artists in Swansea and north-east Wales: Welsh-language musical activity in both these areas had to contend with a lively English-language music scene. While the pronouncements of national commentators in 1966 to the effect that the so-called ‘south Wales scene’ based around Swansea was destined to be ‘the next to take the country in a really big way’4 proved to be unfounded, the success of the Spencer Davis Group, the Eyes of Blue and the Iveys, as well as frequent visits to the Swansea area by recognised English artists such as Dusty Springfield, Georgie Fame and Wayne Fontana are testament to the vibrant nature of Swansea’s music scene. Though the lack of a big city in north-east Wales makes a direct comparison untenable, the situation there was in other respects similar: the venues of the towns on the coastal strip were dominated by the bands of Liverpool and Manchester, who treated the north Wales coast as an outlying gig circuit. Bands such as the Merseybeats, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Mersey Monsters and the Beatles plied their trade at venues in Mold, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and elsewhere. They were often supported by the area’s homegrown acts—beat and rock bands including the Cosmonauts from Mold, the Informers and the Rhyl Strangers, both from Rhyl, the Publicans from Llandudno Junction and the Bossmen from Colwyn Bay. In light of this competition for attention, it is, then, perhaps not so surprising that the numbers of artists shown as active in these areas was smaller than the numbers of Welsh speakers would suggest; nevertheless, their appearance points to the existence of centres of infrastructural activity elsewhere, and these shortly began to attract comment. In the years following Asbri magazine’s establishment in 1969, a growing perception of a Welsh-language popular music heritage along these lines is apparent, and central to that tradition were discussions of place. Articles in the music press detailing the developments of the recent past appeared on a regular basis. One of the earliest such articles dates from 1974, when one ‘ap Alunfa’ identified two towns, Aberystwyth and Pontypridd, as being

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 71 integral to the success of what he called ‘canu cyfoes creadigol’ (‘creative contemporary singing [read: music]’).5 It is evident that the purpose of this rather tortured formulation was to distinguish between different types of pop music: on the one hand, the close harmony and acoustic acts of the previous decade whose popularity was beginning to decline, and on the other, the Welsh-language rock bands who were by 1974 garnering substantial audiences. The latter are clearly the ones defined as being ‘creative’ and ‘contemporary’, as is indicated in a similar retrospective magazine article the previous year, in which ‘ap Alunfa’ described the impact of aforementioned close harmony group Y Pelydrau—one of the most successful artists of the late 1960s, and who even made a triumphant appearance on the BBC’s Opportunity Knocks talent show—as disastrous because of their many mediocre emulators: ‘Ychydig iawn oedd gan Y Pelydrau i’w gynnig, ond roedd amryw o’u dilynwyr yn hollol ddi-dalent’ (‘Y Pelydrau had very little to offer, but sundry of their followers were completely talentless’).6 This perception was unfair, but it is worth exploring its provenance. By the early 1970s, electrification was becoming an important part of Welshlanguage popular music, and rock bands were displacing the acoustic artists of the 1960s (Wallis and Malm, 1984: 94). ‘Ap Alunfa’ recognised this, and Aberystwyth and Pontypridd were highlighted by him as being central to the nascent heritage of that music: of the four acts from Aberystwyth cited in the article, two were not close harmony groups, but pioneering rock bands; and while a third—Y Chwyldro (The Revolution)—was indeed composed of a quintet of female singers, they had successfully experimented with rock arrangements. As can be seen in Figure 5.1, Pontypridd (just north of Cardiff) was less prominent in the press of the period, but local quartet Madog featured electric guitars, while the contribution of drummer Charli Britton to the band Tu Hwnt again gave their composition a tinge of the ‘beat’ sound that lingered for a little longer in Welsh-speaking Wales than in England. What is underscored by the pronouncement of ‘ap Alunfa’ and other similar opinion pieces of the period is a particular perception of Welsh-language popular music that emphasises electrified, guitar-led genres to the exclusion of other styles, such as the acoustic style of the protest singers of the 1960s, which was by then perceived as old-fashioned and conservative. This attitude has consequences when considered in tandem with a second, later snapshot of musical activity. The map in Figure 5.2 shows the locations of Welsh-language artists featured in the monthly music magazine Sothach during the first ten issues of its run, from March 1988 to June 1989. Again, one must be aware of the possibility of editorial bias—the company that ran the magazine was based in Bethesda in north-west Wales—but even so, it becomes clear that by the 1980s, a sea change in geographical distribution has come about, in large part because patterns of activity largely occasioned in Figure 5.1 by the acoustic artists of the 1960s and early 1970s were no longer current. Musical activity continued to occur, in the forms of gigs and discos, in the countryside, but it was now concentrated to a

72 Craig Owen Jones

Figure 5.2 Welsh-language artists featured in Sothach, March 1988–June 1989, by location.

previously unheard-of extent in large villages, towns and cities. The large numbers of artists from Bangor are testimony to the thriving live scene in that city, centred around the Students’ Union, the Railway Institute, the Football Club and other prominent venues, and the presence of the independent label Central Slate Records, which released singles and LPs by both Welsh-language and English-language local bands. More generally, the cluster of artists to the south of Bangor in Snowdonia speaks to the importance

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 73 of the Welsh-speaking heartlands: villages with percentages of Welsh speakers above 90 percent in the 1980s, and whose youth spurred the creation of centres of activity by organising gigs for school bands, generating ticket sales for larger gigs by established groups, arranging transport to and from venues, writing for fanzines and acting as selling agents for music magazines such as Sothach itself. By 1989, too, it is clear that the importance of Carmarthenshire as a centre of activity has been vastly reduced. Cardiff’s importance is again underscored, though the demographic trends that helped to maintain it had changed somewhat: the establishment of BBC stations Radio Wales and Radio Cymru in 1977 and the creation of the Welsh-language television channel S4C in 1982 brought large numbers of Welsh speakers to the city, and with them came greater opportunities for Welsh-language bands. Two other concentrations of artists shown here should be noted, however— namely, those in Bethesda in Snowdonia, and Aberteifi (Cardigan) on the south-west coast, both of which came to be understood, to a greater or lesser extent, as local ‘scenes’. The roots of both scenes have recently been delineated by Hill (2007: 84–85). Championed by DJ John Peel, punk and alternative bands such as Maffia Mr Huws and Anhrefn soon began gaining audiences outside Wales, and were later joined in that regard by Ffa Coffi Pawb, soon to become the Super Furry Animals. Other bands such as Tynal Tywyll and Sobin A’r Smaeliaid were based in the village, whose status as an economically depressed community had been sealed by the closure of or scaling-down of activity at the local slate quarries long before the economic recession of the 1980s. Infrastructural elements associated with Bethesda during this period included the Pesda Roc music festival; the Recordiau Anhrefn (Chaos Records) independent label, established by two members of the punk band Anhrefn in 1984; the Ysgol Roc or Rock School, a course aimed at raising levels of proficiency among young musicians; and the establishing of the successful music magazine Sgrech in the village. The creation of the so-called ‘Teifi scene’, meanwhile, has been dated by Hill to 1980, when rock artists based in Aberteifi such as Ail Symudiad, Rocyn, Diawled and Malcolm Neon began to play in the area on a regular basis. Concomitant with this was the creation of the independent label Recordiau Fflach (Flash Records), formed by two members of Ail Symudiad in 1981, and which shortly began to release numbers of successful records by Welsh-language punk and new wave bands. Some widening of the discussion may be useful. Cohen (1999), among others, has delineated the problems associated with the transitory nature of local music activity, amplifying comments made by Straw (1991). In particular, Cohen has drawn attention to the way in which Liverpudlian musicians who decide to leave Liverpool, and who subsequently become successful, could be viewed as being ‘lost’ or ‘indebted’ to the city by musicians who remained within the confines of the scene—what she succinctly referred to

74 Craig Owen Jones as ‘the rhetoric of leaving and loss’ (1999: 245). These observations are of interest in the Welsh example. The twin motifs of economic outmigration, forcing local inhabitants to move away due to a lack of jobs, and lifestyle tourism, the buying of cottages and houses as second homes by retirees and those seeking escape from the ‘rat race’, are recurring themes, and nowhere is this more obvious than in locations such as Cardigan and Bethesda: the former forms a hub for tourism on the south-west coast, while the latter lies between the Carneddau and Glyderau mountain ranges in Snowdonia, and, along with Llanberis a few miles to the west, provides an attractive tourism base for mountain climbing and other outdoor pursuits in the summer months. It was in this spirit that Ail Symudiad’s first single, released in 1981, was entitled ‘Twristiaid Yn y Dre’ (‘Tourists in the Town’). Yet such cultural motifs did not in fact provide the glue that bound these scenes together in a common musical heritage. The musical styles of those who identified themselves with the Bethesda and Teifi scenes were in fact heterogeneous (though dominated by rock), and it is therefore more appropriate to look to the infrastructural elements present in both locations for an explanation of the longevity of these scenes (see earlier). It is also worth pointing out that, in spite of the presence of around a dozen bands and artists in north-east Wales during this period, including Dau Fi Gyn, Ian Rush, Fel Petai, Jylopi Whopyr and Brodyr Y Ffin, a ‘Clwyd scene’ failed to coalesce. This was in spite of the presence of a honed sense of regional identity, an identity that can be seen in the names adopted by several of the bands—Dau Fi Gyn is an idiomatic expression associated with Welsh as spoken in Flintshire; Ian Rush were named after the famous footballer, a native of Flint; and Brodyr Y Ffin translates as ‘Brothers of the Line’, a reflection of the fact that the band’s members lived in Saltney, a village straddling the England–Wales border near Chester. Clearly, this identity was in itself not enough to actuate the appearance of a scene, and in the opinion of Gaz John of Fel Petai, the area was ‘not ‘Welsh’ enough to maintain a scene of its own’,7 the lack of Welsh-language music events, labels and press coverage all conspiring to make progression difficult. The implications of all this for the notion of geographies of popular music heritage in Wales are clear. Rather than having a number of venues and spaces associated with Welsh-language popular music from its inception to the present day, what exists instead is a multiplicity of villages, towns and cities containing venues that have played host to bands and artists of various genres for a short period, sometimes no more than a year or two, before disappearing.8 It is important to recognise how activities associated with popular music even in solidly Welsh-speaking areas have exhibited a tendency to be transient. Centres of infrastructural innovation in towns and villages—created by the concentration of new bands, gig venues and magazines, labels and studios situated in the locale—have often proven susceptible to uprooting and relocation, especially where their elements are overseen by individuals. The Bethesda scene, for example, came to an abrupt end in the mid-1990s as its major players, the Super Furry Animals, achieved success in England and overseas and began to ply their trade in those places;

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 75 the Bethesda-based music magazine Sothach was wound up in 1997, and the Pesda Roc festival also came to an end. This trend of ‘transient concentration’ is a key feature of Welsh-language popular music. It is even writ large in the gigs and concerts of the National Eisteddfod—Europe’s largest competitive music festival, which is hosted in a different site every year. So many of the pivotal moments on the history of Welsh-language popular music took place at fringe gigs on the ‘Maes B’ (youth field) or in the ‘babell roc’ (‘rock tent’) on the Eisteddfod’s main field, and as such, have no heritage site associated with them. After all, the ‘venue’ that played host to them only ever existed for eight days one August, many years ago;9 and this peculiar circumstance has, in turn, led to a valorisation of the Eisteddfod itself, wherever it may be being held, as the site of heritage, in spite of its itinerary character: as bands rush to organise gigs in the locale and release their latest record in time for ‘Eisteddfod week’, the geography of heritage is internalised. The other symptom of ‘transient concentration’, the disappearance of local music scenes in Wales, is a subject that has yet to be fully explored, as discourses in the Welsh-speaking media have repeatedly placed emphasis on the health of the Welsh rock scene as a whole. In the context of language revival, the implications of the collapse of the sîn roc Gymraeg in the mid-1990s, in the wake of the success of Catatonia and the other so-called ‘Cool Cymru’ bands, were seen to be grave, for the presence of Welsh in the domain of youth culture as encapsulated by the rude health of Welshlanguage pop music was viewed as a crucial development in maintaining numbers of young Welsh speakers, as well as attracting young monoglot English speakers to learn the language. Yet the well-being of local centres of activity must be given equal prominence, for it is within social environments that are solidly Welsh-speaking, be they rock festivals, tour dates, or pub gigs, that both Welsh speakers and learners find their greatest opportunities to practise and promulgate the language. It is heartening to note that in recent years, several steps have been taken to remedy the neglect of this aspect of Welsh musical heritage. Based in Aberystwyth, the National Library of Wales’s Archif Sgrin a Sain Genedlaethol (National Screen and Sound Archive) has assembled a vast collection of recordings of Welsh-language (and English-language Welsh) popular music; Bangor University’s Archif Bop Cymru (Welsh Pop Archive) also maintains a collection of Welsh-language records, cassettes and CDs, as well as studio recordings, gig posters, correspondence, music magazines, fanzines and ephemera; and the National History Museum’s ‘Pop Peth’ (Pop Thing) audiovisual exhibition, staged at its premises in St. Fagans near Cardiff in 2009–10 and curated by the owner of Wales’s largest private collection of Welsh-language pop memorabilia, Gari Melville, among others, presaged a growing public awareness of Welsh-language pop music history. Awareness, however, does not equate to understanding; and it is clear that much work remains to be done in order to arrive at a broader and more nuanced understanding of this heritage. The lack of attention paid to local

76 Craig Owen Jones scenes has already been discussed, but of equal importance is the response of the current generation of groups and artists to what now constitutes a substantial narrative of pop music in Welsh, from a political and a stylistic viewpoint. Developments such as hip-hop artist Saizmundo’s ‘Dŵr Dau’ (‘Water Two’; 2007)—a beat-laden rap version of Huw Jones’s 1969 protest song about the drowning of the Tryweryn valley, ‘Dŵr’—are obviously indicative of a wider awareness of the heritage of Welsh-language pop, but do not explain why that text in particular was appropriated over others. Of key relevance in this regard is whether or not hip-hop represents the ‘canu protest . . . newydd’ (‘new . . . protest singing’), as fellow hip-hop artist and producer Dyl Mei once opined in a 2005 newspaper column.10 In the early 2000s, there was a growing understanding that the most popular rock bands then plying the live scene, such as Frizbee, no longer wrote about the subjects—such as the language issue and considerations of Welsh identity— that preoccupied their forebears, unlike the Welsh-language hip-hop artists that had come to prominence in Wales since the mid-1990s: artists such as Tystion, Cofi Bach a Tew Shady and Pep Le Pew, who continued to engage with topical issues such as the advent of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, the continuing debate over the language, and the new conceptualisations of Welsh identity that these developments heralded. In spite of the pronouncements of Mei and others, what followed, in fact, was a retrenchment of Welsh-language hip-hop, as crews and rappers split or became moribund, and failed to emulate the longevity and success of their rock band contemporaries; the depoliticisation of Welsh-language pop has largely continued in its stead. It remains to be seen how this will affect considerations of heritage in the future. NOTES 1. The English version of the song contained therein is a free translation, and has been corrected here in several particulars. 2. By 1981, only 66 census wards in Wales returned percentages of Welsh speakers above 80%—down from 279 in 1961. By 2001, only 17 remained (Aitchison & Carter, 2000: 52; 2004). Preliminary 2011 Census figures released in late 2012 show a decrease in percentages of Welsh speakers to around 19%, down from 20.5% in 2001. How evenly this percentage drop is distributed across Wales remains to be seen. 3. The scanty provisions for pop concerts during the Eisteddfod that year were nevertheless the target of much criticism, with one contemporary commentator accusing the event’s organising committees of shortsightedness where the new style of music was concerned: for them, ‘mae canu “pop” yn air budr’ (‘ “pop” singing is a dirty word’). Llais Y Lli, 17 October 1969, p. 9. 4. Llanelli Star, 16 April 1966, p. 6. 5. I’r Dim 3 (December 1973–January 1974), pp. 20–21. 6. I’r Dim 1 (June–July 1973), p. 21. 7. Sothach 75 (November–December 1995). Retrieved from www.cymrupop. com/archive/sgrechian/interview2.html (accessed 12 October 2012).

A Survey of Welsh-Language Popular Music 77 8. For example, Caernarfon’s Canolfan Tanybont Centre, which regularly hosted bands in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was subsequently bulldozed and is now the site of a car park. Corwen Pavilion, at which bands had played since the early 1970s, and which held audiences in the low thousands, stopped hosting regular Welsh-language gigs in the 1990s. A decision to bulldoze it in favour of raising a more modern building is currently (late 2012) under review. 9. Pioneering rock band Y Blew’s infamous 1967 performance in the Literature Tent (!) at the Bala Eisteddfod being a case in point. 10. Y Cymro, 8 June 2005, p. 14.

REFERENCES Aitchison, J., & Carter, H. (2000). Language, Economy and Society: The Changing Fortunes of the Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Aitchison, J., & Carter, H. (2004). Spreading the Word: The Welsh Language 2001. Talybont: Y Lolfa. Asbri nos. 1–10 (May 1969–December 1970). Caerfyrddin: n.p. Cohen, S. (1999). ‘Scenes’. In B. Horner & T. Swiss (eds.), Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture (pp. 239–250). Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, J. (1993). The Welsh Language. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Davies, J. (2007). A History of Wales (2nd ed.). London: Penguin. Hill, S. (2007). ‘Blerwytirhwng?’: The Place of Welsh Pop Music. Aldershot: Ashgate. James, D., Jones, N., & Lewis, O. (2006). Key Statistics for Flintshire, National Assembly for Wales. Retrieved from www.assemblywales.org/06–060.pdf (accessed 12 October 2012). Jenkins, G. H., & Williams, M. A. (eds.). (2000). ‘Let’s Do Our Best for the Ancient Tongue’: The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Llewellyn, M. (2000). ‘Popular music in the Welsh language and the affirmation of youth identities’. Popular Music 19: 319–339. Mei, D. (1974). Y Tebot Piws. Penygroes: Gwasg Y Tir. Philips, A. (1970). Cyfeiriadur Pop! Llanidloes: E. Owen a’i Feibion. Smith, D. (1984). Wales! Wales? London: Allen and Unwin. Sothach nos. 1–10 (March 1988–June 1989). Bethesda: Cytgord. Straw, W. (1991). ‘Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music’. Cultural Studies 5: 368–388. Taylor, B., & Thomson, K. (eds.). (1999). Scotland and Wales: Nations Again? Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Wallis, R., & Malm, K. (1984). ‘Sain Cymru: The role of the Welsh phonographic industry in the development of a Welsh language pop/rock/folk scene’. Popular Music 3: 77–105. Wyn, H. (2004). Be Bop a Lula’r Delyn Aur: Hanes Canu Pop Cymraeg. Talybont: Y Lolfa. Wyn James, E. (2005). ‘Painting the world green: Dafydd Iwan and the Welsh protest ballad’. Folk Music Journal 8: 594–618.

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Part 3

Archives and Virtual Sites of Memory

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6

‘Fillin’ in Any Blanks I Can’ Online Archival Practice and Virtual Sites of Musical Memory Jez Collins and Paul Long

Popular music archives, heritage and histories are emerging online from a diverse set of practices, exhibiting a prodigious variety of reference points and modes of memory making. On one hand, and alongside tributes to specific artists, sites such as ‘Orgy in Rhythm’ or ‘Dr. Schluss’ Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities’ are dedicated to the retrieval and documentation of particular styles of music and historical moments. Celebrating renowned or obscure bands and their recording histories by turn, such sites are sometimes organized around singles and albums, uploaded as digital sound files for sharing with fellow aficionados alongside band images, discographies and other documents. On the other hand there are many sites that are notable for the geographical specificity of their historical purview. These sites have as their focus the popular music heritage of countries such as Hungary or Australia or particular cities like Budapest, Wollongong or Brisbane. While some of these projects may be presented in purpose-built websites, many are characterized by a use of ready-made social media templates from WordPress, Blogger, Wikis or Facebook for instance. Actively building communities of interest, sites like Calyx, which concentrates on the music of Canterbury (see Bennett, 2002), or the Facebook group dedicated to Glasgow’s Apollo venue are a focus for testimonies about music experiences in which participants post personal photographs of bands, scans of fliers, magazine, and fanzine pages amongst other kinds of ephemera. Andy Bennett has identified this kind of popular music history-making and archival activity as part of a wider set of heritage practices which he described as a mode of ‘DIY preservationism’ (2009). He notes the prodigiousness of online practices, suggesting that such instances ‘can no longer be regarded merely as isolated incidents of fan innovation, but they constitute a globally connected informal network of activity orientated towards a re-writing of contemporary popular music history’ (Bennett, 2009: 483). In this chapter, we explore the practices of some of these sites and assess the wider significance of their status in the construction of popular music history and heritage. We begin with a focus on sites that concentrate specifically on the archiving and sharing of music, examining the status and avowed motives of their creators, their relationship with the recording industries

82 Jez Collins and Paul Long and questions of intellectual property rights in particular. We contextualize our insights in relation to traditional notions of the archive and the ways in which digital technologies and the democratic tendency of online culture enables an activist archival practice that serves and nurtures diverse communities of interest. While the first section of this chapter explores sites that have at their core sound recordings, the second is concerned with those built around a broader idea of associated music cultures and places. Here, we sample a wealth of sites centred on the city of Birmingham, in the English Midlands. We outline how such spaces are created, curated, and populated by public history makers, activist archivists and individuals who, although they might baulk at such terms, tirelessly document and share their views on music and associated ephemera, generating collective cultural memories. Throughout this analysis, our questions concern the status and authority of such sites and the relationship of curators and practices with conventional historiography and the burgeoning field of popular music heritage. As various authors in this book suggest, the status of popular music as heritage object is a contested one, revealing the abiding nature of cultural hierarchies. Certainly, references to the ephemeral, mass-produced and commercial imperatives of pop as product continue to be enlisted in objections to the presence in the museum of figures such as Kylie Minogue (see Leonard, 2010: 174). For instance, as Waldemar Januszczak complains in the Sunday Times, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is ‘hardly the place’ for an exhibition dedicated to David Bowie’s life and work, complaining that this constitutes an act of ‘colonisation’ of this space by commercial forces (Januszczak, 2013). As this chapter suggests, the vernacular practices of a range of informally constituted archives online insist upon the value of such figures and their work, claiming them as their own within the memorialisation of associated cultures of popular music consumption and creation. WHOSE HERITAGE? CURATING MUSIC COLLECTIONS ONLINE The impact of digital technologies on the music industries has been well documented (e.g. Bhattacharjee et al., 2007; Wikstrom, 2009). Stages of production, distribution and consumption have all been inflected by the take-up of audio-compression technologies, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster and streaming sites like Spotify, as well as online music stores such as iTunes. Whatever the challenges to music industry business models presented by digitization, this technology offers the potential to make the entire history of recorded music available. Nonetheless, an enormous amount of sound recordings remain unavailable in digital or any other form and indeed, much of this material does not look likely ever to become available. In fact, as is noted by Lawrence Lessig, significant amounts of

Online Archival Practice 83 works in copyright are likely to disappear before they escape music industry management and enter the public domain (Lessig, 2003). Amongst the many reasons for this disappearance are the costs presented to music companies by the continued preservation of individual master tapes of recordings, their remastering and digitization, as well as the management of related intellectual property rights. Likewise, it is questionable whether music companies are interested in digitization at all, as the very appearance of recordings in this form makes them immediately susceptible to redistribution for free by consumers to other consumers. Professional archivists and amateurs qualified only by a passion for music have responded to this situation by collecting and making material available online in carefully crafted and curated sites. There are officially sanctioned and supported projects such as the ‘Women’s Liberation Music Archive’ covering ‘Feminist Music-Making in the UK and Ireland, 1970–1990’ (see Deborah Withers, this volume); ‘AudioCulture’, which is planned by ‘NZ on Air’ and collects New Zealand’s popular music; or the Hungarian ‘Gramofon Online’, which makes available 78 rpm recordings from discs produced and issued in that country from 1906 onwards. ‘Unauthorised’ archive sites that make recordings available without permission are legion and some examples drawn from the field of jazz-soul fandom will serve to illustrate issues presented by their practices. For instance, the now defunct blog ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’ was dedicated to Creed Taylor’s independent and innovative CTI label. The label had a period of commercial success with a roster of soulful jazz stylists that included George Benson, Freddie Hubbard and Stanley Turrentine, before filing for bankruptcy in 1978. While some releases continued to be issued via A&M, others became unavailable. At the original blog site, the creator of ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’ outlined the motives behind this project to site visitors in terms of a response to this situation: ‘As there is still a lack of re-releases on the market, I decided to share the whole bunch with you. You don’t have to be a crate digger to get involved. Leave a comment, start a discussion, make my day. After all that’s why I’m doing it’. A substantial amount of vinyl was digitized and made available on this blog, attended by images of sleeves, reviews, ratings and discussion which were co-created by a community of devotees claimed to be almost 970,000 in number. At the foot of the main page of the CTI blog was an explanatory note, not unusual on such sites, which stated that music was copied from outof-print sources and available for education and non-commercial purposes. While many of the comments that took up the invitation to ‘make my day’ were in the nature of simple acknowledgements of the curator’s efforts, others offered extended discussions of the value of the music, its place in the canon and its history from those re-experiencing or discovering CTI’s catalogue for the first time. Likewise, there were discussions of the meanings of this music in the personal histories of individuals and how this archive offered a means of reconnecting with ‘lost’ or neglected artefacts that held great personal significance for many in the site’s community.

84 Jez Collins and Paul Long A similar site, ‘Soundological Investimigations’ [sic] underlines one rationale for this kind of practice. Author-curator Cheeba announces that its purpose is one of ‘tryin’ to put back into the music blogosphere by fillin’ in any blanks I can with out-of-print vinyl as well as the occasional mix, remix, re-edit, art or rant. But mostly vinyl. Mostly.’ In one blog post about a lost release by Hank Crawford that was issued by Kudu, a sister label of CTI, Cheeba suggests that: This album actually highlights the issue of abuse of copyright laws since rumour has it the original tapes have disappeared. If true, this would mean CTI does not hold the original sound recordings and would only be able to exert rights based on ownership of a copy—which Brooklyn Law School’s Jason Mazzone has included as one of the four types of what he calls ‘copyfraud.’ To industry insiders such arguments, as well as genuflections to rights holders that material can be removed on request, are specious attempts to hold at bay accusations of illegality. And yet, in spite of the risk of prosecution involved for the creators of blogs and users in sharing recordings, there is a considerable investment of ‘free’ labour (see Arvidsson, 2008; Terranova, 2004) involved in populating and curating such sites, manifest in the collections themselves and the creation and sustaining of community. Thus, ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’ and the communities of practice it represents prompt a number of thoughts about their status. Firstly, there is the question of what terms like ‘archive’ and ‘curation’ and indeed ‘cultural heritage’ mean if, as we have done here, they are applied to an understanding of the practices and very material made available by such sites. Secondly, and in relation, is the fact that ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’, along with similar blogs such as ‘Smooth’s My Jazz World’, ‘El Reza’, ‘BeeQ’, ‘Jazzever’ or ‘Call It Anything’, have been forcibly closed down by Google for transgressions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which extends copyright law into the online domain. Alongside the frustration expressed about the unavailability of original CTI recordings in vinyl reissues and new formats, the reflections of the blog’s creator on its closure illustrate that in making the digital archive a wholly online one, much more is at stake than the music alone: ‘The Man had not only taken the blog down but also depraved [sic] me of all the content including hundreds of posts and thousands of your lovely comments. As there is no backup and the blog was deleted even from G**gle archive cache, I can’t imagine how could I restore almost 3 years of work on another server’ (Anon, 2010). Whatever their legal province, perhaps all online archives and their communities are equally impermanent, whether they are built upon a core of music uploads or not. The owners of sound recordings such as those issued by the CTI label are supported in law and online by platforms such as Google in asserting their rights over their intellectual property, guarding its economic value by

Online Archival Practice 85 maintaining their assets and limiting access to them. Nonetheless, lovers of the music for whom it has primarily personal and collective meaning as a cultural rather than economic object, claim it as their heritage by their actions in and around online archive sites. Such trespasses have about them the quality of conscious acts of retrieval in addressing what Andrew Dubber has identified as ‘a genuine cultural crisis going on in the music industries’ (Dubber, 2009). In this account, music companies are supplying archives and libraries with material albeit in reluctant and unreliable fashion. Dubber details master tapes decaying in recording company vaults, writing of works by artists who might be judged obscure, irrelevant or well known that are not being preserved. The consequence of this situation is that in spite of the apparently democratic nature of the digital environment that allows for remediation and sharing, ‘In music, perhaps in more than any other field, culture is not merely being prevented from being remixed—it’s completely disappearing, preventing it from forming the basis of any future works or research’ (Dubber, 2009). THEORIZING THE ACTIVIST ARCHIVIST Dubber’s comments are suggestive for continuing with some general observations about the originators of sites such as ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’ and the challenges presented by their preservation practices. For instance, issues arise about their status and authority as curators of unofficial archives which can be located amidst the politics and contested terrain of history and heritage, of their definition, scope and questions of the domain of ownership and access. Here, we are thinking the self-appointed archivist-curator’s unauthorized use of material owned by others in which its cultural worth is celebrated at the cost of its economic value. In addition is the nature of claims for popular music to be afforded such special attention. Certainly, rights holders signal their appraisal of the cultural worth of the material they own by their neglect. Jacques Derrida’s oft-cited meditation on the archive (arkhe) is useful here as he reminds us that archival practice proper is the traditional preserve of professionals who are the arbiters of what is deemed to be of sufficient importance for acquisition, preservation and availability (Derrida, 1996). However, and as Carolyn Steedman has pointed out, Derrida’s concern was with a particular vision of the origin and domain of the archive which ‘is at one and the same time, the establishment of state power and authority’ (2001: 1–2). This sense captures the gravitas of the concept of the archive which is instructive for weighing the relative position of the online practices explored here, as Derrida also speculates on its changing nature which has been increasingly challenged by the advent of ‘telephonic credit cards, portable tape recorders, computers, printers, faxes, televisions, teleconferences and above all E-mail’ (1996: 17). Steedman suggests that

86 Jez Collins and Paul Long in this account, ‘the arkhe appeared to lose much of its connection to the idea of a place where official documents are stored for administrative reference, and became a metaphor capricious enough to encompass the whole of modern information technology, its storage, retrieval and communication.’ (2001: 4). Undoubtedly, digital technologies have presented new challenges ‘destabilising the conventional archive and at the same time revealing the archive’s potential’ (Geiger, Moore, and Savage, 2010: 5). As Lessig and other heralds of the digital age such as Clay Shirky (2009) and Charles Leadbeater (2009) have noted, the online culture of distribution and participation is often democratic in the treatment of knowledge, whoever makes claim to authority and ownership over it and indeed, who is able to deal with it and upon what terms. Curators of online music sites—where the use of recordings is both authorized and unauthorized—might be identified as the latest manifestation of what Howard Zinn labelled ‘activist archivists’. The term was coined in 1971 when Zinn called upon the American archive profession to break with its traditional restrictions, arguing that archival practice was the preserve of the ‘rich and powerful elements in society, whilst the poor and impotent continued to languish in archival obscurity.’ In order to remedy this situation, archivists were ‘to compile a whole new world of documentary material about the lives, desires and needs of the ordinary people’. (Zinn quoted in Johnson, 2001: 213). This position is echoed in that of social historians such as Raphael Samuel (1994) and Rosenzweig and Thelen (1998) who have called upon professionals to recognize the value of everyday lives and practices as areas of legitimate historical study and archival practice. Samuel for instance describes history as more than the preserve of the individual expert but instead is ‘a social form of knowledge, the work, in any given instance, of a thousand different hands’ (1994: 8). In this light, the relatively recent growth in support for the creation of community archives described by Flinn and Stevens (2009) is for them a political act. While noting the wildly differing subject matter, approaches, aims and objectives of community archives, the authors identify two areas of commonality in such initiatives. First, there is an underlying distrust of ‘official’ archives and a desire by creators of community archives to maintain autonomy. Second, community archives are motivated by the very failure of mainstream heritage narratives and collections to reflect and actively represent their histories, stories and knowledge. As Flinn (2010) further observes, the digital environment has had a major role in underwriting activism and the creation of community archives that allow new voices and new histories to be heard and which form around an unbounded plurality of heritage objects, tangible or intangible. Ideas about activist archiving are suggestive for framing the motivations and practices of individuals and communities with shared interests in popular music, and we proceed to explore a series of online sites with a focus beyond the preservation and circulation of sound recordings alone. Here we explore a range of sites that generate popular music memories and cultivate

Online Archival Practice 87 archives and communities of interest concentrated on geographic places, spaces and music scenes with a particular focus on those dedicated to the city of Birmingham. CURATING SITES OF POPULAR MUSIC MEMORY Sites concerned with the relation of music and place in the UK alone indicate a breadth and depth to such activity. By way of example, alongside myriad sites devoted to totemic scenes of Liverpool or Manchester for instance, we can number ‘Pompey Pop’ for Portsmouth, ‘Uncommon People’ on Sheffield or ‘Pink Noise and other Hull Bands of the 1980s’ about Humberside. Turning to the specificity of the music of Birmingham points also to the generic characteristics of this prodigious range of online heritage practice. The sites we explore here are notable when compared with those like ‘The CTI Never Sleeps’ for generally avoiding problems with intellectual property rights presented by placing digitized recordings at their centre to focus instead on a broader approach to music culture anchored to other kinds of artefact and above all the generation of memories of music and its place in individual and community life. Four projects established over the last decade in Birmingham have received the support of various public institutions in furthering what in each case is a particular missionary approach to music heritage. ‘Soho Road to the Punjab’ is a mixed media project created and launched in 2005 by Punch Records, described on its website as: ‘an authentic music driven arts organisation’. Funded via national grant-giving body the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)—‘a leading advocate for the value of heritage to modern life’ (albeit one with £375m to invest annually)—the project was formulated in order to celebrate the role Birmingham musicians, activists and audiences have played in Bhangra music. Bhangra is a musical form originating in traditional Punjabi folk songs which, transplanted to the polyphonic milieu and plural migrant communities of cities like Birmingham has resulted in a hybrid melding of reggae bass lines, rock guitar, hip hop rhymes and beats. Also founded in part upon HLF funding, Home of Metal (HoM) is curated by Capsule: ‘an award winning organisation that curate and present live music, events, exhibitions’. HoM’s agenda is encapsulated in the announcement that ‘For too long Birmingham and the Black Country have failed to celebrate what is rightfully theirs, to claim the city and the region as the birthplace of “Heavy Metal” ’. Birmingham Music Heritage (BMH) announces that it is ‘the official lottery funded music heritage site for Birmingham’, originated in 2009 by an organization called the Creative Community Networks, and built upon a £50,000 funding grant from HLF. Offering ‘untold stories 1965–1985’—the significance of this historical window is not articulated—BMH ‘reflects on the past to inspire a new generation of musicians from the Birmingham and the Midlands’. A fourth project is the Birmingham Popular Music Archive

88 Jez Collins and Paul Long (BPMA), which was founded in 2008 by Jez Collins, one of the authors of this piece. This project has received a small grant from the Arts Council of England as well as another from Screen West Midlands, the now defunct Regional Screen Agency, that allowed it to produce a documentary film. BPMA offers this statement of intent: ‘We want Birmingham to take pride in its musical heritage and to start shouting out about it [. . .] We want to hear about ALL the music activity in the city.’ These sites exhibit a variety of approaches to building the archive and to addressing and building community. Centred on the documentation of music activity ‘Soho Road to the Punjab’ is at the same time a response to the exclusion of migrant experiences from the official history and archive discourse identified by scholars such as Hall (2001), Samuel (1994) and Flinn and Stevens (2009). While this mission is the most overtly political of the four discussed here, the form it takes is a relatively conservative one given its online presence and the potential of digital engagement. It relies on the presentation of a set of already determined narratives and selection of significant artists and artefacts underwritten by the perspectives of a set of nominated experts or ‘champions’ (e.g. Dudrah, Chana, and Talwar, 2007). BMH is similar in approach although the site does invite visitors to share and submit photographs of bands and venues from its concentration on the period 1965–1985. Otherwise this space is organized around an alphabet of bands from The Applejacks to Wizzard, a structure which offers lists of band members with information on releases and chart positions as well as videos embedded from YouTube. These are accompanied by an array of audio productions and filmed interviews with those involved in the city’s music production of the past. BMH also streams some original recordings by unsigned bands and those on independent labels from its roster such as the new-wave Fashion or reggae band Beshara. Like BMH, HoM has also structured its approach around a preferred roster of artists which underlines its eponymous claim: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh. After HoM’s launch and a period of research and development, a number of seminars, concerts and exhibitions took place across Birmingham and the Black Country in the summer of 2011. The creation of an online digital archive of memorabilia and stories supported these activities and continues to invite genre fans at home and from further afield ‘to share their passion for Heavy Metal and contribute stories and memorabilia by uploading images, sound files and film footage’. With an eye on future exhibitions and the founding of a physical archive, the object here is to build capacity and sustainability: ‘WE NEED YOU to contribute to the archive with your Heavy Metal related wares, playing a part in securing our identity as the Home of Metal’. Appositely styled in classic heavy metal black, using portentous typeface and an avatar styled as a metal fan that serves navigation and invites comment, the site connotes authenticity, encouraging visitors to join the community, leave comments and upload digital images of memorabilia. As a result, several

Online Archival Practice 89 hundred digitized contributions are listed which range from personal photographs and rare promotional shots of bands during their formative years, through to fan memorabilia such as badges and T-shirts. Of all of these projects, BPMA is the one that has taken full advantage of the democratic potential of online culture that allows for the attempt to capture the scope of the city’s popular music heritage. Thus, addressing the people of Birmingham as a whole, it asks its users to ‘Tell us what you know, tell us what you think’, encouraging them to contribute to building and shaping the archive. The approach is an exploratory and open one and there are no set parameters for what should or should not be included, that ‘we aren’t just interested in the “star” names. We want to hear about ALL the music activity in the city.’ Nonetheless, the site does suggest a structure for popular music culture of: Bands/Musicians; DJs/Club Nights/Promoters; Exhibitions; Fashion/Shops; Managers; Press/Fanzines; Radio Stations; Record Labels; Record Shops; Recording Studios/Rehearsal Spaces and Venues. With a view to the kinds of artefact that capture music culture, BPMA evinces an awareness of how ‘music provides us with memories, individual and shared experiences and self-expression. For us, these memories and meanings can be stirred by a vast array of music ephemera, it could be a song, it might be a photograph or a ticket stub or it could be someone else’s recollections that make a connection with you and trigger your music experiences.’ Alongside the reproductions of physical things then, it is ultimately the prodigious accounts and memories captured that give breadth and depth to the archive and articulate the voice and concerns of contributors. In their online presence and practices, each of the projects evinces familiar aspects of the repertoire of popular music discourse and shares a number of interrelated challenges as heritage projects. Firstly, they deign to treat popular music as a significant form of heritage, an approach that has had uneven impact on the nature of the official archive as well as physical exhibitions in the sanctified spaces of Culture. While Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG) hosted ‘Home of Metal’ in the summer of 2011, a newly opened £8.9m ‘People’s Gallery’ offers only footnotes for popular culture, let alone music, in its heritage presentation which claims to tell the story of ‘Birmingham: its people, its history’. Secondly, each project claims a place for forms and music that have hitherto merited little attention within the hierarchies of popular music wherein low status has been afforded to genres like metal (see Weinstein, 2009) and indeed, and as lamented by BPMA, to music from Birmingham per se. Of course, in the wider field of heritage and history, each project is also staking a claim for the ‘hidden’ history of ordinary people defined by their consumption of types of music, their ethnicity and ultimately their membership of the city’s community. Thirdly, all of these projects have a role in dealing with abidingly negative perceptions of the city in which it is derided as a site defined by industrial decline and the very absence of culture. As a result, each project can be located in an ongoing project of place making and rebranding Birmingham as a

90 Jez Collins and Paul Long cultural destination (see Parker and Long, 2003; 2004). On this note, all four projects are cited in a recent scrutiny review instigated by Birmingham City Council (2012) in order to gather evidence into city’s music heritage provision. This review was prompted by ‘Destination: Music’, the 2011 report produced by UK Music, the umbrella organisation that represents the UK music industry. As part of an account of 7.7 million overseas and domestic visitors who attend music-related events annually, resulting in economic expenditure of £1.4 billion, ‘Destination: Music’ identified the value of music heritage to tourism, calling on local, regional and national policy makers ‘to realise the potential of this considerable economic asset’ (UK Music, 2011:2). Thus, the scrutiny review was able to make recommendations to do just that with a confidence and purpose evinced in the assertion of the title: ‘Destination Birmingham: Birmingham, A Music City’. In contrast to these projects and this official sanction is a wealth of more informal and self-interested practice that takes place elsewhere online which nonetheless has a part to play in valuing popular music as heritage. For instance, popular music features as a part of sites with a broad sense of community history as their basis. Blogs such as ‘Birmingham Roundabout’ or ‘Birmingham History Forum’ are not primarily about popular music and culture although both have elicited a wealth of contributions on the subject. To take one example from the latter site, a typical thread was opened in 2005 with the question ‘Anyone got any memories and information about nightclubs in Brum, from any time last century?’ (‘Brum’ is an affectionate local term for the city). The community continues to add to more than 100 pages of comments, respondents entering into a process of exploration and recollection. More immediately apparent and interactive perhaps than the bulletin board or forum is the prodigious archive building in social media sites such as Facebook. We can list a sample of groups relating to Birmingham’s music culture in order to give a sense of their variety. ‘Upstairs at the Mermaid’ for instance deals with a pub venue that was, amongst other things, a centre for gigs by anarcho-punk, goth and ‘psychobilly’ bands and associated subcultures. ‘Barrel Organ Digbeth’ focuses on a similar venue, history and moment, as does ‘Crown Punks’ which is dedicated to a subcultural group that in 1976 found a particular pub to be a convivial space in which to congregate. The history of the Crown Pub as a venue illustrates something of the often nomadic nature of subcultures and club nights as before the advent of punk this was the site of Henry’s Blues House. This was a club night that took place upstairs at the Crown, offering a diet of gigs from heavy rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Before that, the pub was the site of a folk club, famous for the recording of the Ian Campbell Band’s ‘Ceilidh at the Crown’ album (1962). With the pub dilapidated and now under threat from redevelopment, it too has a devoted Facebook page. For many years the city’s major venue was an Odeon cinema, which has its own group: ‘Like many kids born in the 60’s or early 70’s, we seemed

Online Archival Practice 91 to spend half our teenage years there watching every rock/metal band that came through town’. Groups for dance music venues are also in evidence, as another advertises: ‘The Hummingbird Club provided the first taste of House and Electronic Dance Music for many people in Birmingham and the Midlands’. There is also at least one group devoted to ‘Record shops in and around Birmingham 1970–1990’, which invites memories of long gone stores which were central to individual lives and scenes such as Don Christies, Reddingtons, Summit, The Diskery, Chart shop, Tempest, Swordfish, Baileys, NEC record fairs and so forth. While such sites attest to how Facebook empowers communities of interest, Joanne Garde-Hansen (2009) sounds a note of caution in her analysis of this social medium and its architecture. Citing Derrida’s analysis of the power of archivist (archeion), Facebook as keeper of the archive has the power and authority to determine how memories are stored, ordered and shared, in order to serve the corporate and commercial activities of the organisation (Garde-Hansen, 2009: 136). In light of the discussion of the politics of community archive work, we should bear in mind the limits that Facebook places on what can be posted online and indeed its generic structure. Within these limits this activity is nonetheless significant in quantity and quality. The groups sampled here for instance vary in the size and energy of their communities. ‘Upstairs at the Mermaid’ for instance has 306 members, ‘Barrel Organ’ 430, while ‘Crown Punks’ has 341 members, and there is some overlap in membership. At each site there are ever-increasing amounts of uploaded historical materials. There are links to official band sites and other tribute pages, embedded video from YouTube and occasional streams of music from facilities such as Soundcloud or Spotify. There are also digitized photographs, ticket stubs, posters and other ephemera from personal collections—the ‘material objects’ of popular music (Leonard, 2007: 148). As Kirk and Sellen write, while appearing mundane, digital copies can simultaneously be emotive and ‘devoid of value, but in other respects be rich with it’ (2010: 11), and so photographs and any other posted reproduction become the archival artefact that is ‘the memory glue’ (Bastian and Alexander, 2009) for individuals and communities in recalling and sharing music-based experiences. It is also the ongoing process of sociability online and the interactions between members that gives rise to narratives and multiple perspectives on the past. Autobiographical remembering presents an implicit appeal to the wider community to do so too, a ‘mnemonic transmission’ that seeks to corral the cultural memory of communities (Wang and Brockmeier, 2002). Of the Mermaid, one member writes that ‘This place was my spiritual home in the late 1980’s, some awesome people and bands’. Elsewhere, another recalls it as ‘A great place: a lawless hole with rancid drinks (“Can I have more Scrumpy with lumps in please?”) and reckless drunks [. . .] I went to my first gig there back in February 1984 (Nightingales + Ted Chippington) and then played my first gig there in June 1984’.

92 Jez Collins and Paul Long It should be mentioned that users of these sites are promiscuous in their membership and memories, offering narratives that map interaction between historical locales and scenes as well as between online groups. This interaction takes place between the community groups focused on Birmingham as well as connecting further afield with sites dedicated to bands or genres as well as compatible sites in and around other cities. Recalling lost venues, scenes and activities such as shopping for music on the high street, such sites offer a collective testament to the passing of so much of what was once integral to popular music culture in this and other locations. Thus highlighting the suggestive ways in which this kind of activity offers an intriguing resource for historians just as it does for those who participate in the construction of online archives of music memory. CONCLUSION In this chapter we have explored a variety of ways in which the online practices of a prodigious array of sites devoted to popular music demonstrate the kinds of ‘DIY preservation’ identified by Bennett. This DIY quality is manifest in vernacular practices, informality or simple disregard for the conventions of intellectual property rights or a wider heritage culture in which popular music has an uncertain place. As we suggested at the outset of this chapter, the sites explored here insist upon the importance of popular music—its products and associated practices—to these amateur curators and communities. Taken together then, these sites present us with a means of thinking through the meaning and value of popular music as heritage. Jose van Dijck (2006) argues that recorded music is integral to the construction of personal and collective cultural memory. This memory simultaneously is embodied, enabled and embedded in and around music. We share and exchange with others through ‘explicit memory narratives’ that ‘directly bespeak musical memory as it relates to personal and group identity’ (van Dijck 2006: 369). This is a useful analysis for thinking about the online practices explored in this chapter and the degree to which they work as sites of music heritage and how they develop such notions. Acknowledging Leonard’s point, lately echoed in Simon Reynolds’s survey of ‘retromania’ (2011), that material cultural artefacts alone ‘cannot stand in for, or be detached from the sonic and bodily experience of music’ (Leonard, 2007: 148), we would nonetheless extend van Dijck’s analysis to the ephemera associated with music production and generated by its consumers and which we see uploaded by those online communities studied here. These communities and the online architecture which enables them are, we suggest, ‘cultural frames for recollection’ that ‘do not simply invoke but actually help construct collective memory’ (van Dijck, 2006: 358).

Online Archival Practice 93 We have written elsewhere (Long and Collins, 2012) on the manner in which communities construct memories in such spaces in and around sites of music culture. The nature of much online communication allows for what at first glance appear to be comments made with little care or attention to language or even detail. Nonetheless, between them and in comments which are primarily centred on music or in which music venues or activity is but anchor and backdrop for other activities these are alive with history, identity and meaning, providing an ‘authentic voice of the past’ (Flinn, 2007: 152). Together, the practices we have explored raise questions about the nature of the archive, of history and heritage. Alongside the collection and sharing of music and of associated artefacts, the archive is manifest in the nature of the collective memory forged in online interactions. These involve an ongoing negotiating and working through of the significance of venues, individuals, bands and moments of both personal and shared pasts. Other than the power of the service provider, this persistence is limited only by the energies and interest of the community. While we have focused on the nature of archive and community building here, this is but an initial attempt to assess this practice as its wealth and diversity invites much more evaluation. For instance, we might pay closer attention to the specific ways in which recordings are discussed for their meanings and significance qua music amidst this memory making. However, the presence of music as a motivating cultural force is apparent in generating so much memory work which attests to its historical importance in the lives of so many of us, underlining issues for thinking about what counts as heritage and the forms it takes. REFERENCES Anon. (2010). ‘Where were you in nineteen ninety something?’ Retrieved from http://90something.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/i-fought-law-and-law-won.html (accessed 11 April 2010). Arvidsson, A. (2008). ‘The ethical economy of customer coproduction’. Journal of Macromarketing 28 (4): 326–338. Bastian, J., & Alexander, B. (2009). ‘Introduction: Communities and archives— A symbiotic relationship’. In J. A. Bastian & B. Alexander (eds.), Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London: Facet. Bennett, A. (2002). ‘Music, media and urban mythscapes: A study of the “Canterbury Sound” ’. Media, Culture & Society 24 (1): 87–100. Bennett, A. (2009). ‘ “Heritage rock”: Rock music, representation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37 (5): 474–489. Bhattacharjee, S., Gopal, R. D., Lertwachara, K., Marsden, J. R., & Telang, R. (2007). ‘The effect of digital sharing technologies on music markets’. Management Science 53 (9): 1359–1374. Birmingham City Council. (2012). Destination Birmingham: Birmingham, A Music City. Retrieved from www.birmingham.gov.uk/scrutiny (accessed 1 October 2012).

94 Jez Collins and Paul Long Derrida, J. (1996). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (E. Prenowitz, trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dubber, A. (2009). ‘So-why-focus-on-music?’ Retrieved from http://deletingmusic. com/2009/07/so-why-focus-on-music/ (accessed 4 July 2009). Dudrah, R., Chana, B., & Talwar, A. (2007). Bhangra: Birmingham and Beyond. Birmingham City Council Library & Archive Service. Flinn, A. (2007). ‘Community histories, community archives: Some opportunities and challenges’. Journal of the Society of Archivists 28 (2): 151–176. Flinn, A. (2010, January). ‘ “An attack on professionalism and scholarship”?: Democratising archives and the production of knowledge’. Ariadne 62. Retrieved from www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue62/flinn/ (accessed 2 April 2011). Flinn, A., & Stevens, S. (2009). ‘ “It is noh mistri, wi mekin histri”. Telling our own story: independent and community archives in the UK, challenging and subverting the mainstream’. In J. A. Bastian & B. Alexander (eds.), Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London: Facet. Garde-Hansen, J. (2009). ‘MyMemories?: Personal digital archive fever and Facebook’. In J. Garde-Hansen, A. Hoskins, & A. Reading (eds.), Save As . . . Digital Memories. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillian. Geiger, T., Moore, N., & Savage, M., (2010). The Archive in Question. CRESC Working Paper Series Working Paper No. 81. CRESC: University of Manchester. Hall, S. (2001). ‘Constituting an Archive’. Third Text 15 (54): 89–92. Hands, M. (2008). Making Digital Cultures; Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Hodgkin, K., & Radstone, S. (2003). Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory. London: Routledge. Januszczak, W. (2013). ‘Loving the alien’. Sunday Times. Retrieved from www. thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/arts/Visual_Arts/article1232390.ece (accessed 24 March 2013). Johnson, I. (2001). ‘Whose history is it anyway? Journal of the Society of Archivists 22 (2): 213–229. Kirk, D. S. and Sellen, A. (2010). On human remains: Values and practice in the home archiving of cherished objects. ACM Transactions On Computer Human Interactions 17 (3): 1–43. Leadbeater, C. (2009). We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production. London: Profile Books. Leonard, M. (2007). ‘Constructing histories through material culture: Popular music, museums and collecting’. Popular Music History 2 (2): 147–167. Leonard, M. (2010). ‘Exhibiting popular music: Museum audiences, inclusion and social history’. Journal of New Music Research 39 (2): 171–181. Lessig, L. (2003). ‘eldred cc. Archives, On building rather than suing: The Eric Eldred Act’. Retrieved from http://lessig.org/blog/2003/01/on_building_rather_ than_suing.html (accessed 18 January 2003). Long, P., & Collins, J. (2012). ‘Mapping the soundscapes of popular music heritage’. In Les Roberts (ed.), Mapping Cultures. London: Palgrave. Parker, D., & Long, P. (2003). ‘Reimagining Birmingham: Public history, selective memory and the narration of urban change’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (2): 157–178. Parker, D., & Long, P. (2004). ‘ “The mistakes of the past”? Visual narratives of urban decline and regeneration’. Visual Culture in Britain 5 (1): 37–58. Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber & Faber. Rosenzweig, R., & Thelen, D. (1998). The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. Chichester, NY: Columbia University Press.

Online Archival Practice 95 Samuel, R. (1994). Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (vol. 1). London: Verso. Shirky, C. (2009). Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together. London: Penguin. Steedman, C. (2001). Dust. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Terranova, T. (2004). Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto Press. UK Music. (2011). Destination: Music. London: UK Music. van Dijck, J. (2006). ‘Record and Hold: Popular Music Between Personal and Collective Memory’. Critical Studies in Media Communications 23 (5): 357–374. Wang, Q., & Brockmeier, J. (2002). ‘Autobiographical remembering as cultural practice: Understanding the interplay between memory, self and culture’. Culture Psychology 8(1): 45–64. Weinstein, D. (2009). Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture (2nd ed.). New York: Da Capo Press. Wikstom, P. (2009). The Music Industry—Music in the Cloud. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Online Archives Birmingham History Forum: http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/forum.php (accessed 1 October 2012). Birmingham Music Heritage: www.birminghammusicheritage.org.uk/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Birmingham Popular Music Archive: http://birminghammusicarchive.com/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Birmingham Roundabout: www.birminghamroundabout.co.uk/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Calyx: The Canterbury Music Website: http://calyx.perso.neuf.fr (accessed 1 March 2013). Dr. Schluss’ Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities: http://psychedelicobscurities.blogspot. co.uk/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Gramofon Online: http://gramofon.nava.hu/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Home of Metal: www.homeofmetal.com/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Orgy in Rhythm: http://orgyinrhythm.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Pink Noise and Other Hull Bands of the 1980s: www.nickclay.karoo.net/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Pompey Pop: http://pompeypop.wordpress.com/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Soho Road to the Punjab: www.sohoroadtothepunjab.org (accessed 1 October 2012). Soundomological Investigations: www.soundological.blogspot.co.uk (accessed 1 October 2012). Steel City Sound: http://steel-city-sound.blogspot.com (accessed 1 October 2012). Uncommon People: http://uncommonpeople.co.uk/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Women’s Liberation Music Archive: http://womensliberationmusicarchive.wordpress. com (accessed 1 October 2012).

Facebook Barrel Organ Group: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23119422706&v=wall (accessed 1 October 2012). Birmingham Record Shops 1970–1990: www.facebook.com/groups/282165277076/ ?fref=ts (accessed 1 October 2012).

96 Jez Collins and Paul Long Crown Punks Group: www.facebook.com/groups/108486069179177/ (accessed 1 October 2012). Glasgow Apollo Group: www.facebook.com/groups/5586711471/?ref=ts&fref=ts (accessed 1 October 2012). Hummingbird Club: www.facebook.com/hummingbirdclub?fref=ts (accessed 1 October 2012). Upstairs at the Mermaid: www.facebook.com/groups/77042988445/ (accessed 1 October 2012).

7

Locating the ‘Bristol Sound’ Archiving Music as Everyday Life Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder

INTRODUCTION: BRISTOL MUSIC CITY The idea of music cities has become a well-established way of making sense of a diverse musical culture, both nationally and internationally. In the UK, the idea that particular sounds and genres belong to specific geographical contexts has enabled the construction of a musical heritage in cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. The close relationship between musical genres and music ‘scenes’ in these cities has made it possible to understand and represent Liverpool’s ‘Merseybeat’ sound, Manchester’s ‘Madchester’ scene and Birmingham’s reputation as the birthplace of heavy metal. The notion of specific urban musical identities has become a conventional way to describe and analyse the cultural significance of British popular music in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Correspondingly, in recent years there has been an increased focus within popular music studies on locality as significant to the production, performance and consumption of musical styles and identities (Cohen, 1991; Mitchell, 1996; Bennett, 2000). The recent technological developments that have enabled the rapid global distribution of music have transformed contemporary popular music cultures. Instead of erasing the significance of locality, these developments in online distribution, music sharing and streaming, may have actually made locality more important within independent music scenes, as musicians and audiences seek to establish distinctive patterns of identity and community against the homogenising effect of globalised musical production and consumption. It is worth noting that until recently none of the UK’s more southern cities has had such a clear sense of particularised musical identity as the key sites of musical heritage already mentioned, which are situated in the midlands and the north. Since the early 1990s however the city of Bristol in the south-west of England, nestled between Wales to the west and London to the east, has emerged as one of Britain’s major musical cities. The idea of a so-called Bristol Sound followed in the wake of global success by artists such as Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky. However in their 2003 book, John Connell and Chris Gibson conclude from this that ‘the idea of a

98 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder “Bristol Sound” was as much a social construction as a reflection of authentic local culture’ and that there was no coherent ‘Bristol Sound’ (Connell and Gibson, 2003: 101). They base this on the fact that in 1996 Phil Johnson claimed that there was no Bristol Sound scene (Johnson, 1996: 27), and Geoff Barrow from Portishead stated that ‘The Bristol scene exists mostly in people’s minds’ (cited in Connell and Gibson, 2003: 101). However, both Johnson and Barrow seem to be suggesting that there was no unified scene—that the kinds of sociability associated with a scene seemed to be either tenuous or altogether absent, and that, from the point of view of musicians associated with Massive Attack and Portishead at least, a coherent scene was either largely imagined or wishful thinking. Denying the existence of a scene is somewhat difficult when the very notion suggests a level of secrecy and hiddenness; ‘there is an esoteric aura connected with any scene which often makes knowledge of its whereabouts a problem for outsiders or for those new to the city’ (Blum, 2003: 167). Whether a Bristol Sound scene existed or not, the term ‘Bristol Sound’ has become associated with a recognisable sound: an experimental music sometimes described as ‘trip-hop’ and influenced by an eclectic mix of dub reggae, punk and soul, jazz and hip hop, and characterised by a heavy bass, use of sampling and a laid-back beat. The Bristol Sound is the main means by which Bristol has been able to establish itself on the map of the UK’s musical cultural heritage. In 2010 it was widely publicised in the British national press and the music press that according to the PRS (Performing Rights Society), Bristol was named the country’s ‘most musical city’. This was based on information from the PRS database on the birthplaces of PRS-registered musicians. There were more PRS-registered musicians per capita of population born in Bristol than in other UK cities. Though there is no necessary correlation between this data and the Bristol Sound, local institutions have been quick to seize on it as affirming not only the sense that Bristol is full of active musicians, but also the ongoing importance and influence of the Bristol Sound. Although this term is closely associated with the emergence of key artists such as Massive Attack and Tricky during the late 1980s and 1990s, the idea of the Bristol Sound continues to shape contemporary manifestations of the city’s musical culture. This musical identity plays an increasingly important role in promoting Bristol as a significant site of cultural heritage within both national and international contexts. Increasingly, music features as a key part of the city’s museums and tourist industry and is linked closely to ongoing promotion and cultural redevelopment within the city. According to a 2001 report, unlike other British cities, Bristol had lacked any kind of official cultural strategy until the 1990s (Aubrey et al., 2001: 11). Its cultural strategy was only developed in that decade, when the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (BCDP) was formed. This organisation was collaboration between South West Arts, Bristol City Council and Chambers of Commerce, ‘to provide leadership on

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 99 cultural activity in the city’ and ‘to use cultural activity to raise Bristol’s profile regionally, nationally and internationally’ (BCDP 1994 cited in Aubrey et al., 2001: 11). Promoting the city via the Bristol Sound was one part of that strategy. The notion of a distinctive Bristol Sound has become the basis of the city’s musical reputation abroad. Bristol has become a cultural brand through the successes of both the Bristol Sound and the internationally renowned graffiti artist Banksy, who also emerged in Bristol in the 1990s, and whose characteristic style combines stencilling with dry political commentary. A 2005 report by the European Institute for Comparative Research in Rotterdam cited the Bristol Sound as an example of successful urban marketing: ‘A city can market itself as an ideal location for people and firms, and a preferred cultural destination for tourists; its unique, original cultural mix can become a recognisable brand (New York’s loft living, Berlin’s underground art, the Bristol Sound, etc.)’ (Van der Borg and Russo, 2005: 7). The cultural capital afforded by the association between the city and its musical heritage can be evidenced in the popularity of the Bristol-branded music around the world. Both the Bristol Sound and trip-hop have become globally recognisable (and overlapping) categories and are now a legitimate part of the marketing and consumption of popular music. ‘Trip-hop’ is a genre widely used to describe Bristol producers and bands, although the term is not used by the musicians themselves. The Bristol Sound label tends to ignore genre differences, and is often used to describe a wide range of music from the city (including drum’n’bass, jungle, dub reggae and dubstep) which share an emphasis on heavy bass (Yates, 2009). The interest in the Bristol Sound can become an inclusive interest in a wide range of independent and underground music hailing from the city. For example, Disc Shop Zero, located in the Nerima ward of Tokyo, is dedicated to artists working and originating in Bristol and is testament to the global reach of the city’s musical branding. Clearly there is a lot of music making in the city but of course not all of this is recognisable as the Bristol Sound. Despite the importance of the key Bristol artists credited with the development of the so-called trip-hop genre, any cursory glance at the diversity of the city’s musical life is testament to the heterogeneity of Bristol’s musical culture. A discussion of the relationship between music and locality may begin with the marquee acts and commonly recognised scenes and musical styles but needs to be able to interrogate the wider constituents of musical and cultural experience. This means shifting the focus from key artist biography to a wider analysis of the musical culture of a city like Bristol. One important way to do this is to focus on the everyday experience of music making, performance and engagement with musical performances within the city. Although the showcase performances of bands like Massive Attack or Portishead may help cement the relationship between locality and music, or construct the reputation of a city as a music city, it is the ongoing energy and diversity of the city’s music venues that underpin the living musical heritage of Bristol.

100 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder The Bristol Live Independent Music Archive (BLIMA)1 project was developed partly in response to the recognition of Bristol as a music city and the problematic concept of the Bristol Sound. We set out to map Bristol’s live independent music scene, from 1950 to the present. The project investigates elements of popular culture, music and everyday life within the city, supporting research in this area, consulting with music networks and cultural and heritage organisations in the region. In this chapter we introduce some of the themes that are emerging as central to the BLIMA project. We begin with the question of liveness, and how a ‘live’ music scene is facilitated by certain kinds of music venues. We go on to address the role of the Dug Out club in shaping a particular reputation for Bristol music. We will suggest that there is a certain irony in the way that the Bristol Sound, perceived as musically and ethnically heterogenous and syncretic, has given an impression of Bristol music (and the Bristol population) as more unified and less diverse in its tastes than it actually is. We take another club from the same period, the Bamboo Club, to give a slightly different picture of the ways in which musical communities and scenes coexisted in the same spaces. Finally we discuss some of the issues involved in attempting to archive and document this kind of diverse and everyday (or every night) music culture. Taking our cue from discussions about the archiving of performance art and live art, we are interested in how the act of archiving actively produces the music scene retrospectively, and have moved from a focus on archiving the music scene to surveying the formal and informal archives that already exist. We also take from this field some ideas about how the live is archived in the audience and performers themselves, and how these ‘archives’ combine to produce new sounds and dances: the process of bricolage characteristic of any new scene. Finally we argue for research methods that allow us to understand the past in ways that are unfixed, and constantly changing, to avoid the deadening effect that a settled past can have on the understanding of a live—and alive—musical culture. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ‘LIVE’ Amongst existing studies of popular music and locality, Sara Cohen’s (1991) work on the independent scene in Liverpool and Ruth Finnegan’s (1989) study of music making in Milton Keynes, stand out as establishing the importance of musical production in a local context by focusing on the complex relationships between music makers, audiences and venue owners. In particular, these studies prioritise live performance as a key site of cultural production marked out by individual creativity, social interaction and ritual, that shape the complex patterns that represent both local music identities and also distinct ‘scenes’ (Huq, 2006). Andy Bennett’s (2000) more recent work (drawing on case studies from Newcastle) has developed these themes

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 101 further by identifying the importance of established venues in shaping local musical communities and scenes. MacKinnon’s (1993) work on the British folk scene provides more insights into the relationship between local music scenes and venues; work which has been further developed by Björnberg and Stockfelt’s (1996) focus on musical and social cultures within the context of the pub venue. Liveness, understood as something which includes aspects of recorded music (e.g. in sampling and DJing), is central if we want to treat popular music culture as something more than the activities of star performers, and to embed popular music studies in the study of everyday life. We began our study of the live music scene in Bristol with a survey of venues and clubs, both contemporary and historical. Regardless of whether the Bristol Sound corresponded historically to a specific and coherent scene, venues and club nights have played an important part in the construction of Bristol’s heterogeneous music scenes. Live performance functions to construct and assert local or ‘scene’ identities to the key focus of musical creativity which is ultimately tied into the production and wider distribution of distinct musical identities and genres. To make sense of the changes in venues and clubs, and therefore in Bristol’s music scenes, we need to understand the impact of urban redevelopment, and changes to licensing laws since the 1990s. Aubrey, Chatterton and Hollands argued that in British cities, urban regeneration, especially of nightlife, had neglected young people ‘in the hubbub of self-congratulation and civic boosterism’ (Aubrey et al., 2001: 6). The nightlife economy of Bristol had been taken over by large corporate operators in the city centre, with ‘implications for individuality, identity, creativity and locally embedded economic development’ (Aubrey et al., 2001: 6). They attribute the interest of ‘London-based firms and promoters’ in Bristol nightlife to the successful ‘export of the “Bristol Sound” in the 1990s, through artists such as Massive Attack, Tricky, Roni Size and Portishead’. In this interpretation of events at least, the impact of the Bristol Sound as city-brand has been negative: While much of the character of the club scene in the 1970s and 1980s was based around the organic nature of smaller venues and the desire to create an environment that allowed creativity to thrive, the 1990s have seen a dramatic increase in larger, corporate owned, city centre venues alongside the closure of several traditional venues. (Aubrey et al., 2001: 24) Large-scale corporate bars in the city centre are also less likely to play host to live music since ‘live music is seen by many commercial operators as cutting into drinking space and profit margins. In other words, live music literally takes up space in the form of a band stage and a dance floor, thereby cutting down on vertical drinking space’ (Aubrey et al., 2001: 65). Although it is not clear that this is the cause, Bristol has lost some important independent venues during the latter part of the 20th century. Examples include the

102 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder famous rock venue The Granary which was closed in 1988 after 30 years of operation and was converted into luxury apartments in 20022 and The Mauretania which closed its doors in 1994 to make way for a cocktail bar and an exclusive over-25s nightclub. If a study of live culture needs to involve the political economy of the city, it also requires that we specify exactly what we mean by liveness. The Bristol Sound complicates this, since it characterises music which involves live DJ performance (using decks), sampling, and bands that are principally studio based. In Bristol, as in many cities, the notion of liveness needs to be extended beyond venues where bands perform regularly to the significant influence of nightclubs and DJ culture within the city. Soundsystem culture within the city has had an important role to play since the 1970s where systems such as Jah Shaka and the Mad Professor were just as significant as local reggae bands like Talisman and Black Roots. This does not diminish the importance of the live but it does mean that we need to be precise about what we mean by the term. On the one hand, live performance is about temporality: it is what marks out a musical scene as existing now, rather than being mere history or ‘heritage’. The use of the term ‘live’ as a way of describing events seems to have originated as a means of distinguishing the live from the recorded. According to performance theorist Philip Auslander, it was first used in reference to radio, in 1934, because radio broadcasting made it possible to confuse recorded and live performances (Auslander, 1999: 16). Audiences, unable to directly see the source of the sound, were also unable to distinguish between geographic distance and temporal distance (Auslander, 2002: 19). Auslander argues that, ‘liveness is first and foremost a temporal relationship, a relationship of simultaneity’ (Auslander, 2002: 21). This is why it makes sense to talk of live TV, live radio or concerts streamed live on the Internet.3 However, in music, what might mark out the event as ‘live’ would include those elements that are unpredictable, variable or spontaneous, the particular mixing of pre-recorded elements that add up to the sense of a unique moment, an event happening in a particular time and place. Liveness is placedependent insofar as it is to do with the notion of ‘being there’ at that time, in that place, and to the extent that it involves the co-presence of audience and performers. Just as in visual culture the museum artwork gains its authority from its ‘presence in time and space’ (Benjamin, 1992: 214) and the photograph from its ‘having-been-there’ (Barthes, 1977: 44), in music, claims to cultural authenticity can be based in having been there at the time and in that place. ‘Live’ radio appearances, or ‘live albums’ aside, the live is partly defined in terms of the co-presence of the performers and the audience in the physical space. The role of ‘having-been-there’ in the construction and mythologizing of a music scene is evident in the case of the Bristol Sound, where much is built around the posthumous reputation of spaces (pubs in Montpelier and St Paul’s, St Paul’s Carnival) and, in particular—one club—the Dug Out, a small nightclub located on Park Row near the centre of the city.

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 103 THE MYTH OF ORIGIN: DOWN AT THE DUG OUT As we have seen, one shaping context for a music scene is the vitality of the small, independent venues and clubs that make live performance possible. The range of live performance, soundsystem and DJ culture within the city has shaped both the notion of a distinct Bristol Sound and also throws light of the range of diverse musical practices in the locality. Clubs, venues, and key events help to establish the existing accounts of the origins and development of the Bristol Sound (Johnson, 1996; Webb, 2004). One significant event was the graffiti exhibition at the Arnolfini gallery in 1985. The exhibition included the graffiti art of 3D (Robert del Naja of Massive Attack), and a party held in the galleries featured the Wild Bunch collective, who later formed Massive Attack. The Arnolfini event is interesting because it complicates the common assumption that high cultural contexts appropriate, rather than participate in the production of, new popular cultural forms. As an art venue it does not quite fit the narrative of authentic musical heritage, which is usually associated with a more ‘underground’ scene and linked to influential nightclubs around the city. Johnson, who was present and videoed the event, writes about it as a significant event and memory but also dismisses it as not ‘the real thing’, compared to clubs and warehouse parties of the same period (Johnson, 1996: 64). Clubs like the ‘legendary’ Dug Out are given a central role in the emergence of the Bristol Sound and continue to frame a shared understanding of the city’s musical heritage (Mojo, 1998; O’Hagan, 2012). For example, in 2013 a new play entitled The Dug Out was launched at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory theatre, evidencing the enduring status of the club. A feature on the play broadcast on local TV news in the spring of 2013 reflects the crucial role that the club plays in favoured narratives of music in the city, describing the Dug Out as: ‘Notorious and famous in equal measures . . . the birthplace and spiritual home of the Bristol music scene’ (BBC, 2013). The legendary status of the Dug Out is based largely on the period throughout the 1980s when it was frequented by artists, producers and DJs who went on in the early 1990s, to shape the output of high profile Bristol acts like Massive Attack and Tricky. The Wild Bunch DJ collective included the three core members of what would become Massive Attack (Robert Del Naja, Andrew Vowles and Grant Marshall—better known as ‘3D’, ‘Mushroom’ and ‘Daddy G’), and members of the collective regularly performed at the Dug Out, as did the influential Smith and Mighty who would later go on to produce Massive Attack’s first single. The combination of influences at the Dug Out, from soundsystem culture, punk and soul worked to produce a distinctive musical mix which helped to shape what became known as the Bristol Sound (Webb, 2004; O’Hagan, 2012). The mixture of cultural, ethnic and genre influences that are commonly understood to have been at play during the heyday of the Dug Out are important in defining the cultural and creative characteristics of the Bristol Sound. The idea of the syncretic is a useful tool

104 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder for analysing the development of new musical genres in contemporary Britain and their relationship to cultural identity (Hyder, 2004) and in many ways the Bristol Sound exemplifies this idea of multi-accented musical identities. The central place of a now defunct originatory venue is significant in the construction of narratives of local scenes across a range of other music cities. The Cavern Club in Liverpool with its links to the early years of The Beatles and Factory Records outlet the Hacienda in Manchester both continue to frame the musical stories of both cities. The mythic venue with its sense of ‘I was there-ness’ plays an important part in establishing a dynamic moment of musical and cultural creativity that is seen to represent the origins of a new and defining musical identity. In other words, it helps create a sense of recent cultural heritage and distinctive local identity. In Bristol, the Dug Out as origin underpins the story of the Bristol Sound and helps to cement a sense of musical and regional identity. The myth of the Dug Out had begun even while the club was still open: Bristol musician Roni Size was too young to be allowed into the club at the time but remembers ‘just standing outside and banging on the door and wondering if I could get in there, but I could never get in there, but it was great because I always imagined what it would be like’ (Yates, 2009). He was inspired by the idea of the syncretic and creative processes that he imagined were going on inside. Recently, the Dug Out has inspired projects such as the 2005 ‘virtual Dug Out’ which uses ‘the Dug Out club as a focus and metaphor for the peculiarities of Bristol and its creative community [and] provides a trip through the mythical past that was the Dug Out club and provides a vision of Bristol as a creative city by referring to THEN and NOW’ (www.electricpavilion.org/dugout/). The strength of this story and place of origin is important in maintaining a strong sense of continuity and creativity within certain musical traditions within the city, providing subsequent generations of musicians with a distinct point of focus and inspiration. The reputation of the Dug Out is of a place where subcultural groups mixed and danced to the same music. Daddy G, who DJed at the Dug Out in the early 1980s described it in this way: ‘Especially back in ’77 when it was like punks, bikers, dreads, you know just a whole cacophony of people in this one place.’4 The combination of musical styles played at the Dug Out is remembered as particularly diverse: Dug Out DJ Gill Loats remembers that, ‘In my experience, most clubs . . . had certain nights for certain types of people. Clubs would play soul all night or funk, and I mixed it up . . . I would play a bit of everything; everything I liked.’ (Cater, 2013c) Another clubber, Sapphire, also found the crowd very mixed, ‘The dress code was wear what you like and the crowd was very different. You had your black men in trilby hats and their nice smart suits, you had funky ones with trainers and the street look, then you had the working girls [and] your students.’5 However, our research suggests that the mélange of cultural and musical styles that flourished at the Dug Out does not necessarily reflect the cultural interconnectedness of the city itself. The model of the Bristol Sound which

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 105 foregrounds notions of musical and cultural syncretism may be productive but it has also arguably contributed towards a simplified understanding of the city’s musical life. There is a certain irony attached to the fact that the Bristol Sound, with its perceived roots in syncretism and hybridity has gone on to articulate a sense of a single and unified music culture and scene. According to recent statistics around 5% of Bristol’s population of 400,000 people are categorised as ethnic minorities, a figure slightly behind the national average of 5.5%. The influence of different musical cultures in the city undoubtedly contributed to the genesis of the Bristol Sound but the account of syncretic exchange at the Dug Out perhaps serves to distort or romanticise the level of intercultural crossover in Bristol’s regular musical life. Looking at the experience of other clubs and venues around Bristol we can see a different model of musical development where specific cultural and musical communities are catered for in parallel. If we look at the history of the Bamboo Club (1966–1977) we uncover a venue that in some ways fits with the existing model of the Bristol Sound but also problematizes certain aspects of it. The Bamboo Club was set up in 1966 specifically to cater to the city’s West Indian settler community and as such was best known for its role in helping develop Bristol’s reggae scene. The development of the scene in clubs such as The Bamboo helped produce local bands such as Talisman and Black Roots who both went on to achieve national success. During the 1970s and early 1980s both bands were championed by BBC Radio DJs Kid Jensen and John Peel, recording several live sessions for the corporation and becoming popular acts on the festival scene around the country. The club also hosted a range of artists with a national and international reputation, most notably when Bob Marley and the Wailers played the Bamboo in 1973 as part of their influential ‘Catch a Fire’ tour. The club also featured several popular DJs such as Sol Jay and played host to soundsystems such as Innex Mind, Jah Shaka and Ajax. Although there are clear links between the West Indian–centred reggae scene featured at the Bamboo Club and the eclectic mix of sounds developed at the Dug Out, there is not the same evidence of intercultural exchange and experimentation associated with the former. Reggae music was central to the identity and success of the Bamboo Club but it was not the only genre catered to, nor was the clientele exclusively West Indian. The jazz nights at the club appealed more to a largely white citywide audience with popular local bands such as the Severn Jazzmen appearing regularly at the venue. This is common to many clubs in Bristol, in that it is unusual for particular venues to be dedicated solely to a particular musical or cultural contingent. Other clubs that were considered as places to go to listen and dance to ‘black music’, such as the Moon Club or the Tropic Club, certainly held nights dedicated to reggae or hip-hop but were also regular venues for a range of independent rock and punk bands frequented by largely white audiences. The final roster of the Bamboo Club from December 1977 includes a disco night, soundsystems (including Jah Shaka) and a listing that merely

106 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder states that a ‘punk band’ were booked to play a few days after Christmas. This band was in fact the Sex Pistols, as part of their hastily rescheduled ‘Never Mind the Bans’ tour. Unfortunately, before the Sex Pistols could play there, a fire completely destroyed the Bamboo Club, which was never to reopen. However, the very fact that the band was booked to play at the club is evidence of the diversity of music at the Bamboo, which reflects the wider processes of music making and performance in the city. The vibrant punk scene in Bristol had given rise to bands such as The Pigs (who were due to support the Sex Pistols in December 1977) and The Cortinas who enjoyed some success nationally, also drawing the attention of John Peel at Radio One. Bristol based musician Mike Crawford remembers the Bamboo being a welcoming place for young punks whose presence was not always welcome in other locations around the city: The vibe was very good, they were all very accepting. Punk bands started to play down there and as I gradually became interested in the whole punk thing it was a good place to see them. We would all turn up in safety pins and they didn’t mind us, we never got any unpleasantness from them. From that point of view they were extremely accommodating. They must have wondered what the hell was going on. (Cater, 2013a) Although the degree of musical interaction between black clubbers and white punk fans may have been somewhat limited,6 the Bamboo Club had an established history of hosting white rock bands as local reggae musician and Bamboo regular Joshua Moses recalls: Yes, there were all sorts of rock bands playing there, because when it started out it wasn’t punk yet. It catered to the community and whatever type of music was popular at the time. If we had an interest we would go but if it wasn’t our sort of thing then we wouldn’t. People would go along to the nights that they were interested in. I’ve seen various kinds of bands at the Bamboo Club. (Cater, 2013b) Such musical coexistence is evidence of a different type of cultural diversity than that represented by the Dug Out model, one which reflects the importance of parallel musical development that sits alongside ongoing processes of syncretism and exchange. ARCHIVING THE LIVE In our research project we have set out to understand how the live, independent music scene in Bristol might be recorded, archived and historicised, in

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 107 ways which are attentive to everyday experience, liveness, and the ongoing musical culture. One of the first things we discovered was the proliferation of personal and organisational archives and collections in the city: examples include Bristol Archive records (www.bristolarchiverecords.com), run by Mike Darby, which particularly focuses on the late 1970s / early 1980s punk, post-punk and reggae scene; ‘What’s Your Trinity Story’, an archival project run by the Bristol music venue and community hub the Trinity Centre and financed by the Heritage lottery fund (3ca.org.uk/projects/story); and Paul Townsend’s own extensive online collection of local history photographs on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred). The new museum of Bristol MShed, which opened in 2011, also includes a collection of memorabilia and ephemera such as flyers and tickets. These are all impressive resources, and there are many more examples, but we can also learn from the archives and projects on other kinds of performance—such as theatre and live art—where the question of how to approach the archiving of the live has been explicitly addressed and problematised. Live art archivists are faced with particularly interesting problems because of the origins of live art in the rejection of the commodification of art, the emphasis on the intensity of the live encounter between artist and audience, and the specific focus of some works on transience and ephemerality. Archivists and theorists of live art debate how to document or record a performance without commodifying it or losing its defining qualities, and how to ensure that these artworks continue to have a legacy and influence. In Britain alone, organizations and projects such as the Live Art Development Agency, Locus+ Archive at Sunderland University, Performing the Archive, Rethinking Archives, the National Review of Live Art Video Archive, and the Performance Re-enactment Society, to name just a few, have engaged directly with these questions.7 These are issues which have come to seem particularly urgent as the first generation of performance artists enter old age. Paul Clarke’s project ‘Performing the Archive: The Future of the Past’ (2006–2009) explored how documents of past performances could be used in new performance practice as well as in critical reflection on it. In a paper produced as part of this project, Paul Clarke and Julian Warren suggest that while there is a resistance amongst Live Art’s practitioners to archiving, the archive has the power to define their practice: ‘The act of accessioning makes a work Live Art and makes a statement about what Live Art can be.’ (Clarke and Warren, 2009: 48). A similar argument can be made about the Bristol Sound. Projects like Bristol Archive Records, or the ‘virtual Dug Out’ mentioned earlier, produce the Bristol Sound, past and future, through acts of documenting, archiving and appraising. Archivists, fans, the selfappointed or official keepers of Bristol’s musical ‘heritage’ necessarily make choices about what to include and exclude: ‘Choices about what and how to document act on the performance, they intervene in the event and alter its unfolding’ (Clarke and Warren 2009: 48).

108 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder On this basis, Clarke and Warren propose that the logic and practices of the archive themselves need to be documented, made visible and passed on. One of the first activities of BLIMA project is to attempt to identify the range of formal and informal archiving projects already existing in the city even as they proliferate. Clarke and Warren suggest that the subjective and uneven nature of archives are ‘as telling’ as the contents themselves, or the (music or art) practices to which the contents—ephemera, documents and recordings—refer. Following Rebecca Schneider they suggest that photographic and video documentation of events are often simply laments to the lost: ‘This is what you missed . . . It sings of remove’ (Schneider cited in Clarke and Warren, 2009: 49). By contrast, the more messy documentation, leftovers and scraps of paper suggest something of the process and of the ephemeral nature of the event. Perhaps records of live events, whether photographic, audio or video, favour the mythologizing of the moment; in other words, the audiovisual traces of the Bristol Sound (such as rare footage of the Dug Out or Phil Johnson’s footage of the breakdancing in the Arnolfini graffiti show in 1985), become not transparent evidence of the event but also a poignant reminder of what we missed. The question of how a performance can remain ‘live’ after it has passed is one that several live art and performance theorists have addressed (including Phelan, 1993; Schneider, 2001). One argument is that the performance lives on in the both audience and performers as a ‘treasury of practices, or stock-in trade domiciled in our flesh’ (Clarke and Warren, 2009: 54). Performance skills are honed and developed through practice, but it isn’t just the body of the musician or performer which retains memory in this way—audiences dance and develop new ways of dancing, and new forms of bodily self-presentation at gigs and at parties, in clubs, dance halls and venues. A ‘scene’ develops through shared sets of practices, mimicry of others’ bodily performances witnessed live and via the media (as in the adoption of breakdancing). When genres are settled, or more rigid (as Webb claims of UK hip-hop, for example) mimetic mastery of generic rules is given more precedence (Webb, 2007: 186). Thus the syncretism that characterises the Bristol Sound can be understood as a heightened example of the bricolage process of constructing any new scene. This is enacted in microcosm in the bodies of dancers in a club whose bodily memory brings together the experience of different genres and involves copying other dancer’s moves. The live event is archived in the bodies of both audience and performers as a form of know-how, but is also kept live by being constantly reworked. In the field of theatre, some take the view that the principal and only record of the live performance should be in the memories of the audience. Theatre director Peter Brook argued that a live performance is, an event for that moment in time, for that [audience] in that place— and its gone. Gone without a trace. There was no journalist; there was

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 109 no photographer; the only witnesses were the people present; the only record is what they retained, which is how it should be in theatre. (Brook cited in Reason, 2003: 85) For the Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba, memory’s changeability makes it a suitable match for the liveness of the event. In memory, the performance continues, as the dialogue with the spectator continues. The metamorphosis of the performance, which takes place in the mind of the spectator and her or his discussions with other spectators, is the afterlife of the performance, and what produces its longevity. Barba writes, ‘theatrical performance resists time not by being frozen in a recording but by transforming itself’—and this transformation takes place in the spectators (cited in Reason, 2003: 86). Some might argue that the task of the historian of Bristol’s music scene would be to filter through these memories, to distinguish the accurate from the inaccurate, to try and establish an objective and factual historical account from what remains. Some of the impetus for setting up archives of live performance has been to do with a concern that memories are unreliable, conflicting, changeable and subjective. Of course they are, but this belies a particular perception of archives as somehow reliable, consistent, frozen in time and objective. This runs contrary to archive theory that emphasises the mutability of the archive, the inevitable decay, the incompleteness, unevenness and fabricated quality of any archive (Reason, 2003; Clarke and Warren, 2009). Matthew Reason asks, ‘instead of the archive’s instability and compromised authority being an inevitable accident, can it be transformed into the central motif of a live performance archive celebrating transformation and fluidity?’ (Reason, 2003: 87). We may have set out initially to construct a coherent and systematic archive of Bristol’s music scene but one of the things we have learnt is that the most interesting projects have, not always by design, allowed for conflicting memories, parallel developments and heterogeneity. We need a sense of the past as something unstable and unfixed, if we are to avoid a monolithic model of a ‘legendary’ or ‘mythical’ Bristol Sound. Otherwise the archive risks representing the musical culture of the city only as an object of historical study rather than as something able to be claimed and reshaped by new audiences and performers. Web-based media, with the potential for crowdsourcing, collaborative authorship and dynamic, unfixed and unfinished textual practices, can provide the platform for this kind of project. NOTES 1. The BLIMA project was set up by Rehan Hyder and Michelle Henning in 2010 at the University of the West of England, to support research into popular culture, music and everyday life in Bristol.

110 Michelle Henning and Rehan Hyder 2. Regarding the Granary: ‘The closure was explained by a long-running feud between Les Pearce [the manager] and his son Richard [the owner] . . . in the end the club’s lease, which had seven years to run, was sold.’ For a long time the building housed a restaurant at ground level, but the club remained empty, with stage and dance floor still intact. In 2002 the remnants of the club were destroyed to make way for apartments (Read, 2003: 276). 3. The participants in a live event don’t have to be alive themselves: Auslander’s essay is about chatterbots: pieces of computer programming that simulate conversation in real time. 4. Daddy G. interview with Peter Kirk, 2004, Bristol Archive Records. Retrieved from www.bristolarchiverecords.com/people/people_Daddy_G.html (accessed 19 July 2013). 5. Sapphire interviewed by Alex Cater, 2011, Bristol Archive Records. Retrieved from www.bristolarchiverecords.com/people/people_Sapphire.html (accessed 19 July 2013). 6. As Mike Crawford recalls, the level of mutual musical appreciation at the Bamboo was somewhat uneven: ‘We liked their music—I’m pretty sure they didn’t like our music—and so they were generous enough to invite us in . . . Punk sets were really short. The band would be off and then the DJs would take over and the Jamaicans would reclaim it. You might stay around and get into the groove but once you had paid to get into one place you didn’t really have the money to go anywhere else so you would try to stick it out.’ Mike Crawford, interviewed by Alex Cater for BLIMA project, 2013. 7. Several of these projects are Bristol based. Paul Clarke’s Performing the Archive project was collaboration between the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, Arnolfini and Exeter University Department of Drama. Michelle Henning and Julian Warren’s Rethinking Archives project was a collaboration between the University of the West of England, Bristol and Arnolfini in 2008–2009.

REFERENCES Aubrey, M., Chatterton, P., & Hollands, R. (2001). Youth Culture and Nightlife in Bristol. Newcastle: Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies and Department of Sociology and Social Policy University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Retrieved from http://research.ncl.ac.uk/youthnightlife/bristolrep.pdf Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge. Auslander, P. (2002). ‘Live from Cyberspace’. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 70: 16–21. Barthes, R. (1977). ‘Rhetoric of the Image’. In S. Heath (ed.), Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana. BBC. (2013). ‘Legendary Bristol Nightclub the Dug Out Inspires New Play’. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-22722868 (accessed 04 April 2013) Benjamin, W. (1992). ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations. London: Fontana. Bennett, A. (2000). Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. London, Macmillan. Björnberg, A., & Stockfelt, O. (1996). ‘Kristen Klatvask fra Vejle: Danish pub music, mythscapes and “local camp” ’. Popular Music 15 (2): 131–147.

Archiving Music as Everyday Life 111 Blum, A. 2003. The Imaginative Structure of the City. Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Cater, A. (2013a). Interview with Mike Crawford on behalf of BLIMA project, unpublished. Cater, A. (2013b). Interview with Joshua Moses on behalf of BLIMA project, unpublished. Cater, A. (2013c). Interview with Gill Loats on behalf of BLIMA project, unpublished. Clarke, P., & Warren, J. (2009). ‘Ephemera: Between archival objects and events’. Journal of the Society of Archivists 30 (1): 45–66. Cohen, S. (1991). Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Connell, J., & Gibson, C. (2003). Sound Tracks: Popular Music Identity and Place. London: Routledge. Finnegan, R. (1989). The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huq, R. (2006). Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World. London: Routledge. Hyder, R. (2004). Brimful of Asia: Negotiating Ethnicity on the UK Music Scene. Aldershot: Ashgate. Johnson, P. (1996). Straight Outa Bristol: Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and the Roots of Trip Hop. London: Hodder and Stoughton. McKinnon, N. (1993). The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Mitchell, T. (1996). Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop, and Rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press. Mojo Magazine. (1998). ‘Massive’s Bristol’, July 1988. O’Hagan, S. (2012, 28 October). ‘Blue Lines: Massive Attack’s Blueprint for UK Pop’s Future’. The Observer. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/ oct/28/massive-attack-blue-lines-remaster (accessed 24 January 2013). Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge. Read, A. (2003). The Granary Club: The Rock Years 1969 to 1988. Bristol: Broadcast Books. Reason, M. (2003). ‘Archive or memory: The detritus of live performance’. New Theatre Quarterly 19 (1): 82–89. Schneider, R. (2001). ‘Performance remains.’ Performance Research 6 (2): 100–108. Van Der Borg, J., & Russo, P. A. (2005). The Impacts of Culture on the Economic Development of Cities. Rotterdam: Euricur. Webb, P. (2004). ‘Interrogating the production of sound and place: The Bristol phenomenon, from lunatic fringe to worldwide massive’. In S. Whitley & A. Bennett (eds.), Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Social Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Webb, P. (2007). ‘Hip hop musicians and audiences in the local musical milieu’. In P. Hodkinson & W. Deicke, Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes. London: Routledge. Yates, W. (dir.). (2009). The Bristol Sound. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch? v=V34aBj4txCc (accessed 21 February 2013)

8

Saving ‘Rubbish’ Preserving Popular Music’s Material Culture in Amateur Archives and Museums Sarah Baker and Alison Huber I guess it all goes back to the initial reason for the formation of the organization, and many of the . . . jazz aficionados were concerned, what would happen to their material in the future, as to whether it would be preserved in some way, or whether in fact it would just be thrown on the dump heap. Their families were no longer interested, their children and grandchildren were not interested in this type of music . . . so they were very concerned about all this material would be wasted and just thrown away . . . and [that was] the reason why we came into being. So logically following from that . . . when people are needing to downsize their homes, if they’ve got to move into a smaller place . . . they may need to get rid of or offload much of their collection or their material, and so we have become the repository of a lot of that in various different ways. Much of it is very, very good indeed. Much of it is not so good, and much of it we can’t do anything much with at all. However, we do our best. (volunteer, Victorian Jazz Archive, Australia, 31 May 2011)

This chapter follows our interest in the emergence of a growing number of amateur-run collecting organisations (archives; museums), which we have come to term ‘DIY/do-it-yourself institutions’ (see Baker and Huber, 2013).1 Begun by enthusiasts who are not professionals in the arena of cultural preservation, these organisations are staffed primarily by a volunteer workforce and are funded by grants and donations. Despite an ‘amateur’ status, these sites of cultural heritage management charge themselves with the task of saving artefacts from popular music’s material history for the future in ways that often mirror the mission statements and internal structures of national institutions, and endeavour to replicate similar standards of preservation. Our work here belongs to a burgeoning area of scholarship related to community-based archiving and vernacular expertise across a number of disciplines (see, for example, Flinn, 2007; Moore and Pell, 2010; McKee, 2012), and the recognition of trends in music-focussed archiving and museal practice within this literature (Leonard, 2007; Collins, 2012; see also chapters 6, 7 and 9 in this volume).

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 113 Our chapter draws on material gathered via semi-structured interviews with 28 DIYers (mostly volunteers2), and observations made during visits to six DIY institutions.3 While we have been struck by the commonalities of experience that have emerged across the research sites we have visited in different countries, we have also been interested to note the similarities of the collections that these archives and museums are amassing regardless of generic focus or national context. They are not only collecting recordings in all imaginable formats, but they are also collecting other material that is part of the broader commodity logic of popular music production and consumption: posters; publicity material; t-shirts; costumes; instruments; personal effects belonging to artists; and all manner of merchandise and ephemera. As Marion Leonard has noted, these kinds of artefacts are effectively the ‘silent witness’ (Leonard, 2007: 148) to the lived history of popular music cultures; material objects stand in place as representations of real-world encounters with popular music, or, as Leonard puts it, ‘the sonic and bodily experience of music and the emotional and social ways in which it is experienced in time and space’ (148). Collections like those assembled by the DIY institutions of our research are the remnants of popular music’s commodity economy, the ‘junk’ of this pop culture. Allusions to rubbish, trash, waste, junk, or what Susan Pearce has termed ‘material to which no socially coherent value attaches’ (Pearce, 1995: 386) appeared consistently across our interview data. A concern expressed by a number of our interviewees related to the anxiety of forgetting or losing culture when popular music artefacts are discarded as ‘rubbish’, an anxiety that is captured in the quotation with which we begin this chapter. Here a volunteer from one such institution, the Victorian Jazz Archive (VJA) in Melbourne, Australia, explains the impetus for beginning the archive—a question over ‘what would happen to . . . [jazz] material in the future’. Would this material be discarded by relatives when collectors pass on or their accommodation is downsized? Would this material end up on the ‘dump heap’? In response to such fears, the VJA formed itself to become a ‘repository’ for material that might otherwise be lost, and, as this volunteer recognises, although not everything can be saved or kept by the institution, ‘we do our best’. So while this chapter is indeed about ‘rubbish’, it is also about the politics associated with the naming of certain items in this way, and documents a series of community-based attempts to salvage items from this cultural categorisation. Our interest in the rubbish of culture is not unique: indeed, issues around the classification of certain elements of everyday life to be ‘waste’ has emerged as a topic of interest across the humanities (Strasser, 1999; Hawkins and Muecke, 2002; Scanlan, 2005; Straw, 2010). For example, Gay Hawkins has written convincingly about the ways in which the non-human matter that a culture discards in effect ‘makes us who we are’ (Hawkins, 2006: 2, original emphasis) in that the declaration of certain elements of our material world to be ‘waste’ also ratifies our sense of what it is to be human,

114 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber while at the same time attributing systems of value to the non-human. While Hawkins’ interest is in human/non-human relations as they are articulated through waste, here we are interested in how assessments made in relation to what is and isn’t the ‘waste’ of popular music culture are integral to the project of building a ‘site of heritage’ for cultural memory, or, to borrow Hawkins’ formulation, how waste makes heritage. Further, we want to consider to what extent the anxiety of losing material to the ‘dump heap’ might be related to the performance of memory in the present, rather than the perceived heritage needs of the future. ‘THIS IS NOT RUBBISH’: START YOUR OWN CULTURAL INSTITUTION While these DIY institutions each have, to varying degrees, a mission statement describing their aims that are not dissimilar to equivalent national institutions, the stories behind the founding of these DIY collecting institutions are rather different. They come not from the national-agenda imperatives of heritage policy, but rather from within the communities of music consumption themselves, and reflect the specificity of the national contexts in which these communities coalesce. As one founder of Austria’s Archiv österreichischer Popularmusik (SRA) noted in his interview, he and his two co-founders were concerned about how popular music of their generation was going to be represented in the future; the fear of this culture being ‘forgotten’ is clear in this quote, in which he describes the purpose of starting the SRA: The [idea] was to invent a shelf where all culture is put . . . What happens if somebody in a thousand years [finds] this shelf and what will be [on] there? . . . So we were thinking, will [Austrian popular music] be [on] there? So the next step was, it’s a very important thing of our culture, of our subculture as we defined it, to document ourselves. Not just to produce the music, but to document the culture so we don’t forget it. (founder, SRA, 12 August 2010) In some DIY institutions, news of large volumes of ephemera being sent to landfill, or discarded/rejected from national collecting institutions—which often translated to a feeling that certain material was being lost and would subsequently be forgotten—have become entwined in their founding stories, as groups of music enthusiasts are spurred into action to ‘do something’ to save artefacts from a determination that they are rubbish. As we have already noted, the VJA was founded in order to save material from being thrown out. In the words of one of its founders, one of the primary thrusts we had [was] that we would stop stuff going to the tip, because there were some horrific stories before we formed

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 115 about family carting enormous numbers of 78s and dumping them in the tip . . . photos and what have you. (founding member, VJA, 27 June 2012) This comment imagines the existence of a great volume of material artefacts that has already been lost, remembered now only for the fact that it no longer exists. In some respects, these sorts of incidents occur because of confusion over what is worth preserving. The apparent ‘disposability’ of popular music and the sense that popular music’s mass produced items are made to be thrown away, not collected and stored, might explain some of the instances in which family members, who see no value in a collection they have inherited from a dead relative, treat it as rubbish to be discarded. The very same logic has, in some instances, also been reflected in the collecting policies of ‘official’ institutions. The founder of New York City’s ARChive described to us the difficulties he encountered when attempting to find a home for his own expansive collection of over 50,000 records in the mid-1980s. After deciding that he no longer wanted them in his personal collection, he tried to donate them to national institutions in New York, but these institutions were resistant to understanding popular music as heritage: I tried to give them away . . . they take up space and I don’t really listen to them that much anymore. Because I was playing whatever was new . . . So what I had was hip-hop and we’re talking about ’75–’85; hip-hop, punk, and reggae, and I tried to give them away, and everybody said, this is shit, we don’t want it . . . So everybody was saying, no, this junk, we don’t really want this. (founder, ARChive, 21 October 2011) As a result of being certain these items were not junk, he kept the LPs and started his own archive which has now grown to include over two million sound recordings. The ARChive continues to maintain its mission to collect popular music of the world in the broadest sense possible, in an effort to fill the breach left by what it interprets to be ineffective cultural policy and a disorganised approach to popular music heritage within the industry itself. As its website puts it, The ARChive was established because for decades the record industry has done little to preserve its own heritage, and over the years many irreplaceable recordings and artifacts have been misplaced or destroyed. Even as the new medium of CDs has placed many out of print recordings back in circulation, many re-issues have different or truncated material, and many CDs themselves are already out of print. The record industry has yet to act to preserve its own heritage, as the film industry recently did after realising that nearly half of all films produced before 1950 have been lost. (ARChive website, ‘What is the ARC’, n.d.)

116 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber This fear over the ‘loss’ of artefacts, and the attendant anxiety that this will lead to a forgetting in cultural memory was connected by the archivist at ARChive to the ‘youthfulness’ of popular music culture itself: ‘Well, it is kind of too young’ (archivist, ARChive, 21 October 2011). Unlike other cultural artefacts that already have a long history of being collected by archives and museums, popular music culture’s relative youth means that there is not necessarily a consensus on what ‘needs to’ or ‘should’ be preserved for posterity. While standing amidst ARChive’s extensive vinyl collection and clutching one of the many Dave Brubeck LPs in its holdings, the archivist went on to say, popular culture’s considered a throwaway culture. It’s not like—you know, the classic painter or something. It was, for the most part, mass produced. It seems even more disposable, as opposed to a Salvador Dali painting where there’s only one of this particular one, whereas who knows how many people, how many copies of this record was made. (archivist, ARChive, 21 October 2011) This ‘disposability’ and the sense that popular music’s mass-produced items are made to be thrown away, not collected and stored, might explain some of the instances in which both family members and institutions alike have been unable to see the material remnants of popular music as anything other than ‘rubbish’. For many of the DIYers we spoke to, then, the role of the community-based institution is in part one that asserts the cultural heritage value of this material, by finding it, storing it for safekeeping and, wherever possible, making it available for public access and viewing. In a number of instances, this includes diverting its journey to ‘the tip’, or uncovering its existence in a place out of heritage’s reach. ‘UNDER THE BED’: PLACES IN-BETWEEN REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING One of the ways that some interviewees talked about material that needs to be saved from being declared ‘rubbish’ was in terms of its precarious location ‘in-between’. Artefacts were often described as lurking in a place out of sight that is somewhere between being known about and not known about. Most frequently, this site was called ‘under the bed’, but at other times was referred to as ‘up in the attic’, ‘in the shed’, ‘a cupboard’, ‘the garage’ or ‘basement’, and appeared during stories which explained how artefacts arrive at these institutions: like the other day, or the other week we had—a fellow came in and said, ‘oh’, he said, ‘my mum’s told my dad he’s got to clean out a cupboard, clean out the shed, and he’s got to get rid of this stuff, so do you want

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 117 it’. And we had some large number of 78s of various persuasions, and some books, and we said, ‘yes’, and out of that we gleaned a few very important items. (archivist, ACMHF, 9 June 2011) our first program . . . was the Acetate Action, because these old acetates were de-laminating, and they came out of the woodwork. They were under everybody’s bed, and we preserved—I don’t know how many we preserved—a hell of a lot of them . . . a lot of them came from musos, and they hadn’t been played for thirty years. (founding member, VJA, 19 July 2011) there was a hospital here in Iceland . . . and there was one man working there. He made them a radio station . . . and he used all his money buying records . . . and a few years ago his daughter . . . called us, she said ‘I have a full basement of records, which my father had and I’m going to throw it away. I can’t have it any more, do you want it?’ (founder, Tónlistarsafn Íslands, 11 October 2011) What I’m doing is getting them inured to the idea that anything—if they don’t want—if it’s under their bed—anything can be sent to [us] on a pay on delivery basis—we pick up the costs our end, so if they’re willing to parcel it up . . . (volunteer, VJA, 19 July 2011) While some of these quotes describe real locations, and many donations to these institutions did in fact come from, for example, under someone’s bed, these references also operate for some of our interviewees at the level of metaphor, helping to explain that a material object that sits in a place that is private and out of sight, is implicated in the processes of memory in a particular way: to be found, liberated from ‘out of sight’ and saved in an archive or museum is to be remembered; to be left languishing under the bed is to be forgotten. Further, one of the VJA’s founders expressed concern over the fact that many young Australian jazz musicians do not realise that they, themselves, may be forgotten by a future memory if they don’t donate their materials to the archive: Yeah, well, to get their [young/contemporary jazz musicians’] collections— see we don’t even know whether they keep stuff—many of the young musicians have got two hundred CDs under their bed and they don’t send us one, you know. So that’s a real problem for us. (founding member, VJA, 27 June 2012) These uncollected artists and their music will, instead, remain under the metaphoric bed, out of the reach of the materialised form of cultural memory represented by the project of archiving.

118 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber With this knowledge that people might not be aware of the value of things in their possession, many of the DIY institutions now actively ask visitors to the archive whether they have material that might have a place in the collection. In these interview excerpts, volunteers describe interactions they have with visitors in which they try to encourage donations to the institution: everyone who comes here, we ask, ‘do you have some stuff in your attic? Look it up. If you don’t want it . . . don’t throw it away, bring it here, and if it’s nothing we can throw it away’. People come, bring their records. Two weeks ago [the founder] and I went to a guy . . . who wanted to move to another house, and he said, ‘well I have 4,000 records and you can come pick them up’ . . . we collected 4,000 LPs . . . you can imagine we are working a bit behind with cataloguing! More is coming in than we can handle. (volunteer, Museum RockArt, 24 September 2011) We ask people, ‘if you want to throw something away, please let us do it. Let us’, we will say. We call it the trash where trash becomes treasure . . . [Visitors to the museum] come and they watch and they go around and talk to us and then they say ‘I have something at home’, and I always say ‘please come when you are ready’. (founder, Tónlistarsafn Íslands, 11 October 2011) I always say to the artists, ‘look, don’t throw anything out. Our garbage tin is as good as yours. Let us go through it first’. (archivist, ACMHF, 9 June 2011) In this way the DIY institution becomes something of a ‘sorting station’ for popular music’s material past. Upon acquiring items from this place ‘in-between’, and so possibly diverting them from being thrown away at some later stage, it is then left up to the DIYers to establish the value of the material in relation to the collection they are assembling in their institution. In other words, decisions related to what is and isn’t rubbish, and so what should and shouldn’t be collected and/or displayed, come from within the collective expertise of those involved in DIY institutions, based on a form of intrinsic, vernacular knowledge of the cultures they are endeavouring to preserve. However, sometimes even vernacular knowledge doesn’t help to determine whether something is ‘ready’ to be thrown out. For example, the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame (ACMHF) in Tamworth, Australia, has an interesting default position when it comes to assessing whether certain donated items are ‘rubbish’, or otherwise not worth keeping in the collection. In spite of a serious and ongoing lack of space, the archivist aims to save as much as possible, particularly in cases where there is any question over an item’s importance. As the archivist humorously put it, ‘You know

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 119 the old expression, “when in doubt, leave it out” . . . Well, we’ve got the reverse of that: “when in doubt, leave it in” ’ (archivist, ACMHF, 9 June 2011). In fact, it seems there is surprisingly little that is discarded entirely at the ACMHF. Here, the archivist responds to a question asked in an interview about whether items are ever just put ‘into the skip’ (i.e. thrown out): Very little. I have—at my place, which is where I’ve got gear at the moment to handle acetates—a recording which we’ve received, one side of the acetate’s coming right off, of course it’s totally unplayable, the other side is playable. What I need is the time to, the time to do it before it disintegrates completely. You know, so yeah, those are some of the problems we’ve got. (archivist, ACMHF, 4 August 2011) Directly before he began explaining the situation with the acetates, the archivist had been showing some other material that had been deposited with the archive, which included a number of cans of film reel from a Sydney television station that he thought may or may not contain country material. The reels were sitting in the hallway because there was no space for them to be housed properly. As he opened one of the cans, a strong and worrying chemical smell wafted out, suggesting the film was in an unstable state. Its imminent destruction was doubly concerning as he didn’t really know what was on the film. In spite of this he said, ‘And we do value this stuff. I mean it may be garbage, but it’s not for us to say’ (archivist, ACMHF, 4 August 2011). An account like this, then, is partly a story about deterioration and the oppressive feeling that ‘time is running out’ to preserve things—like the acetate recording and film reels—that are in a state of disrepair and disintegration. But it is also a story about the difficulty of naming something that affects you—even when you don’t quite know what it is—to be ‘waste’, which is essentially a declaration that consigns what has been retrieved from ‘under the bed’ to the metaphoric ‘dustbin of history’. Despite this resistance to discarding donated material, there are times when donated items are unable to be included in the collection. For example, at the VJA one volunteer explained how, ‘the material, when it does come in, is . . . perused to see if everything is alright, and if there is anything that’s obviously no good, not up to the standard we would expect, we would have to reject that’ (volunteer, VJA, 31 May 2011). But even when donated items are rejected from the collection, their exclusion does not automatically send them to the ‘dump heap’. Many of the DIY institutions in our research put this material up for sale, using the proceeds to help fund the preservation of artefacts that are able to be saved. Even objects with no clear resale value can be recirculated in other ways. In this account, a volunteer at the VJA explains how she gives rejected cassette tapes a chance at another life in her car’s tape deck:

120 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber most people bring [cassettes] in and . . . [the collections team] sort them out . . . on the big table in the next room . . . they take out what are jazz and what aren’t jazz and what they need and what they don’t. Because a lot of [cassettes] are homemade, people have gone along [to concerts] with their little Sony and taped them. Some of them are worth keeping but a lot of them aren’t. And then what’s not used it gets put in the box [in the tea room] and anybody can help themselves. I take quite a few, because I’m one of the ones that’s still got a cassette recorder in my car, so I put them in the car. (volunteer, VJA, 26 June 2012) In other instances, where material that is donated duplicates items already held in the VJA’s collection, there are other opportunities for recirculation which are preferable to throwing items away. ‘A box of spares’ (volunteer, VJA, 19 July 2011), for example, can have a use down the track, particularly when people visit the archive looking for information: I found a [jazz convention] program which had [the visitor] on the committee, and I had a real old one, that I was able to say, ‘have it’ . . . he said, ‘oh, can I have that’—I said, ‘yep . . . I’ve got good copies, and I’ve got these very old copies’, and I said, ‘this is not considered museum standard, so we can do that’, and we feel that that’s good, and another family of—I think must be a late musician . . . came and [we were] able to show them where his name was somewhere, and photocopied it for them, but I think we still might be able to send them the original . . . because I knew where it would be hidden. (volunteer, VJA, 19 July 2011) As custodians of heritage materials, whose work finds the ‘treasure in the trash’, the practices described to us by our interviewees demonstrate the complexity of the everyday decisions made at the DIY institution as they seek to move items from a place ‘in-between’, or ‘on the way’ to forgetting, and into the realm of memory. In one way or another, underlying much of these activities is a desire to retain a value they know to be in the objects that arrive in their care, even those that don’t immediately have an obvious place in the collection. ‘HERITAGE IS RUBBISH’ / ‘RUBBISH IS HERITAGE’: CULTURAL COLLECTIONS, HERITAGE AND MEMORY It is worth acknowledging, then, this epistemological difference at communitybased archives and museums, where decisions related to what is determined to be (or not be) rubbish are made upon knowledge from within the

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 121 community that has assembled around popular music preservation. These DIYers are, we must remember, amateurs in heritage management, but they are people who have come to the task with a purpose born from a deep investment in the culture being collected, and it is partly because of this investment that these places exist in the first place. Perhaps for this reason, decisions over an object’s worth are never made lightly. Even in the case of items in a fragile state of decay, or objects that are not collected by the institution, or which are repeats of artefacts already in its holdings, the assessment that must be made about whether the item is worth keeping, or whether it has crossed over into the realm of ‘rubbish’ that can be discarded, sometimes remains unmade, and value is found in other ways. These vernacular archivists and curators make quite a straightforward connection between saving material artefacts in an archive or museum and the act of remembering; on the opposing side of this dichotomy is the spectre of the ‘rubbish heap’, which stands in as the well-worn metaphor for forgetting. Somewhere in between these two extremes is another metaphoric location: ‘under the bed’, an imagined place out of sight where discarded objects that are not yet rubbish reside, and where the community-based archivist/curator can intervene to salvage material worthy of safekeeping in the institution of their creation. For many of the people we spoke to, this intervention represents an important act of cultural ownership, where vernacular expertise, coupled with community, has the potential to contribute to the public record, often making up for a shortfall they have identified in national projects of cultural preservation (see also Flinn, 2007). In this process, there is a confidence in the safety of material objects; that, through preserving objects, the historical past of music will be made present. But the accompanying opposite of this confidence is the anxiety of loss: things that are not saved with this intervention might be forgotten, as its presence slips out of reach. In a recent book documenting what he sees to be a tendency toward ‘retromania’ (that is, the obsessive recalling of music culture’s past in the present), Simon Reynolds is somewhat dismissive of the desire to keep everything to do with popular culture without discrimination. He says that without rational decisions about what to retain and what to throw away, the archive risks becoming an anarchive: a barely navigable disorder of data-debris and memory-trash. For the archive to maintain any kind of integrity, it must sift and reject, consign some memories to oblivion. History must have a dustbin, or History will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap. (Reynolds, 2011: 27; original emphasis) While it may well be true that it is impossible (and undesirable) to accumulate a ‘total’ collection of/for ‘History’, our account of these DIYers and their practices of cultural salvage draws into Reynolds’ characterisation some of

122 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber the emotional decisions that might be part of the process of assembling a material record of popular music. As we have shown, the consignment of certain material ‘to oblivion’ is accompanied by significant feelings of concern over the way music’s past will appear for the future. This concern often provides the impetus for the foundation of community-based archiving and museum projects, and inspires many of the acts of cultural salvage that were described to us. Salvaging material from the ‘garbage heap’, then, is part of the process of making heritage; in other words, heritage—now a category acknowledged to include not ‘a narrow selection of the most remarkable tokens of the past’, but ‘the sum total of all traces of the past as past’ (Nora, 2011: x, original emphasis)—is born from rubbish. Where our DIYers fit into this equation is in their involvement in decisions that move items from one category into the other and into the public record they are making. This kind of engagement is named by Stevens, Flinn and Shepherd to be one of the strengths of community-based interventions in heritage, and the establishment of vernacular ‘memory institutions’: that is, ‘the active and ongoing involvement of members of the source community in documenting and making accessible their history on their own terms’ (Stevens et al., 2010: 60, original emphasis). Further, it seems to us that these DIY institutions are not solely about the creation of storerooms ‘for the future’, but are equally as important for the memory practices of ‘the present’; by this we mean that those involved in the DIY enterprise are engaged in the process of materialising their own experience and expertise through the collection, declaring and naming its importance; another way of saying this is that they are enacting memory. How the results of their collecting labour are interpreted in the future of their imagination—as historical evidence; as nationally important; as representing the past of popular music; as an institution for memory; or, indeed, as rubbish—is ultimately out of their hands. Perhaps this is the real anxiety that underpins the desire to salvage and retain material from the past in the present. NOTES 1. This research sits within a broader project, Popular music and cultural memory: localised popular music histories and their significance for national music industries, funded under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Project scheme for three years (2010–12, DP1092910). Chief Investigators on the project are Andy Bennett (Griffith University), Shane Homan (Monash University), Sarah Baker (Griffith University) and Peter Doyle (Macquarie University), with Research Fellow Alison Huber (Griffith University), and partner investigators in institutions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Israel and the United States. Additional funding for fieldwork in Austria and Iceland was provided by an Australian Academy of the Humanities ISL-HCA International Research Fellowship (2nd Round, 2010) awarded to Sarah Baker. Since writing this chapter, the authors’ work on DIY institutions has attracted

Preserving Popular Music’s Culture 123 further funding from the ARC: Do-it-yourself popular music archives: an international comparative study of volunteer-run institutions that preserve popular music’s material culture (2013–15, DP130100317). 2. Volunteers at the DIY institutions we have visited come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are fans (though not all are ‘fanatical’) and/or collectors, others are musicians or people who once worked in the recording industry. A number of volunteers are less interested in the music and more interested in heritage projects more generally or in the act of volunteering itself. The majority of the volunteers we have interviewed are retired. See Baker and Huber (2012) for one example of how the background of volunteers shapes and impacts the archival enterprise. 3. The six DIY institutions included in our research are: The Australian Country Music Hall of Fame (ACMHF), an archive and museum located in Tamworth, a regional city of New South Wales, which claims status as Australia’s ‘Country Music Capital’; the Victorian Jazz Archive (VJA) in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Wantirna, Australia, an archival facility housed in a refitted mechanics’ shed including three shipping containers that hold the collection, and a volunteer workforce numbering close to sixty; Tónlistarsafn Íslands, a music history museum in Kopavogur, a town outside Reykjavik in Iceland, which, since opening in 2009, has held special exhibitions focusing on everything from Iceland’s punk scene and rock, blues and jazz guitars to classical composers; ARChive located in New York City, USA, which houses an enormous collection of recordings from all genres, as well as a small collection of books and ephemera, and boasts famous patrons such as David Bowie and Keith Richards; Museum RockArt on the outskirts of the small coastal town of Hoek van Holland, the Netherlands, which, in addition to collecting objects related to Dutch music, also focuses on international artists who have influenced the Dutch scene; Archiv österreichischer Popularmusik (SRA), an archive founded in 1993 and housed in MuseumsQuartier of Vienna, Austria, which aims to collect all forms of Austrian popular music under the tagline, ‘if it’s not in here it did not exist’. Of these places, the most comprehensive data has been collected at the VJA during three visits by the research team, and accounts for around half of the interviews conducted to date. Other sites were also visited on multiple occasions, including the ACMHF, Museum RockArt and Tónlistarsafn Íslands, however the workforce of these institutions is a fraction of that of the VJA.

REFERENCES ARChive of Contemporary Music. (n.d.). What is the ARC. Retrieved from www. arcmusic.org/begin.html Baker, S., & Huber, A. (2013). ‘Notes towards a typology of the DIY institution: Identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (5): 513–530. Baker, S., & Huber, A. (2012). ‘ “Masters of our own destiny”: Cultures of preservation at the Victorian Jazz Archive in Melbourne, Australia’. Popular Music History 7 (3): 263–282. Collins, J. (2012). ‘Multiple voices, multiple memories: Public history-making and activist archivism in online popular music archives’. Unpublished master’s thesis, School of Media: Birmingham City University. Flinn, A. (2007). ‘Community histories, community archives: Some opportunities and challenges’. Journal of the Society of Archivists 28 (2): 151–176.

124 Sarah Baker and Alison Huber Hawkins, G. (2006). The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Hawkins, G., & Muecke, S. (eds). (2007). Culture and Waste: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Leonard, M. (2007). ‘Constructing histories through material culture: Popular music, museums and collecting’. Popular Music History 2 (2): 147–167. McKee, A. (2012). ‘Australian television, popular memory and suburbia’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (3): 303–314. Moore, S., & Pell, S. (2010). ‘Autonomous archives’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 16 (4–5): 255–268. Nora, P. (2011). ‘Foreword’. In H. Anheier & Y. R. Isar (eds.), Heritage, Memory and Identity (pp. ix–xi). London: Sage. Pearce, S. (1995). On Collecting: An Investigation Into Collecting in the European Tradition. London: Routledge. Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber. Scanlan, J. (2005). On Garbage. London: Reaktion Books. Stevens, M., Flinn, A., & Shepherd, E. (2010). ‘New frameworks for community engagement in the archive sector: From handing over to handing on’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 16 (1–2): 59–76. Strasser, S. (1999). Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books. Straw, W. (2010). ‘Spectacles of Waste’. In A. Boutros & W. Straw (eds.), Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture (pp. 184–213). Montreal: McGill Queens University Press.

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Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Women’s Liberation Music Archive Deborah M. Withers

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive (WLMA)1 is an online collection of digitised photographs, ephemera, music, film, radio interviews and oral histories centred on the music making communities connected to the UK Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), 1970–1989. The WLM was one of the most significant social movements in post-war Britain. It mobilised thousands of women to challenge and redefine their place within society across public and private domains.2 The WLMA documents an important cultural aspect of the movement: its music making activities. It is largely a collection of grassroots political music, and since the site was launched in May 2011 it has proved popular, receiving over 52,000 visits as of May 2013. The online archive has also been the inspiration for an exhibition, Music & Liberation, which toured the UK in autumn 2012.3 The exhibition featured much of the content from the online site but also displayed objects, such as musical instruments, reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, vinyl, diaries, notebooks and t-shirts, as well as interactive installations. Initially set up by myself and Frankie Green, a drummer in the first lineup of the 1970s women’s liberation rock band Jam Today (Jam Today 1), the WLMA is an example of what Andy Bennett has termed ‘DIY Preservationism.’ This is: an alternative form of heritage rock project. In this case, key agents are often rock music enthusiasts who establish media such as internet fan sites or small, independent record labels to preserve and promote the music of rock musicians who have, for a variety of reasons, fallen into obscurity and thus do not feature in established canons of rock achievement. (2009: 475) Both the WLMA and Music & Liberation bring to contemporary audiences a collection of music and music making practices that challenge even the most alternative of rock heritage projects. Feminist music making in the UK between 1970–1989 has barely registered in the cultural histories of feminism, let alone other ‘radical’ histories of protest music that continue to

126 Deborah M. Withers marginalize the contribution of women (Lynksey, 2011). Indeed, unless you were participating within particular communities at certain times and places, it is unlikely you would have heard of most of the performers in the archive. What distinguishes the WLMA from other forms of alternative ‘rock heritage projects’ is that it includes very few smooth, finalised recordings that are of an audio standard one might expect within a commercial release. While some of the music included in the WLMA was recorded to a ‘professional’ standard such as those made by the first line-up of Jam Today at the Barge in Little Venice in 1977, or Abandon Your Tutu’s recordings at Eel Pie Studios in 1983, such material never ended up on an album or single. Those recordings that were released on vinyl or tape were distributed via Women’s Revolution Per Minute (WRPM), a feminist company that held distribution rights for women’s music in the UK.4 Music made by women that was selfconsciously aligned to the WLM was not connected to independent regional networks such as the Cartel established by Geoff Travis in late 1970s that distributed do it yourself punk and post-punk music made by women and men (see Reddington, 2012: 58–62). The WLMA is however rich in other artefacts that provide great insight into the practices of activist music making in the WLM. The WLMA is, as I have argued elsewhere, an ‘archive of process’ (Withers, 2013): it provides a unique insight into the doing of music making. For example, there are numerous letters, notebooks, accounts, recordings of practices and live shows that create a strong impression of how music making happened in the WLM, and the unique pressures women faced as they used music as part of a wider, cultural revolution. Due to the particular qualities of these archival remains I argue that the histories collected in the WLMA are an example of what UNESCO, in their 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage call ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH). This is heritage grounded in practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills, rather than exclusively in tangible, material objects or historic sites, such as a vinyl record or a well-known music venue. Moreover, WLM music histories emerged from specific feminist communities that had their own language (‘sisterhood’, ‘solidarity’), customs and codes of behaviour. The cultural traditions of Women’s Liberation were also spatially enacted, often in ephemeral, temporary homes, such as a squatted venue or a local community centre hosting an occasional women’s disco. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage is a useful framework to think through the value of such grassroots, community orientated anti-commercial forms of popular music heritage. I suggest that becoming adept at interpreting so-called intangible (or we could say ‘immaterial’) forms of cultural production will make it easier for conceptions of popular music heritage to accommodate diverse music making sites and practices. To begin this chapter I argue that a popular music heritage focused on the commercial industry alone will exclude anti-commercial, grassroots music because of the cultural value invested in commercial products. I then elaborate

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 127 the anti-commercial stance of WLM music, discussing some of the key ideas in the political economy of women’s liberation music making, before exploring how the fragmented recorded legacy of women’s liberation music has effected its transmission across feminist generations. I then outline how the Convention for the Safeguarding for Intangible Cultural Heritage offers useful frameworks to recognise, and potentially safeguard, forms of cultural production that arise from, and help to shape, political communities and their identities. Finally, I draw on two examples, the woman-focused work of Frankie Armstrong and writings by the Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band, to illustrate how Intangible Cultural Heritage can be identified in the music making practices of the UK WLM. POPULARISING THE UNPOPULAR Commercial music is often synonymous with popular music, and this has arguably influenced how certain bands or performers become subject to ‘heritagisation.’ While the question of what ‘popular music’ is remains open and continues to be widely debated by critics and scholars, Simon Frith’s 2005 definition demonstrates how the popular and commercial are often conflated. He writes that popular music is: music made commercially, in a particular kind of legal (copyright) and economic (market) system; music made using an ever-changing technology of sound storage; music significantly experienced as mass mediated; music primarily made for social and bodily pleasure; music which is formally hybrid. (Frith, 2005: 133) It follows then that the ways popular music heritage is understood are implicitly informed by a similar bias toward music produced within particular market relations and systems of distribution. Marion Leonard has written about how the sheer volume of material products produced by the commercial music industry can itself lead to curatorial challenges and archival headaches: [It] makes it difficult for any one institution to feasibly preserve holdings which are representative of all such material. On the other hand, this system has an effect on the perceived value of popular music in that the industry’s overriding concentration on acts that are commercially successful might skew notions of what is worth preserving. (Leonard, 2007: 150) To automatically assume, therefore, that a collection of self-consciously anti-commercial music made by women who chose largely to create their

128 Deborah M. Withers own media platforms can seamlessly become part of popular music heritage could be construed as being naïve. If the amount of material culture produced by the commercial music industry necessitates the types of agonising choices articulated above, what hope is there for forms of cultural production that fall outside material understandings of popular music heritage to be included in collections or otherwise be recognised by a heritagisation process? Furthermore, the music made by women in the WLM is not the same as music produced within the commercial industry, and this fact needs to be specified in the process of heritagisation. Women in the WLM tried to create their own culture, and part of this was setting up their own autonomous networks of production and distribution. Women’s Liberation music makers were strongly critical of the commercial music industry, a critique that fed into their political economy of music making. Indeed bands and collectives described themselves as ‘anti-commercial,’ which was a qualitatively different stance from ‘non-commercial’ or ‘do it yourself’ music that was emerging in Britain in the late 1970s. ‘Anti-commercialism’ attempted to combine a not-for-profit ethos, autonomy and a wholesale rejection of commercial values seen as fundamentally harmful to women. Between 1974 and 1979, women’s liberationists in the UK developed their own theories about contemporary popular, commercially produced music. Key documents such as the Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band’s Manifesto (1974a), the publication Women & Music (n.d.) and the Sisters in Song songbook (1979) articulated the position of women in the movement: ‘We need to evolve an autonomous music that reflects who we are, that speaks to women where they live that cannot be co-opted by the leisure industry’ (Women in Music). The development of anti-commercial theories was part of the feminist challenge to the capitalist music industry, which they saw as being thoroughly implicated with the systemic exploitation of women in wider society, and throughout the world: ‘EMI not only produces records, but invests in and produces weapons’ (Thompson, Webb, and Faychild, 1979: 4) tells us how serious women’s liberationists took their cultural politics. Even anti-establishment music was not radical enough. ‘We also feel that the supposed “alternative music set ups” aren’t women defined either. We want to develop radical alternatives to what exists, and not just be glad that women are having more opportunity to play, as in punk music for example’ (Thompson et al., 1979: 5). Feminist music makers documented within the WLMA thus had a fraught relationship to popular culture and the music industry. A pressing concern was the need to retain autonomy and not become ‘co-opted’ by the system, while also being visible and able to communicate feminist political ideas to large audiences. Some women attempted to do the impossible: gain popularity and large-scale media exposure without subscribing to what they perceived to be the values of the commercial music industry.

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 129 As Rosemary Schonfeld of the lesbian duo Ova explained in a radio interview in 1983: It’s not lack of commercial success [we are unhappy with] its media coverage, a lack of airplay. We have sent [our albums out] to the radio stations, we are a presence in London, we’ve been around for a long time and we just don’t get the coverage. So its censorship we are complaining about, not commercial success. We’re not after commercial success. (Schonfeld, 1983) Teresa Hunt and Alison Rayner from the third line-up of Jam Today (Jam Today 3), who passed on to Ova the responsibility for running Stroppy Cow, the first independent UK feminist record label, articulated similar ideas. In a pamphlet they described how they set up an ‘anti-commercial’ record label that was not ‘for bands who use small and alternative record labels as a stepping stone, moving on to the commercial record business’ (Hunt and Rayner, n.d.). Women’s liberation music makers did not manage to create a long-lasting alternative to the commercial music industry. They did not redefine the principles of cultural value by making a living as musicians and achieving anticommercial, popular success or create sustainable, non-exploitative and women-centred networks of production and distribution. Nevertheless, it is important to clearly distinguish the aims of the grassroots, activist music making of the WLM from other independent or alternative music communities of the 1970s and 1980s, principally DIY and punk networks, even if there is a convergence between the strategies used. Part of the aim of the WLMA is to honour the terms of these women’s anti-commercial interventions via a heritage practice that digitally recirculates their manifestos, newsletters and songbooks, materials that clearly communicate the specificity of their political positions. WOMEN’S LIBERATION MUSIC, RECORDED MUSIC AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSMISSION Women’s Liberation music was fairly unpopular at the time it was made. Not many people heard or saw it, and feminist political views were not accepted in mainstream ‘popular’ culture. How then can we understand the heritage value of WLM music? One way to do this is in terms of what Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison call the ‘mobilisation of tradition’ in social movements. They describe how ‘after the movements fade away as political forces, the music remains as a memory and as a potential way to inspire new waves of mobilisation’ (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998: 1–2). Yet this mobilisation of feminist cultural tradition has not been realised within feminist communities. This is largely due to its dispersed, fragmentary and

130 Deborah M. Withers unrecorded nature. Consequently WLM music has not been widely accessible as a memory resource that could inspire further activism. The limited recorded legacy of Women’s Liberation music in the UK is a key reason to think outside conceptions of heritage that focus exclusively on commercially released recordings. For many women’s bands in the predigital era, recording music professionally was financially impossible and the portastudio, although available to some, was not widely used. Very few bands managed to get into the recording studio. Indeed, acts such as the third lineup of Jam Today and the Fabulous Dirt Sisters had to borrow money so they could afford studio costs, as the plea on the back cover of the first Fabulous Dirt Sisters album reveals: ‘WE HAVE BORROWED THE MONEY TO MAKE THIS RECORDING SO PLEASE DO NOT COPY’ (Fabulous Dirt Sisters, 1986, caps in original). Even when bands did record in studios, they may not have been happy with the results. George Clarke, who was a bassist in the Oxford based feminist pop-rock band the Mistakes, is today markedly uncomfortable with the recorded legacy of her band, stressing that she never listens to the albums because she doesn’t like how they were mixed (personal communication, 2012). The remains of Women’s Liberation music making therefore offer a fragmentary and incomplete record, particularly when measured by the traditional ‘record’ of commercial, popular music history. Within the WLMA there are few contenders for the 100 Greatest Albums of all time, a key technology of canonisation within popular music history (von Appen and Doehring, 2006). This legacy of Women’s Liberation music making resonates with David Suisman’s point about how the dominance ‘of recorded sound in the fabric of life today’ has ‘exaggerated the significance of recorded music and clouded our perception of how recordings have functioned’ (2011: 212). The simple fact is, to be included in any kind of canon some kind of tangible, material recorded legacy needs to exist. In principle, this process of heritagisation will exclude artists who have never recorded anything, artists whose contribution to the history of music making is nevertheless important within their cultural context—a context that may (try to) operate outside of commercial relations. Because the UK WLM5 did not produce and self-release a large amount of musical recordings, their music legacy has often been overlooked within narratives of feminist history too. Instead, late 1970s punk, post-punk and riot grrrl from the USA in the 1990s have usually been the first and last place to look for radical and rebellious feminist music making. These movements caught the imaginations of many women and young girls, and have dominated how cultural memories of feminist music have been shaped and received. The memories of riot grrrl in particular are often heavily influenced by the North American context, leading to particular cultural effects. As Julia Downes argues: ‘nostalgic and romanticised interpretations of US riot grrrl undervalue the (sub) cultural resistance of girls and young women that span different locations and eras’ (Downes, 2010: 61). I do not want to undermine the appeal or importance of riot grrrl and other feminist punk

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 131 legacies, or to say these histories have been comprehensively documented. Yet there is a need to reach further into the shoeboxes stuffed at the back of cupboards, and to explore that suitcase that has been gathering dust under the bed, to unearth histories that are ‘lost’ or have been marginalized because of how historical information—which of course includes music—flows, or rather doesn’t flow, through time. In doing so it may be possible to understand the multiple, varied and complex legacies of feminist music making, and uncover the greater visibility of women in music throughout history. How cultural memories and practices are transmitted between generations is a key heritage issue. Having a sense of historical continuity for feminist communities (online, offline, transnational) is part of the reason why the WLMA was set up. Unearthing Women’s Liberation music heritage it aims to achieve a sense of the past that is: less a perception of historical change, than a feeling of temporal depth rooted in the continuities of practical experience. But tradition is not to be understood as mindless persistence. Generally it involves at least a measure of social reverence—a disposition to value, rather than simply to repeat, the ways of one’s ancestors or the established usages of one’s community. (Cubitt, 2007: 181, italics mine) Achieving such a disposition to value is a crucial part of the heritagisation process, but a framework that focuses on the material legacy alone cannot, as I suggest above, accommodate the complexity of the heritage of Women’s Liberation music making. In the next section of the chapter I will discuss one such framework—intangible cultural heritage—and suggest how it may be a useful tool with which to identify forms of cultural heritage that are fragmentary, ephemeral, and grounded in cultural practices. INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE AND THE WLMA UNESCO define intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as: The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environments, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. (UNESCO, 2003, italics mine)

132 Deborah M. Withers I have highlighted certain passages of the convention because I want to take seriously the notion that there are feminist communities that have specific cultural practices. These may vary according to geographical location, the age of members, the political issues they discuss and so forth. However, broadly speaking, there is a legacy within feminist history of groups of women (and sometimes men) who meet and network because they are concerned with gender equality and other forms of social injustice. Some of these groups have come together to produce literature, art and music (representations and expressions) and start organisations, groups and protests (to develop knowledge and skills). The dominant culture, however, may not recognize feminist ‘traditions’ as valuable. They may even be hostile to them. Yet such representations, expressions, knowledge and skills are still in need of ‘protection’ or ‘safeguarding’ in a similar way to forms of ICH that are more commonly thought to coincide with the 2003 convention, for example indigenous oral traditions, performances and stories. I want to be clear that I am not suggesting the musical heritage of the WLM should be officially protected by UNESCO’s policy. Rather that the convention is a useful framework to think through the kinds of cultural traditions that were both created and revived by women’s liberation music makers. Intangible forms of cultural heritage are ‘constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environments, their interaction with nature and their history’ (UNESCO, 2003). ICH is in this sense flexible, mobile and changing: communities can recreate cultural practices in response to their environments (nature and history). ICH recognizes the importance of the transmission and continuity of cultural memories. As Arizpe notes, it is ‘not an object, not a performance, not a site; it may be embodied or given material form in any of these, but basically it is an enactment of meanings embedded in collective memory’ (2007: 361–362, italics mine). It is important to state here that definitions of tangible and intangible cultural heritage are not rigid or mutually exclusive. As Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton comment, ‘heritage cannot be defined by its materiality or non-materiality, but rather by what is done with it’ (2009: 291–292). There are also examples of material culture in the WLMA, as much as commercial music histories have degrees of intangibility: they are grounded in the memories or experiences of fans and collectors, and few acts achieve the longevity afforded to acts such as the Beatles or Bob Dylan. Nevertheless, the definition of intangible cultural heritage fits well with more ephemeral, noncommercial forms of cultural production such as a skill-sharing pamphlet, a cassette album produced in limited numbers, or an occasional women’s disco of which there is limited documentation, aside from a listing in a magazine or newsletter, or the recounting of personal memory. These forms of cultural heritage are fleeting and transitory but nonetheless are informed by specific ideas and cultural practices that have emerged from a particular community. It is important therefore to create space for thinking about popular music heritage in ways that can attend to music making activities that are not tied into, and in some cases explicitly challenge, commercial concerns and the material production of culture. Using the framework for the recognition of

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 133 ICH laid out in the 2003 convention may allow hidden histories to emerge from the margins and achieve such a ‘disposition to value’. This is because what counts as heritage should be less concerned with the form in which it appears, and more acknowledging of the multiple ways cultural memories are passed down through practices—including the practice of music making. RECOVERING WOMEN’S MUSICAL TRADITIONS AND CREATING NEW SOCIAL SPACES A large amount of work was done recovering female-centred musical traditions in the WLM, and this is the logical place to start thinking about how Women’s Liberationists transmitted intangible forms of cultural heritage within the movement. There was a diversity of approaches to creating ‘feminist’ or ‘women’s music’ in the UK, that included writing original music, inventing new musical styles, as well as using pre-existing genres such as jazz, funk, folk, pop and soul. Women’s Liberationists were also engaged in a kind of intangible excavation of their own, recreating their culture in response to the demands of their historical environment. Indeed, it was often stressed in newsletters and through distribution initiatives such as the WRPM that there was a need for tradition, both invented and recovered: As the women’s movement has grown there has been an increasing need for our own music; music which accurately reflects our lives, music about our new feelings, about our history, our activities, our work, our relationship with women and about all our experiences. (WRPM, 1978, italics mine) One of the women at the forefront of recovering women-centred music was the folk singer Frankie Armstrong. Alongside Peggy Seeger and Sandra Kerr, she researched and recorded The Female Frolic (1968), one of the first albums of folk songs by women and about their experiences. In an interview I conducted with Armstrong, she talked about the process of researching folk songs that appeared on the album. In particular, she drew attention to the creative challenges of working with intangible musical remains. When I asked her how she recreated songs from the past, she described the process as follows: They’d have the music written down. Sometimes, it might say ‘to the tune of’ and then you’d have to find the tune. Sometimes we made up tunes, or put another folk tune to it. That has been done for centuries so we didn’t feel we were violating. If it was a tune we didn’t like, we could always find another or amalgamate tunes. There was a branch of the folksong revival which was rigidly traditional, and wouldn’t tamper with songs. But there were lovely songs that had been collected, but clearly whoever collected them had forgotten some verses or got them

134 Deborah M. Withers muddled up, as the stories didn’t make sense unless you added another verse, or changed the order of the verses, or there’d be lines missing where they’d blanked out. We’re in the job of recreation. (personal communication, 2012, italics mine) In this extract Armstrong talks about the nature of recovering folk traditions, explicitly saying that ‘we’re in the job of recreation.’ Grappling with partially complete manuscripts in order to invent a sense of continuity and culture is defined here as a creative process. It responds to the needs of the immediate situation that requires a legacy to augment a sense of identity. New melodies are combined with old words, something that ‘has been done for centuries.’ This sense of intangible heritage ‘transmitted from generation to generation, constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environments, their interaction with nature and their history’ (UNESCO, 2003) is conveyed in the extract. Armstrong further described her method: There’s been these generations of people who have carried aspects of a traditional style of singing, a way of phrasing, telling stories, ornamenting songs, embellishing, decorating songs. It’s really about listening to those styles of singing. And not copying in the sense of pastiche, plagiarising, but really trying to find your own style, but within that kind of framework. (personal communication, 2012) This method of recovery, which is about finding ‘your own style, but within that kind of framework’ indicates the kind of flexibility required by these processes of heritage making. This presentation of intangible cultural heritage is dynamic; it changes through the act of generational transmission. And it is precisely through practices where heritage value emerges. It cannot always be found in a material totality, preserved in time, on record, sound, text and body. It is something that has to be recreated, yet with a distinct sense of inheritance and tradition. Of course an artist such as Frankie Armstrong, and others like her, have recorded many albums of music, and achieved worldwide recognition for their contribution to their field. Many other Women’s Liberation music makers did not record the kind of tangible cultural heritage that is to be found in commercial music archives. Indeed many songs exist only as lyric sheets, and clearly were used to create a sense of community and shared identity. In some cases these were original compositions, such as Armstrong’s pro-choice anthem, ‘We Must Choose’. Others took the tunes of ‘popular’ songs and added feminist lyrics which subverted their original meaning, and inserted a feminist presence within them. ‘Bad Queen Thatcher,’ with lyrics written by Claire Weingarten for example, was written for the Southwark Abortion Campaign in 1979, and was sung to the tune of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ with lines including, ‘Family life it is the key / Women the solution’ and later

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 135 ‘Mind the kids and nurse the sick / And keep the men from striking’. Reoccupying such a popular and well-known song with feminist lyrics allowed feminist politics to be immediately accessible at rallies and marches, while also acting as a way to boost morale and foster communal identity. A similar use of singing was used at Greenham Common peace camp, as noted by Anna Feigenbaum (2010). While songbooks and sheets were commonly handed out to help create a bonded, activist identity, other bands used song sheets for more pragmatic reasons. Across all three generations of the band, Jam Today produced a song sheet that was handed out at gigs, partly so women could understand the lyrics over unpredictable PA systems, and partly to advertise the band throughout the network and get more work. Other early feminist bands, such as the Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band (NWLRB, 1973– 1976) and the Stepney Sisters (1974–1976) produced songsheets and books. While the Stepney Sisters reformed in 2010 to faithfully rerecord their songs as close as possible to the originals, song sheets from NWLRB are the only documentation from the time that indicates what they played. Far more prominent, and well distributed at the time, was the NWLRB’s manifesto. Within the manifesto the NWLRB affirmed the centrality of popular music to the cultural oppression of women, as described below. Is music important? It may seem puzzling to have such strong opinions about pop music—you may think: why get so worked up about, after all they’re only songs. But all music says something; it is an expression of feelings, a powerful means of communication, and it contains a certain view of life, supports a certain order of things. Unless we use music to express women’s fight against oppression, to encourage other women to stand with us, it will always support the established order of men as the stronger and women as the weaker, passive sex. (Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band, 1974a) The NWLRB were also at the forefront of defining the importance of social spaces in the WLM. In an article in Spare Rib (1974) they offer this summary of their performance at the sixth national WLM conference in Edinburgh: Too often the sexism of popular and progressive music invades and insults the occasion, marring the experience of just being with other women. We felt the need to use music as a force for us to express new feelings, relationships and attitudes to each other that we are trying to create in the Women’s Movement. (Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band, 1974b) Similar to the excerpt from the WRPM catalogue cited earlier, this statement makes clear how music making in the WLM was not tied to music alone, it was intrinsic to creating a different kind of culture, based on ‘new

136 Deborah M. Withers feelings, relationships and attitudes to each other.’ In other words, the culture they were creating was attempting to be distinct from the dominant, patriarchal world, defined here as invasive and insulting to the ambition of Women’s Liberation. Furthermore, performing the music was reported as having particular, transformative effects: ‘After the first number, we could really feel the audience with us [. . .] the music was no longer ours as a group, it was everybody’s and we all wanted it’ (NWLRB, 1974b). This erasure of boundaries between performer and audience was part of the political ideal of Women’s Liberation music making: it was the moment when hierarchies were overturned, and a different social relationship was realised, no matter how ephemeral that moment was. This act of memorialisation, written weeks after the event yet vividly immediate in its intensity, affectively conveys the practice of Women’s Liberation music making. It demonstrates a moment where the theory of the movement became practice, as a glimpse of different social organisation was enacted through a collective experience of music. The importance of such transitory social practices, which included gigs and discos as much as skill-sharing workshops and consciousness raising groups, are a vital part of the WLM’s intangible heritage. As one anonymous interviewee comments about women’s discos: They were a crucial space for women’s to socialise in, and for lesbians to interact and have a social and romantic space, where they wouldn’t be attacked, where they could feel relaxed, and not be subject to people’s judgement. At the worst end attacked, but at least being stared at. (personal communication, 2012) It is such activities that are at risk of being unrecorded because they were not always grounded in one particular venue or space: events happened occasionally and haphazardly in the WLM. Gigs happened as and when people had the energy, networks and resources to do so. Some acts, such as the York Street Band (1978–1982) and the Fabulous Dirt Sisters (1981–1989) even used the street as their stage. It is difficult to understand the effect such performances had on the people who saw them play, and unless you can ask the audience directly such knowledge disappears as quickly as the performances. These were instead musical interactions guided by chance and surprise, and are another example of intangible heritage created by women inspired by or involved in the WLM. Such actions are remarkably evanescent but nonetheless deserving of a place in a reconfigured, popular music history. VALUING INTANGIBILITY This chapter has argued that viewing alternative and anti-commercial music practices, as exemplified by the WLMA, through the lens of intangible cultural heritage is one way these legacies can be understood as part of popular music heritage. ICH provides a conceptual lens that presents the actions

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 137 of women’s liberation music makers on an equal but different footing to the heritage of the commercial music industry. Seeing the WLMA as ICH is one way to take seriously the practices, representations, knowledge and skills women developed in the WLM. It creates space for fragmentary, oralbased heritages that are grounded in communities of people using music to assert a unique cultural identity (one that is complex, multiple and always changing). Another important reason why collections such as the WLMA can be seen as ICH is the question of transmission. The identity ‘feminist’ or ‘Women’s Liberationist’ is one that people in different times and spaces have claimed, but not necessarily with access to heritage produced by preceding generations. Such continuity is culturally desirable because it fosters ‘a feeling of temporal depth rooted in the continuities of practical experience’ (Cubitt, 2007: 181). Rather than simply being cut off from history, always forced to reinvent identity without tradition, heritage acts as both creative and practical resource that can move across generations. While the 2003 UNESCO ICH convention has been criticised for its prescriptiveness (Byrne, 2009: 229), and has not yet been ratified by the UK government, I nonetheless find its definition useful for thinking about the heritage value of oppositional music making communities that use music not only to protest the dominant order, but to create a different kind of culture. Within the context of the WLM, music was seen as a means to overturn sexism, hierarchies and economic exploitation. As the many newsletters and songbooks created by women in the WLM make clear, music was defined as a deeply cultural phenomena, and thus it needed an equally cultural response to overturn its oppressive dimensions: ‘next time you put on a record, sister, listen to the lyrics. [. . .] Listen to the voices. Look at the presentation. The pretty chick with her hands clasped in front of her . . . and the mighty male wielding his instrument like a weapon’ (Women and Music Newsletter, 1978). Of course women had various degrees of success in trying to achieve this different culture, and any process of heritagisation should not romanticise or indulge in nostalgia: it should remain critical. It is, however, important to take seriously the remains of Women’s Liberation music makers, and adopt appropriate conceptual tools that can hope to do justice to the action of histories they created. Only when the value of such intangible, fleeting practices are identified as heritage, not only by enthusiastic DIY preservationists but also by a large breadth of heritage makers, will these oppositional musical histories become an enduring part of popular music heritage. NOTES 1. Retrieved from http://womensliberationmusicarchive.co.uk 2. If you want to learn more about the UK WLM, Sisterhood and After: Oral Histories of the Women’s Liberation Movement, is a good resource: www. bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood/index.html 3. Retrieved from http://music-and-liberation.tumblr.com

138 Deborah M. Withers 4. The Women’s Revolution Per Minute, archived at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths University, London, predominantly distributed music made by feminists from the USA. 5. The Women’s Music movement in the United States has however been heavily documented by comparison. See www.queermusicheritage.us/olivia.html for a fantastic web archive of Olivia Records, one of the most important USA feminist record labels in the 1970s, and Morris (1999).

REFERENCES Arizpe, L. (2007). ‘The cultural politics of intangible cultural heritage’. Art, Antiquity and Law 12: 355–370. Bennett, A. (2009). ‘ “Heritage rock”: Rock music, representation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37: 474–489. Byrne, D. (2009). ‘A critique of unfeeling heritage’. In L. Smith & N. Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage (pp. 229–253). London: Routledge. Clarke, G. (2012). Personal communication with author, 15 August 2012. Cubitt, G. (2007). History and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Downes, J. (2010). DIY Subcultural Resistance in the UK. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Leeds University. Eyerman, R., & Jamison, A. (1998). Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fabulous Dirt Sisters (1986). Flapping Out. Spinaround Records. Feigenbaum, A. (2010). ‘ “Now I’m a happy dyke!”: Creating collective identity and queer community in Greenham women’s songs’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 22 (4): 367–388. Hunt, T., & Rayner, A. Simon Frith (2005). ‘Can We Get Rid of the “Popular” in Popular Music?’ A Virtual Symposium with Contributions from the International Advisory Editors of Popular Music. Popular Music 24 (1): 133–145. (n.d.). ‘About Stroppy Cow’. Private archive of Teresa Hunt. Leonard, M. (2007). ‘Constructing histories through material culture: Popular music, museums and collecting’. Popular Music History 2 (2): 147–167. Lynksey, D. (2011). 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs. London: Faber. Morris, B. (1999). Eden Built By Eves. Los Angeles: Alyson Books. Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band. (1974a). ‘Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band Manifesto’. Retrieved from http://womensliberationmusicarchive. files.wordpress.com/2010/10/nwlrb-manifesto-cover-page-1.jpg Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band. (1974b). ‘Women Together: Edinburgh Sixth National Women’s Liberation Conference’. Spare Rib 27. Retrieved from http://womensliberationmusicarchive.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/nwlrbarticle-spare-rib-27–1974.jpg Reddington, H. (2012). The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era. Sheffield: Equinox. Schonfeld, R. (1983). Inside London interview with Ova. BBC Radio London with David Edwards. Smith, L., & Waterton, E. (2009). ‘ “The envy of the world?”: Intangible heritage in England’. In L. Smith & N. Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage (pp. 289–303). London: Routledge. Suisman, D. (2011). ‘Sound and popular music histories: The remix’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 23 (2): 212–220. The Critics Group. (1968). The Female Frolic. Argo, Argo issue number: DA 82 (mono), ZDA 82 (stereo).

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive 139 The International Advisory Editors. (2005). ‘Can We Get Rid of the “Popular” in Popular Music?’ A Virtual Symposium with Contributions from the International Advisory Editors of Popular Music. Popular Music 24 (1): 133–145. Thompson, T., Webb, A., & Faychild, J. (1979). ‘Introduction’ to Sisters in Song, London, 1–7. UNESCO (2003) ‘Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage’. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en& pg=00006 (accessed 25 February 2013). von Appen, R., & Doehring, A. (2006). ‘Nevermind the Beatles, Here’s Exile 61 and Nico: “The Top 100 Records of All Time”: A Canon of Pop and Rock Albums from a Sociological and an Aesthetic Perspective’. Popular Music 25 (1): 21–39. Weingarten, C. (1979). ‘Bad Queen Thatcher’ in the Women’s Song Book. Available in the Feminist Archive South, Bristol, DM 2123. Withers, D. (2013). ‘Re-enacting process: temporality, historicity and the Women’s Liberation Music Archive’. International Journal of Heritage Studies. doi: 10.1080/13527258.2013.794745 Women & Music. (n.d.). ‘Our Own Music’, p. 1. Women’s Revolutions Per Minute. (1978). Catalogue available at the Feminist Archive South, Bristol, DM 2123.

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Part 4

Nostalgia and Heritage Practices

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10 ‘You Had to Be There’ Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience Kenny Forbes

INTRODUCTION It is widely recognised (Frith, 1996; Bennett, 2006: 221; van Dijck, 2009) that the power and potency of popular music is such that it is able to stimulate and maintain memories of an idealised past, most notably through engagement with recorded media. Serving as vehicles for memory (Pickering and Keightley, 2007), songs on different recorded formats can reflect periods of high levels of personal engagement with popular culture, particularly those time frames that encompass youth and early adulthood, and evolve to soundtrack what could be regarded as key stages in the life of the individual (Frith, 1996: 142). However, while such recordings can engender distinctly individual memories, initial engagement with songs of this nature inevitably emanate from within the realms of shared listening experiences and social practice (van Dijck, 2009: 114), with this collective framework serving to blur distinctions between songs that symbolise ‘individual’ or ‘shared’ memory vehicles. Furthermore, the practice of appropriating popular songs to provide soundtracks that epitomise specific generations or periods in history (Burns, 1996), as well as for political purposes and to reflect aspects of nationhood (Frith, 1993: 529), serves to highlight that defining songs can facilitate both autobiographical and collective memories. The ‘collectivisation’ of individual soundtracks, where the initial autobiographical attachment symbolises a form of ownership with the songs in question, but where notions of possession increasingly fragment due to the magnitude of collective listening experiences, has been further intensified by what Andy Bennett (2008: 261–262) refers to as the multigenerational, multi-ownership of these songs, which is enabled by the fact that they are almost instantly accessible to audiences through digitisation and dissemination through the mass media. Moreover, the fact that such access functions to remove the contemporary fan from the temporal sociocultural and political contexts that these songs initially emerged can, especially if applied to the politically charged environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s which the rock genre engaged with to a discernible degree (Doggett, 2007), serve to limit or alter the depth of individual attachment that such listeners may experience (Bennett, 2008: 262).

144 Kenny Forbes Overall, a combination of these collective processes have, in some cases, functioned to de-individualise music memories, limit the extent of the autobiographical context and marginalise perceptions of individual ownership of treasured songs. While collective experiences relating to defining songs still resonate, advocates may seek to further individualise music-related reminiscences by focusing on the ‘lived experience’ of attendances at live concerts, where notions of live authenticity, especially within the folk-framed rock genre, are embraced (Gracyk, 1996: 78; Connell and Gibson, 2003: 29). Live music memories are therefore not only worthy of analysis, but the individual and collective shaping of these recollections can also be considered to be a key factor in their dissemination. This chapter reflects on the connotations of such memories by analysing aspects of the published reminiscences of the audiences who attended live concerts at the Glasgow Apollo Theatre during the period of its operation (1973–1985). The venue, which was the one of the largest of its kind within the pre–arena UK live network, gained a global reputation for what was regarded as its ‘legendary’ atmosphere and enhanced levels of audience– artist interaction (Leadbetter, 1995; Kielty, 2009). During a key period in popular music where ‘rock’ was regarded as the dominant genre (Bennett, 2008: 272) artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Queen, AC/DC and David Bowie, among many, many others, all performed at the venue and regarded the Apollo as the highlight of their respective tours (Scott, 1978: 2).

Figure 10.1 The Glasgow Apollo, courtesy of Jim MacNee (2009)

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 145 The majority of the memories discussed within the chapter were originally published in two books that focus on the Apollo, its audience and the artists that performed there: You Don’t Have to Be in Harlem, by Russell Leadbetter (1995) and Apollo Memories by Martin Kielty (2009). Other reminiscences featured in a BBC Radio Scotland documentary Temple of Apollo, which was broadcast in May 2009. The chapter will focus on four particular factors that impacted on the ways in which the Apollo was remembered by audiences: firstly, the experiences of youth; secondly, notions of authenticity attached to the environment of the venue; thirdly, the consequences of the audience encounters with the venue’s security personnel; and finally some of the concert-going practises adopted by the Apollo audience. Subsequently, it will be argued that these factors, which were closely linked to their spatio-temporal environment, were framed by engagement with forms of physicality and autobiographical intensity that have served to elevate the individualistic nature of the memories involved, as well as their symbolic value. Furthermore, it will be suggested that, when reflecting on their Apollo memories, many of the audience comprehend that the majority of the circumstances, practices, processes and encounters that have helped to shape these individual memories can never be repeated. They are no longer ‘youthful’; music venues like the Apollo no longer exist; many of live concert practices facilitated at the venue are not permitted within a contemporary setting, and perceptions of what constitutes ‘live’ may have also changed (Auslander, 2011: 61). The overall uniqueness of what the Apollo live experiences may have represented for many of its advocates therefore permeate the memories of many of the venue’s audience. EXPERIENCE OF YOUTH For a large number of young music fans throughout Scotland’s Central Belt, the Apollo’s opening in September 1973 offered the first opportunity to attend live concerts at a dedicated music venue, which was situated in a city centre and fed by major public transport routes. With no age restrictions in place, the venue, unlike other club and University venues in the area, was accessible to all. Indeed, many of the recollections appear to be from those who were in their mid-teens at the time, with frequent references made to school, limited finances, and parental concerns relating to their attendance at the venue. Many speak of attending a live concert for the first time, others of making their initial visit to Glasgow. Whilst the majority of the audience were from the city, a significant proportion travelled from throughout West-Central Scotland to the venue. Accordingly, the ‘mad dash’ for the last train at the end of the evening is referred to frequently, and can be regarded as forming a key part of the overall Apollo experience. Repeated and celebratory references also abound to underage drinking, which can be considered to be part of the teenage rite of passage, especially in the West of Scotland:

146 Kenny Forbes Every outing to the Apollo was special. Drinking vodka and blackcurrant before heading indoors to work up a sweat listening to our favourites, jumping around crazily (if the killjoy bouncers allowed) then racing down Renfield Street to catch the last train home to Greenock. And the next day, when the latest badge of honour bought the previous night would be pinned on the blazer and worn to school. David Terris (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 101) I was 16 and went with four mates . . . I went to the pub for the first time . . . After two pints each it was off to the Quo gig for one of those amazing sweaty balcony moments . . . We’d missed the last train and we had no money for a taxi because we’d spent it in the pub. We had to walk eight miles . . . [and] my dad . . . went mental at me for walking home at three in the morning on a school night. Allister Gourlay (quoted in Kielty, 2009:33) The following two recollections highlight the somewhat restricted environments that some of the young audience members inhabited, with the relatively small distances between their home location and Glasgow (10 miles from Paisley, 25 miles from Gourock) being regarded as part of a significant adventure to a major urban centre and its night-time economy: I remember arriving in the big smoke from Gourock. I just couldn’t believe how bright everything was! I’d never been to a theatre like the Apollo—my heart was in my mouth . . . It’s a night I’ll never forget and one which has, in many ways, shaped my life. Sue Ashcroft (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 92–93) It [the Apollo] was in Glasgow, and I do not live in Glasgow. I’m from a housing scheme in Paisley. You know, going to the big city at night-time when you’re 13, 14 . . . it was just a huge adventure . . . brilliant! Laurie McAuley (quoted in Temple of Apollo, 2009) Others consider themselves extremely fortunate that the Apollo had the capability to attract artists of a global stature to a local venue, which greatly enhanced their first concert experience and first visit to the city, and thus the significance of the occasion: It was my first and best concert ever—I was 14 and I’d never even been to Glasgow on my own before. The ticket was £6—roughly three times what other big names were asking at that time. But I paid because this was no ordinary concert—it was an event. ABBA were at their absolute peak . . . Even now I can hardly believe they played there. Charlie McNab (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 52)

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 147 Overall, it would appear that for some of the audience, an overall mix of youth, adrenaline and alcohol served to heighten the live music experience. Others revel in the experience of making the trip to the city for the first time. The pleasures related to the anticipation and realisation of new adult experiences, and being afforded an opportunity to encounter and immerse themselves in the gratifying rituals of attending concerts by major artists, may have also helped to intensify modes of appreciation during the live events at the venue, and no doubt contributed towards the renowned characteristics of the Apollo audience. These reminiscences also serve to encapsulate several aspects of Conway’s study of autobiographical memory (1990: 82–93), where it is suggested that memories of ‘first time’ experiences that mark transitional periods in one’s life tend to be detailed, vivid and regarded as highly significant due to the emotional impact experienced. As a result, a form of privileged encoding ensues, whereby such memories are elevated within the hierarchy of key memories, and it is evident that many of these ‘first time’ Apollo recollections fall into this category. LIVE ROCK AS AN AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE With rock providing the majority of the live soundtrack at the Apollo, two key aspects of the genre’s perceived authentic foundations manifested within the venue. First, framed by what Frith (1986: 265–267) suggests is its engagement with community, the non-commercial and its representation as a ‘truthful’ art form, rock was regarded a process best encapsulated by its raw and unmediated live reproduction. Similarly, Auslander (2006: 89) claims that live performance, “has long been understood as the realm of the authentic, the true test of the musicianship undisguised by studio trickery.” Others (Grossberg, 1992: 208; Bennett, 2008: 264) also maintain that the live rock music experience symbolises a key interactive component that serves to further legitimise the genre from the perspective of its audience, with Toynbee (2000: 123) suggesting that that the rock venue acts as a location where communities can be constructed, and bodies can be immersed among other members of the audience, amidst the surrounding noise. Second, if this rawness was further articulated within the venue itself, by virtue of it possessing a somewhat run-down environment, then this tended to act as a process that heightened the authenticity of the setting, emphasise its non-commercial persona, and lead it to assume an engaging ‘otherness’ distinct from the refined surroundings of the concert hall. According to Frith (2007: 9) rock mythology not only embraces the symbolism of the filth and seediness inherent within (now) defunct live music venues, but also that these establishments were regarded as essential to a city’s musical soul. If this

148 Kenny Forbes is true then the dilapidated condition of the Apollo, which was regarded as a distinctly local venue, would no doubt have helped to enhance such notions for its rock audience at least. The venue originally opened as the Green’s Playhouse in 1927, and its 4,400 capacity made it Europe’s largest cinema at that time. Although the design of the venue was based on the pioneering American cinema architecture of the mid-1920s, its envisioned grandeur was diminished somewhat from the outset, with poor quality materials being used during the construction process by (at best) competent building workers rather than expert craftsmen (Peter, 1996: 38). In the decades that followed its opening there appears to be little evidence of anything other than makeshift maintenance being carried out to the venue in either of its Green’s Playhouse (1927–73) or Apollo (1973–85) incarnations. Some of the artists who performed there were appalled at its overwhelming shabbiness, with Rick Wakeman of Yes referring to it as a “disgraceful, disgusting, filthy place” (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 64), and Zal Cleminson of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band comparing it to “a cross between a Victorian music hall and Escape from New York” (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 11). However, for many of the audience, the run-down nature of the venue was endearing, and formed a key part of the ritual of attending the venue, to the extent that it would be difficult to imagine if the Apollo would be celebrated in the same manner had it existed as a well-maintained and comfortable venue: You could say the Apollo was dirty, dingy, seedy, cheap and nasty, but it was still the best concert venue that Scotland has ever had. The place just reeked of tradition that you can never find in a new building. It was as if every band who ever played there had left something of their spirit behind. You could definitely feel this at any Apollo concert, and every performance seemed to add to the band’s mystique. John McCluskey (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 73) Accordingly, some members of the rock audience who frequented the venue felt able to immerse themselves in the authentic ambience of a crumbling and distressed theatre, which may have added a certain resonance to their experience of the music and event: The place had a sort of working man’s bar-room filth that made it exotic in our eyes . . . But the grubbiness was somehow adult—it made us feel we were in one of the wilder parts of the grown up world . . . on the edge. We boasted about it at school—the fag-ends, the chewing gum on the seats, the empty beer bottle against the wall at the entrance. It all indicated excesses of debauchery to us—and we’d seen it! Wendi Dwyer (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 4)

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 149 Comments of this nature suggest that, for some audience members, aspects of the venue’s downtrodden environment symbolised a form of otherworldliness that served to individualise the live music experience at the Apollo. In many ways the venue’s status is also further ‘enhanced’ by its crumbling infrastructure, which acted to align the Apollo with other run-down ‘legendary’ live locations such as the Cavern Club (Leigh, 2008), CBGBs and The Winterland (Burrows, 2009). However, others could see beyond the seemingly positive aspects of this authentic ambience: The place did have a certain correctly tatty, devil-may-care, down-athell rock ‘n’ roll ambience, an atmosphere . . . although whether “atmosphere” is quite the word for burst sewers, bits falling off walls and rain pouring into dressing rooms four floors below the roof. David Belcher (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 13) The negative dimensions of the Apollo’s shabbiness was particularly noticeable to the pop audience, as illustrated by this letter to a local broadsheet newspaper from an extremely dissatisfied audience member expressing a somewhat negative view of the surroundings: Sir—May I express my complete dissatisfaction and amazement at the conditions which prevailed in the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow for the recent Neil Sedaka concert. Having purchased the most expensive tickets (£7.50) I was amazed to find the place in such a dismal state of repair—seats were torn, there were holes in walls with plasterwork strewn over the floor, the toilet facilities were less than adequate (and covered in graffiti), and there was litter almost everywhere . . . Such was my anger and disappointment that I left (with many others) after 15 minutes, and despite repeated complaints. Why has the theatre been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair and when will it be put right? (Crosbie, 1979: 6) In fact it was never ‘put right’. Due to the Apollo’s increasing dilapidation in its later years, even members of the rock audience felt compelled to disown the venue as it edged towards its final closure, and the venue attracted decreasing levels of public support. Although a major campaign to save the Apollo from closure in 1978 attracted a large scale audience and media support, which contributed to its reopening after a short period, there was no similar campaign in 1985 when the venue, by now referred to as ‘the biggest pop slum in Britain’ (Kielty, 2009: 100), finally closed for good. Despite this, it appears that, for the most part, it is the distinctly positive memories of the Apollo’s authentic ambience that prevail, and this perhaps reflects the tendency within reminiscences that evoke the bittersweet

150 Kenny Forbes to accentuate the positive and marginalise the negative as a means of coping with loss (Davis, 1977: 418). Overall, for many of the Apollo audience, the preferences towards the disrepair and neglect encountered functioned to embody notions of rock’s perceived authentic values and, by association, infer membership of a collective and ‘real’ music experience (Frith, 1981: 88). Despite its somewhat fragile infrastructure, the Apollo’s condition would not, in one sense, have been regarded as being overtly unusual, given the limited facilities and rundown nature of many venues within the pre-arena UK live sector during the 1970s (Gorman, 1978: 68–69). Such partial conditions were reflective of a range of management practices and processes that emphasised the lack of standardised procedures, involving aspects such as health and safety, crowd control, box office and ticket procedures, and security, within the prevailing live music environment. As an example, the series of UK stadium concerts by The Who during May–June 1976, one of the first instances where such a large-scale live venture had been undertaken, saw existing event management techniques being employed and, in the case of the Charlton Stadium concert on 31 May, the audience encountered violence, overcrowding, ticket forging and poor services, as the following observation illustrates: It rained. There had been massive ticket forging, overcrowding the ground and forcing the police to stop further entry, even to those with genuine tickets. There were fights, there was drunkenness. The sound system, like all rock and roll sound systems everywhere, was not functioning properly. The bands all came on late and there were not enough toilets. The ground was carpeted with discarded hot dog rolls. It took twenty minutes to walk—or rather, squeeze—twenty yards. The visibility was ten feet less than whatever one’s distance was from the stage. It was awful. But it was marvellous. It was rock and roll. Anything better organised and more civilized might well have pleased the Greater London Council, but it would not have provided the outlet for aggression and mild lawlessness which rock exists to provide. Save us from rock promoters who try to make our experience a pleasant one. We want it to be rough, unpleasant . . . and memorable. Pleasant viewing we can get in our own sitting rooms. (Gorman, 1978: 74) Such observations appear to fully engage with rock’s perceived authentic values, along with its non-commercial perspective, albeit at the expense of public safety, value for money and extremely poor customer service. To a more limited extent the Apollo, positioned firmly within the pre-arena live music environment for the bulk of its period of operation (the Apollo closed in 1985, around the same time as the UK arena network became fully established), also absorbed several of the unpleasant, yet endearing and memorable (for some audience members), aspects that constituted typical

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 151 characteristics of the prevailing UK live network that served to embrace elements of authenticity within rock’s mythical landscape. THE APOLLO BOUNCERS For many audience members one factor that served to influence their memories of the Apollo concerts was the regular confrontations between concertgoers and the security staff hired by the venue. The Stewards (the title preferred by the venue’s management) or Bouncers (preferred by the audience) were renowned for their heavy-handed approach, and evidence of this can be viewed in The Clash film, Rude Boy (2007). A key scene features live footage of the riot that occurred at the group’s concert at the Apollo on 4 July 1978, where the stewards savagely manhandled audience members in the area in front of the stage, as remembered by this observer: The atmosphere that night was very bitter. The bouncers have to answer for that . . . I remember the unnecessary provocation the bouncers were giving us as we went in . . . You could feel the tension as soon as you went into the hall. The bouncers were just out to give people a hard time. And to make matters worse they were playing disco music over the tannoy. Jim Wyper (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 76) Even witnessing some of these violent incidents left an impression on some audience members: A lot of us saw The Jam at the Apollo, and I remember one guy climbing onto the stage and starting to jive. The bouncers flung him from the stage and two of them escorted him from the auditorium. Our seats were directly above the ‘tunnel’. As soon as they got him out of sight of the main audience, a third bouncer punched him on the back of the head. Then they stuck the boot in—all because he’d dared climb on stage. Peter Allan (quoted Leadbetter, 1995: 99) Some recipients could even cherish aspects of the violence encountered at the Apollo: My fondest Apollo memories are when I was tossed out on the street by the over-zealous bouncers—it happened to me all the time! The best one was at a Stranglers gig . . . my mate gave me a punty up and I managed to get my elbows on the stage—only to be dragged off by two bouncers. They punched and kicked the shit out of me till they opened the emergency door with my head, and they flung me out into the lane, in

152 Kenny Forbes the pissing rain, landing me in a big puddle. They were standing there laughing, but I found a half-eaten bag of chips so I lobbed it at them and got one full on the coupon. What a shot! Big mistake, though—they dragged me back inside and kicked the shit out of me again. I bet they still laugh about it to this day—I do! ‘Dodger’ (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 71–72) Recollections of this nature, where the use of humour serves to diffuse the violence and aggravation experienced, can be regarded as another component of the ‘fuzziness’ that prevails within nostalgia-fuelled memories: Indeed, the nostalgic mood is one whose tendency is to envelop all that may have been painful or unattractive about the past in a kind of fuzzy, redeemingly benign aura. The hurts, annoyances, disappointments and irritations, if they are permitted to intrude at all, are filtered through an ‘it was all for the best’ attitude or, at very least, are patronized in terms of some ‘great human comedy’ metaphor. (Davis, 1977: 418) Obviously, the extent of this type of violence did not occur at every Apollo concert, but variations of this aggressive mentality materialised on frequent occasions. These reminiscences therefore suggest that for some, the regular violent encounters with the stewards formed a part of the ritual of attending the Apollo, with audience members either anticipating or fearing some level of disorder at most events. This helped at many of the concerts to heighten levels of expectation among the audience and increase the intensity of engagement between the audience and the artists, thus adding to the already charged atmosphere. With physicality being regarded as a key element of the live experience for some of the Apollo audience, further analysis of the temporal production and consumption of live music can be undertaken by referring to Philip Auslander’s historical model of liveness (2011: 61). In its initial form, Auslander suggests that ‘classic liveness’ represents the physical co-presence of the performer and audience within a theatre-type environment, and would embody a temporal simultaneity of production and reception where factors such as the ‘essence of the moment’ would manifest. In other words, ‘being there’ in a physical sense and experiencing a range of simultaneous audiovisual and bodily occurrences that enable the live moment to form, are of key significance within this setting. Further historical progressions within this model increasingly rely upon technology to produce forms of liveness to larger audiences across a range of platforms, such as those processes involving live broadcasts and recordings, as well as websites going ‘live’, and would lead to temporal gaps being accrued between production and reception. The latter stages of the live model, which would most likely be regarded as representing ‘contemporary liveness’, highlight that our interaction with

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 153 machines, as typified by what Auslander refers to as ‘Internet liveness’ (websites, blogs) and ‘Social liveness’ (texts, mobiles), now defines what may be live, as opposed to the physicality that framed the ‘classic liveness’ experience that would have been experienced at the Apollo. However, if anything, the violent encounters at the venue, whilst representing a generally negative experience for audience members, helped to symbolise facets of tangibility that emphasise the overall simultaneity of audiovisual and bodily experiences that encompass the complete live music experience, more so than forms of engagement that are facilitated by current notions of machine-led liveness. In effect, if reflecting the characteristics within the historical live model as suggested by Auslander, then a kick to the face suffered during the ‘classic liveness’ of an Apollo live concert experience resonated much more with this audience than a click on a page, which is a process that symbolises contemporary forms of liveness. UNCONVENTIONAL CONCERT RITUALS While the Apollo may have been popular with audiences partly due to its size and status during the pre-arena phase of the UK live sector, the venue eventually became increasingly marginalised due to the emergence of the domestic arena network and the rise in professional standards that accompanied this process. These arenas, which served as an additional tier of concert venues, generally consisted of large (with capacities ranging between 8,000–15,000 on average) multipurpose exhibition sites located in major cities, and their introduction initiated the emergence of a new venue hierarchy, assuming a key position over the existing multitude of cinemas, ballrooms, city and town halls (where the maximum capacity was generally in the region of 2,500). In many cases, the very limited facilities offered by a typical local venue within the traditional circuit, especially those that would fail to accommodate the increasingly large-scale stage productions adopted by many major artists from the late 1970s onwards, became increasing apparent, and thereafter such locations tended to be bypassed in favour of the regional arena, where the promoter’s requirements could be facilitated, and revenue generation potential was far greater. The establishment of the UK arena network also heralded forms of standardisation within the realms of live events management, that began to address some of the security, health and safety and ticket issues that had manifested at previous large-scale live events, such as those that had occurred at The Who’s stadium concerts of 1976, which were discussed earlier. Another step towards the professionalisation of the UK live sector occurred in 1986, when a national Concert Promoters Association was finally formed after several previous unsuccessful attempts (Brennan and Webster, 2011: 11). While regional arenas, such as Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, had started to appear from the mid-1970s onwards, a network of UK

154 Kenny Forbes arenas did not manifest until the mid-1980s. Indeed, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) opened in Glasgow in September 1985, which was within three months of the Apollo’s closure, enabling audiences who went there and had previously frequented the Apollo to compare the two venues. The Apollo was renowned for the unconventional means that the audience utilised to gain access to both the venue and the artists who performed there. There are numerous recollections that focus on factors such as ticket scam processes, where the same ticket was used by numerous audience members to gain free entry to the venue by way of an already admitted audience member directing his or her concert ticket to their accomplice outside the venue, usually within a well-aimed cigarette packet or matchbox from an upstairs window. The venue’s layout and lack of security procedures also facilitated numerous opportunities for personal encounters with artists, to the extent that such confrontations proved to be part of the Apollo concert ritual for some of the audience. Framed by a sense of freedom and euphoria that such uninhibited access at the Apollo engendered, any illusions that a similar environment prevailed at the new highly regulated SECC arena, would lead to forms of disappointment. For some, the Apollo live encounter, even if this was experienced during periods of employment at the venue, represented an opportunity to control levels of access: My friend and I worked there—unpaid, but we got to see so many groups for free. We had to take punters’ tickets and show them to their seats. As soon as the lights went out the torches were dumped and we found a good place to see the bands—they were all brilliant! Sometimes we’d make an excuse to ‘go to the shop’ and give our friends used tickers to get in—but we only did this for blokes we fancied! Janice Murray (quoted in Kielty, 2009:10) Gaining access to the Apollo stage, despite the fact that it was remarkably high at just over 16 feet, proved to be a major objective for some audience members, no matter where they were located in the venue: I managed to clamber onto the stage and just as a bouncer was trying to pull me down, Rod Stewart spotted me and pulled me up. He told the crowd I was his wee sister and carried on singing—it was great fun. Then after the gig my friends and I got to meet the band, which was a dream come true for us. They all seemed quite impressed that I’d managed to get onto the stage, me being the height of nothing. Ronnie Wood asked me where I’d been sitting. I said, ‘On the balcony.’ He just about choked on his pint and asked, ‘Did you fly onto the stage then?’ I had to explain it was normal for everyone to rush down to the stalls when the band started. Maggie Duncan (quoted in Kielty, 2009: 27)

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 155 The ‘multiple ticket’ scam referred to earlier, which was utilised by many concertgoers also appears to have been adopted by some members of the audience who would later appear on the Apollo stage in a professional capacity: Me and Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill (both Simple Minds) used to go to gigs at the Apollo. One of us would go in and go to the upstairs toilet and put the ticket into a cigarette packet and throw it out the window. Six of us would get in that way. Derek Forbes, Simple Minds (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 44) For others, the multi-ticket process was a key part of the Apollo ritual over the period of a decade: I think nearly every Apollo regular tried the ticket-out-the-window trick a couple of times. It was sort of a rite of passage. We had two tickets for five of us to see Iron Maiden. I went in with a ticket, went into the gents, put the ticket in a matchbox and threw it out the window to land in the lane . . . I was never caught in ten years of this trick. I can’t imagine having the bottle to do it now! Frank Farrell (quoted in Kielty: 1997: 131) Although a large number of key concerts took place at the venue, some of these live events are more revered than others, and have since formed part of a local live music canon. Such events would include the 1978 performance by AC/DC, the bulk of which formed the live album If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It), and the unannounced concerts by The Rolling Stones in 1982. Another example is the series of concerts by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, which took place over Christmas and New Year 1975–76: The Christmas shows by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band felt so special. It was like being at a small party where the band were your mates and you knew everyone in the place. At the end, balloons and streamers were released from the ceiling and drifted onto the crowd. It was like all your Hogmanys rolled into one. Everybody was drunk on the atmosphere and you grabbed the guy next to you and hugged him as if you’d known him all your life. When the lights went up, you walked out into the night air feeling like a king and wishing that feeling would last forever. Ewan Watt (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 98) Other audience members have also reflected on the transcendent nature of the concert-going experience at the Apollo: It was like a spiritual experience, the music just seemed to fill the whole place and I’ve never had the feeling of complete immersion in music than when I’ve seen bands play at the Apollo. Francis McDonald (quoted in Temple of Apollo, 2009)

156 Kenny Forbes These representations of transcendent experiences reflect facets of jouissance, which, as suggested by Roland Barthes (1975), occurs when the interaction of the text and the reader produces momentary notions of bliss and ecstasy, with this form of simultaneity facilitating an elevated platform or body, which these agents inhabit and utilise to travel to what seems is a different dimension, albeit briefly. Such elation, although framed by the specific Apollo live experience, serve to assume an entity, almost like a letter, where the memory of jouissance is fixed within the text (Solen, 2003: 92), with subsequent re-readings enabling a renaissance of jouissance in later years. This memory process is further idealised by what many recall as the overall uniqueness of the venue, the quality of the artists who appeared at the Apollo (most of whom were performing during their creative peaks) and the intimate experiences that emerged. In such circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that elements of ‘I Was Thereism’ materialise: I feel sorry for live-rock music fans who can only go to either the Royal Concert Hall (more like a hospital than a gig venue) or the oversized tin shoebox known as the SECC. Both have about as much atmosphere as a dead fish. Not only Glasgow, but the whole of Scotland, lost something irreplaceable when the Apollo closed its doors. Some people might tell us Apollo-lovers are being over-sentimental, and I know things always look rosier when they belong to the past. But even so . . . all that I can say is: if you were ever there, you’ll know how we feel. Jock Barnston (quoted in Leadbetter, 1995: 78) Observations of this nature on the perceived dichotomy between the experience of concerts at the Apollo and those within the new arenas reflect the changes that have manifested with the UK live environment. They also promote notions of nostalgic longing, whereby the past represents a sanctuary in the face of new developments that, for whatever reason, do not resonate with the individual concerned (Boym, 2001: xiv). Furthermore, if considering the depth of nostalgia that some audience members hold for the Apollo live experience (loosely regulated, access to jouissance) when juxtaposed with the type of experience which would be encountered at an arena like the SECC (highly regulated, constraints imposed on levels of behaviour) some form of analysis can be facilitated if the criteria set by Fred Davis (1979: 11–12) for measuring the scope of nostalgic longing in a given situation is applied. Davis suggests that the magnitude of nostalgia experienced within the relevant setting can be determined by the extent of the subjective contrast between the past and the present, and, if considering the huge differences that existed between the Apollo and the new arena network, then the nostalgic glorification for the Apollo live experience can be more readily understood.

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 157 CONCLUSION This chapter has illustrated that the requirement for some audience members to utilise the ‘lived’ experience of attending live concerts as a method for elevating the role of the individual self within music-related memories, has tended to focus on a key period of rock concerts hosted by the Glasgow Apollo. It has highlighted four particular factors influenced audience memories of the venue. Reminiscences were shaped by the dynamics of youthful encounters, engagement with notions of rock’s perceived authentic foundation, through either witnessing or experiencing confrontations with the venue’s security staff, and by the adoption of unconventional concert routines at the venue. When reviewing these aspects of the Apollo memories, it is perhaps beneficial to consider both their historical context and the modes utilised to re-engage with these live events. Unlike a contemporary live event, where new technologies enable live events to be instantly recorded by audiences using mobile phones and other recording devices, the Apollo concerts took place within an analogue environment, with little documentary evidence to substantiate these recollections. Consequently, whereas easily accessible recordings from contemporary live events serve to prompt audience memories relating to these experiences, the limited amount of Apollo-related media available requires the relevant audience member to rely upon the key aspects of their individual reminiscences. In effect, this practise functions to assume greater significance, given this lack of access. This is a process that Philip Auslander recognises when he explains that: The less an event leaves behind in the way of artifacts and documentation, the more symbolic capital accrues to those who were in attendance. (2011: 67) Such notions are further exemplified by an advertisement relating to a musical based on the venue, I Was There (McGrory, 2010), which suggested that there two types of music lovers in Glasgow—those who had been fortunate enough to attend the Apollo, and those who wished they had been able to attend the venue (Ticketsoup, 2010). To conclude, and recap on the discussion, four aspects that served to shape reminiscences of members of the Apollo audience were analysed within this chapter. First, some of the memories that were explored were fuelled by the sense of adventure that certain youthful members of the audience experienced when they attended live concerts at the Apollo. The trepidation and anticipation, then realisation, of adult experiences, some of which were fuelled by adrenaline and alcohol, would no doubt have made a relevant contribution to atmosphere at the venue. ‘First time’ experiences relating to the Apollo, which, for some, would also have led to visiting Glasgow for

158 Kenny Forbes the first time, would also serve to heighten the emotional intensity of the live experience at the venue and add to the vividness of recall. The second factor that contributed to the atmosphere was the inherent shabbiness of the venue itself, with the lack of maintenance providing an environment where this authentic ambience helped to facilitate the audience’s immersion with the live concert experience. Third, according to some of the memories, violent encounters with the venue’s stewards, whether anticipated, experienced or witnessed, were a regular occurrence, to the extent that this formed part of the ritual of the concert experience at the venue, and, again, this tangibility no doubt helped to further charge the atmosphere during live events. Finally, the levels of access to the venue and the major artists who performed there reflected the increasingly evident differences in practice and processes between the Apollo and the new arena network. Certainly, the new network, with the local example being the SECC, would provide less scope for such breaches of security, further serving to highlight the uniqueness of the live concert experiences at the Apollo. Consequently, the memories relate to the lived experiences of an audience who, despite the conditions and the provocations, consider themselves extremely privileged to have attended live events at the Glasgow Apollo. With the knowledge that many of the factors that contributed towards their defining experiences will never re-emerge, these memories continue to remain significant to those who frequented the Apollo, and hold symbolic value over those who were unable to attend. In effect, ‘you had to be there’.

REFERENCES Auslander, P. (2006). ‘Liveness. Performance and the anxiety of simulation’. In A. Bennett, B. Shank, & J. Toynbee (eds.), The Popular Music Studies Reader (pp. 85–91). London: Routledge. Auslander, P. (2011). Liveness. Performance in a Mediated Culture. London: Routledge. Barthes, R. (1975). The Pleasures of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang. Bennett, A. (2006). ‘Punk’s not dead: The continuing significance of punk rock for an older generation of fans’. Sociology 40: 219–235. Bennett, A. (2008). ‘ “Things they do look awful cool”: Ageing rock icons and contemporary audiences’. Leisure 32: 259–278. Boym, S. (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Brennan, M., & Webster, E. (2011). ‘Why concert promoters matter’. Scottish Music Review 2 (1): 1–24. Burns, G. (1996). ‘Popular music, television and generational identity’. Journal of Popular Culture 30 (3): 129–141. Burrows, T. (2009). From CBGB to the Roundhouse. London: Marion Boyars. Connell, J., & Gibson, C. (2003). Sound Tracks. Popular Music Identity and Place. London: Routledge. Conway, M. A. (1990). Autobiographical Memory. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Memories of the Glasgow Apollo Audience 159 Crosbie, T. (1979, 11 May). ‘View from the front stalls’. Glasgow Herald, p. 6. Davis, F. (1977). ‘Nostalgia, identity and the current nostalgia wave’. Journal of Popular Culture 11 (2): 414–424. Davis, F. (1979). Yearning for Yesterday. London: Collier Macmillan. Doggett, P. (2007). There’s a Riot Going On. Edinburgh: Canongate. Frith, S. (1981). Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon. Frith, S. (1986). ‘Art versus technology: The strange case of popular music’. Media Culture Society 8: 263–279. Frith, S. (1993). ‘Representations of the People: Voices of Authority in Pop Music.’ Revista de Musicología, Vol. 16, No. 1, Del XV Congreso de la Sociedad Internacional de Musicología: Culturas Musicales Del Mediterráneo y sus Ramificaciones, (1), 528–532. Frith, S. (1996). ‘Towards an aesthetic of popular music’. In R. Leppert & S. McClary (eds.), Music and Society (pp. 133–149). New York: Cambridge University Press. Frith, S. (2007). ‘Live music matters’. Scottish Music Review 1 (1): 1–17. Gorman, C. (1978). Back Stage Rock. London: Pan. Gracyk, T. (1996). Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Grossberg, L. (1992). We Gotta Get Out of This Place. New York: Routledge. Hazan, J., & Mingay, D. (2007). Rude Boy [DVD]. London: Slam Dunk Media. Kielty, M. (2009). Apollo Memories. Glasgow: Noisewave. Leadbetter, R. (1995). You Don’t Have to Be in Harlem. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Leigh, S. (2008). The Cavern. The Most Famous Club in the World. London: SAF. McGrory, T. (2010). I Was There. The Story of the Glasgow Apollo [Musical]. Glasgow, Clyde Auditorium (viewed August 28, 2010). Peter, B. (1996). 100 Years of Glasgow’s Amazing Cinemas. Edinburgh: Polygon. Pickering, M., & Keightley, E. (2007). ‘Echoes and Reverberations’. Media History 13 (2): 273–288. Scott, G. (1978, 14 June). ‘Stars pay tribute.’ Evening Times, p. 2. Solen, C. (2003). ‘The paradoxes of the symptom in psychoanalysis’. In J. M. Rabate (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lacon (pp. 86–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Temple of Apollo. (2009, 2 May). Radio Programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Glasgow. Ticketsoup.com. (2010). ‘I Was There—Event Details’. Retrieved from www.ticketsoup. com/tickets/i-wasthere-2010–11663/default.aspx (accessed February 27, 2011). Toynbee, J. (2000). Making Popular Music. Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. London: Arnold. van Dijck, J. (2009). ‘Remembering songs through telling stories: Pop music as a resource for memory’. In K. Bijsterveld & J. van Dijck (eds.), Sound Souvenirs (pp. 107–119). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press.

11 Engaging Nostalgia Popular Music and Memory in Museums Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton

Reviewing the then newly opened Museum of Liverpool, Rowan Moore commented, ‘To judge by the lively opening day crowds, having their memories prompted by this or that nostalgic nugget, the museum’s aim of connecting the city with its past is powerful and important’ (Moore, 2011). Museum exhibitions can produce powerful nostalgic responses and it is recognised that nostalgia can be a key motivation for museum attendance (Devine, 2013). Yet nostalgia—perhaps linked to its roots in pathology—has historically been viewed as a debased mode of remembering: one that is uncritical, emotional, and which falsifies the past in an urge to idealise that which went before, enabling it to act as a refuge from the difficulties of the present (see Hewison, 1987; Chase and Shaw, 1989; Lowenthal, 1989). As Keightley and Pickering point out, nostalgia has been set in a binary. Positioned in opposition to progress and the future, it has been understood as ‘a determinate backwards-looking stance’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2006: 920) premised on a longing for the past. If understood in this way, nostalgia becomes a site of tension for museums. It has the power to attract audiences but also potentially frames the past in particular, even troubling, ways. Goulding’s appraisal of themed, ‘living’ heritage museums may be taken as illustration because while she acknowledges that ‘they appear to provide a stimulus for nostalgia’, she also comments that they sanitise the past by offering ‘a glimpse into history, but it is a history cleansed of disease, poverty, and exploitation’ (Goulding, 2001: 566). Similarly, Simon Reynolds has criticised what he has seen as the overly cohesive representation of the history of music in museums, where he contends, ‘the rock museum . . . presents music with the battle lines erased, everything wrapped up in a warm blanket of acceptance and appreciation’ (Reynolds, 2011: 7). While any museum exhibit has the potential to provoke a nostalgic response, little attention has been given to how this applies to the use and representation of popular music within museums. Exhibitions about popular music, and more broadly about popular culture, present a particular set of issues relating to nostalgia. Music (and associated tangible objects such as concert tickets and posters) can trigger emotional reactions, which might provoke personal remembrance or even engender a wistful longing

Engaging Nostalgia 161 for an earlier time when that music was first experienced or made personally meaningful. As a sonic, intangible cultural form, music functions and is imbricated within our social, cultural and everyday lives and is capable of having, and aiding the recall of, very specific attachments to particular events. Moreover, as we shall discuss, nostalgia can also be felt in reaction to stimulus material by people who are not drawing on personal experience. Furthermore, as Grainge argues, nostalgia can be understood not only as a ‘mood’ but as a ‘consumable mode’ (2000: 27) within media culture, which should not necessarily be translated as a longing for the past as it is also about configurations of taste, textuality and style. This vogue for nostalgia, or ‘retromania’ as Reynolds (2011) has termed it, has been both engendered and commercially exploited in respect to popular music through television programming (Tinker, 2012), the marketing of reunion tours (NME, 2013), and the packaging of reissue releases, such as pre–rock era compilations, as nostalgia music (Baade and Aitken, 2008). Taking into consideration shifting understandings of heritage and museological debates around the representation of memory, history and cultural pasts, this chapter analyses how museum exhibitions of popular music heritage enable modes of nostalgic engagement. This is not to say that these presentations are purely concerned with appealing to a nostalgic impulse, nor to argue that their content is compromised by such an affective response. The discussion draws on interviews with curators working in the UK museum sector1 who have experience of curating popular music and its associated material culture. In exploring this topic we take up Keightley and Pickering’s argument that nostalgia can be a useful critical term as it ‘enables the relationship between past and present to be conceived of as fragile and corruptible, inherently dependent on how the resources of the past are made available, how those traces of what has been are mediated and circulated’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2006: 938). Museum representations of popular music history are active mediations of the popular past and as such they broker this fragile relationship between past and present. Rather than seeking to discount nostalgia as an inferior and falsifying form of remembrance, diametrically opposed to ‘real history’, this chapter instead seeks to appraise how nostalgia is activated within heritage presentations and employed as part of the engagement strategy of museums. In line with Gregory and Witcomb (2007: 274) we argue that nostalgia can be an important curatorial tool ‘to generate historical understanding and appreciation for the social dimensions of community history’. SITES OF MEMORIALISATION Exhibition design has increasingly addressed and given importance to processes of memory, with personal remembrance viewed as engaging for audiences, and the multi-vocality it permits being seen as useful for the

162 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton democratic mission of museums. An empathetic response is generated when a visitor sees an exhibit with which they have a personal connection, which in turn enhances the medium’s affective power. According to Williams, museums ‘engender and consolidate social practices of remembrance’ (Williams, 2007: 5), acting in much the same way as the social groupings that Maurice Halbwachs identifies as actively constructing collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992: 182). The effect of memory enaction in a popular music exhibition may be manifold: to socialise a personal musical memory within communal frameworks, for instance; or to link a musical cultural phenomenon with broader social, economic, or political contexts. Arnold-de Simine discusses new forms of museal practice—pioneered by Holocaust museums—where memorial processes are prioritised over and above other museum functions. She writes: ‘the genre of the memory museum has diversified into a range of “sub-genres” which see their role both in preserving and embodying memories not only in relation to recent events of mass suffering, but to a much wider range of historical periods and experiences’ (Arnold-de Simine, 2012: 16). Particular representational strategies are often adopted within such ‘memory museums’, including intermedial layering of texts, images and audiovisual representations. This use of media allows audiences to consider the ‘representational and mediated quality of history’ (Arnold-de Simine, 2012: 17). Such museum displays are indicative of a renegotiation of the role of museums within social narratives, moving from political positioning of ‘official’ history based on physical artefacts to communal positioning of collective memory, based on emotional impact and the self-reflexive performance of museum identities. This has the advantage which Helen Rees Leahy has noted of creating ‘a performing museology [that] enables the institution to adopt a reflexive position in relation to its own operation, thereby revealing its hitherto unacknowledged functions and processes’ (Rees Leahy, 2012: 3). Thus, instead of a single authoritative ‘official’ voice emanating from the institution, space is created for multiple emotive responses, which in turn can critique previously hidden, unquestioned aspects of the museum discourse. Popular music heritage displays within museums parallel sports heritage presentations discussed by Ramshaw and Gammon (2005: 232) in that they often celebrate a heritage of popular music, building a specific narrative of achievement within the wider field of practice, as well as presenting popular music as heritage thereby making a broader cultural claim about the significance of musicians, music and associated practices. Certain approaches to how popular music is exhibited may particularly encourage nostalgic engagement. Heritage presentations of popular music often celebrate commercially successful and/or critically lauded performers, charting career breakthroughs and key events or ‘moments’ which might be taken as staging posts within an exhibition narrative. Thus the exhibition content and selection encourages nostalgic engagement by representing a celebration of popular music’s own past.

Engaging Nostalgia 163 Many exhibition projects have been developed to recognise the links between popular music and place by showcasing the work of a particular artist (as in the case of AC/DC Australia’s Family Jewels developed by the Arts Centre, Melbourne and the Western Australian Museum) or by offering a presentation of local or national music heritage (such as the North East Beat exhibition exploring the popular music scene of north-east England or Rockheim, Norway’s national museum of pop and rock). Such exhibitions encourage nostalgia through their celebratory review of ‘home grown’ stars. They can also confer legitimacy via materially representing elements which are already celebrated within spoken and written discourses around local music heritage. For example, in North East Beat a letter from a Newcastle club sign salvaged from scrap became a synecdoche for nostalgic reminiscence from contributors and visitors alike. In addition, popular music exhibitions encourage personal identification from visitors who, on an individual level, may be attracted by the possibility of reimagining their own biographical engagements with music and celebrating music to which they feel personally attached. The role that music plays within daily life helps to account for these strong attachments for, as DeNora has argued, music is woven into everyday life, used to accompany daily activities, to regulate and reflect mood, to offer pleasure and comfort, and as ‘a building material of self-identity’ (DeNora, 2000: 62). Several curators remarked on the primacy of nostalgia in audience responses to exhibitions themed around locality. For example, the curator of North East Beat commented that the exhibition generated ‘A lot of the feedback . . . about nostalgia, people remembering and mentioning a trip down memory lane, that sort of thing’ (personal communication, 2010). The public demand for sites of commemoration connected to music has arguably prompted exhibition projects and even entire museum developments. While the decision to undertake and invest in projects will have been made for a number of strategic reasons, it is important to recognise that such ventures are often initiated in response to a perceived public demand for a popular music ‘destination’ to visit. For example, discussing the Abba museum before it opened in May 2013, the museum’s managing director Mattias Hansson commented, ‘We know from the tourism office in Stockholm that each and every year they receive thousands of questions from tourists about where to go to see something about Abba, and for years they have been forced to say, “nowhere” ’ (Orange, 2012). This comment suggests there may exist a desire for sites that commemorate, situate, and facilitate an individual’s emotive connections to popular music. So, while a specific call for museum projects may not have been identified, these have been developed by the sector with the confidence that they might satisfy a public wish to commemorate music artists or the music heritage of a particular place. An illustration can be taken of the Home of Metal exhibition staged in the English Midlands in 2011 as part of a set of events celebrating the heavy metal heritage of Birmingham and the Black Country. The project was initiated by

164 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton music promoters Capsule who regularly bring international touring artists to the city and ‘always felt a little bit embarrassed that there was nowhere to take them . . . there was no tea towel, so-to-speak . . . no visitor attraction.’ (personal communication, 2011). Home of Metal originated from a desire to produce spaces that located a hitherto unanchored heritage narrative: answering a demand for presence by creating events and exhibitions to act as focal points for memorial associations. The desire for identifiable sites of commemoration can be associated with a range of motivations including nostalgia but also extending to other impulses such as pilgrimage, fandom, personal identity work, local pride, and the aim to participate in a ‘tourist experience’. Moreover, evident within the examples of Home of Metal and ABBA the Museum is the wish to see particular dimensions of cultural practice given public acknowledgement and space within their ‘home’ cities by being recognised as a part of their ‘official’ heritage. Aside from working as a memory prompt for lived experience, museum exhibits of popular music may also elicit ‘vicarious’ nostalgia (Goulding, 2001) where audiences respond emotionally to displayed material despite their having not personally experienced the conditions in which the object was initially spatially and temporally situated. For example, a Liverpool-based museum professional cited the reaction of international visitors to exhibits of the Beatles: ‘As a nostalgia drive I think it really works. I think music is a big draw for the international market . . . I would guess if you did a sample survey of international visitors . . . a lot of them would put music on the list of why they’ve come here. I think actually in some ways it works more for that audience’ (personal communication, 2011). These comments suggest that despite lacking direct geographical links to Merseyside, such tourist audiences can experience popular music exhibits featuring a nostalgic memorial locus in an emotive, empathetic manner, relating to the emotional ‘punctum’ (Barthes, 2000: 27) of an exhibit despite the fact that the materials might not connect directly with their personal memories. In such instances, the representation of popular music present in the museum exhibition passes beyond the personal level of nostalgic reverie into a collective memory framework, where the nostalgic ‘affect’ is not contingent upon direct experience. In their article on music recordings and photography as sources of nostalgia, Keightley and Pickering discuss the uprooting of personal into collective memory, where ‘The representation associated with the image or music has now entered into a much wider network of relations through which the past is remembered and reconstructed.’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2006: 153). This is now a significant function of the museum: to transfer personal mnemonic associations into collective social frameworks of past history. Yet, in the examples cited, personal narrative remained an important feature acknowledged by audiences and museum curators alike. For example, the Home of Metal exhibition in Birmingham included a section centred on fan portraits accompanied by recorded interviews relating the individual’s affective connections with the music and objects on display. The challenge for museums is to curate objects

Engaging Nostalgia 165 in such a way that they simultaneously resonate at a communal level while remaining attached to and available for personal narratives of recollection. SOUNDS FAMILIAR Whether broadcast through the vintage speakers of a jukebox or heard through a wireless pair of headphones, how sound is ‘delivered’ within the gallery space affects its communication. The selection of music, the way in which it is presented in the gallery, and the context for its reception (for example the presence of certain display materials), can create conditions for nostalgic reaction. Music might be used to evoke an era, to create a mood or to increase the experiential qualities of the display. For example the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums exhibition of North East Beat used a recording of a live performance by local band the Animals to create an atmosphere for visitors. Part of its nostalgic ‘affect’ came from the sound quality of the rare archival recording, made at a local club, the A’Gogo, where the group held a residency in their early days. Placed at a key point near the exhibition’s entrance and played through directional parabolic speakers, the recording, rather than offering aural fidelity, gave audiences an auditory impression of an ‘authentic’ experience of the 1960s beat scene in Newcastle that harnessed the nostalgic communication of the sound to emphasise the spatial and temporal framing of the exhibition. Music can be used within exhibitions as part of an interpretative strategy to create emotional memorial narratives. The use of music which has a connection with the daily lives of visitors might help to make exhibited materials more accessible or engaging, contributing to the experience of a layered display. One social history curator commented on music’s ability to help construct museum experiences: ‘I think it offers a very obvious point of connection with the audience and then there’s all that interesting work in terms of the role of music in nostalgia and in terms of triggering emotion. I think it does have a very strong role to play in terms of visitor response, that you can get something from music that is hard to evoke from other media. So I think it’s a useful trigger in that point’ (personal communication, 2011). The way in which music might trigger emotion is of course complex. It could be that the sonic characteristics of a particular song (its texture, timbre, production, vocals, instrumentation and style) suggest an emotional state or work to create a particular mood. The listener could also bring certain associations to particular songs or styles of music (related perhaps to place, time, memory, emotion or value) which might form part of their engagement with materials in a gallery. Hearing a particular piece of music could also awaken memories of a specific time in the listener’s life when that track or song had been previously heard. In a more diffuse way, a particular song or track might be used within an exhibition as suggestive of the sonic landscape of a particular period of time, where the individual track resonates with the

166 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton listener and contributes to how they frame and periodise the material on display. In presentations of popular music heritage nostalgia can then become a ‘tangible asset in the interpretation of the display’ (Devine, 2013: 4). Yet, seldom is music presented in isolation from other elements and frequently it is layered with other media to present a powerful audiovisual production. One can consider here how music is used within commissioned films for museums (borrowing from established techniques of television and commercial film production) to underscore and stitch together a visual narrative. Take, for instance, a curator’s description of the Rasta section of Black British Style at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A): ‘In the Rasta section we had worked closely with Don Letts, who filmed the emergence of Rasta as a style and religion in Britain in the mid-1970s. His argument was that it was a means of identification for first and second generation young black British. He put together a film using a lot of previously unseen footage that he’d recorded in London in the 1970s, which he then overlaid with a dub-reggae track.’ (personal communication, 2010). While the use of music and moving image is now common within exhibition design, it is worth attending to how it communicates. Letts’s film was a text which could hold significance for different audiences, who might understand it as an audiovisual social history, a representation of a collective identity and/or an evocation of nostalgic memory. As Corner has argued, the use of music and sounds within film, ‘greatly intensifies our engagement with the images . . . Music saturates the images, informing them by fusing its meanings with their own, and at the same times it bonds the shots together through its own aesthetic continuity’ (Corner, 2002: 359). The way in which meaning is taken from these texts is informed also by the gallery context. As Baer has discussed, the increasing proliferation of audiovisual histories and the increasing presentation of such films in high-tech museums has led to a blurring of the categories of memory, history and representation, potentially ‘creating a richer understanding of history and collective memory and a more reflective and self-conscious historical subject’ (Baer, 2001: 499). The ordinariness of television is disrupted by its movement into the museum where it is used as a medium which speaks to and for history. The commingling of memory and history is a recurrent characteristic of popular music exhibitions, placing personal identity and community history centre stage. The curatorial approach found in many popular music exhibitions sidesteps the assumed authority of a singular history by highlighting different perspectives on and mediations of the historical narrative. Exhibition design can also exploit the intensified experience of sound on film to enhance the impact of exhibition content. An illustration of such experiential design was employed within the David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A shown in 2013. Almost at the end of the exhibition, the visitor route dramatically opened into a sweeping double-height space where stage costumes were displayed on various uncased plinths within the gallery and also within a giant display cabinet built from floor to ceiling with the clothes veiled behind a gauzy film of textile material. At regular intervals throughout the day this

Engaging Nostalgia 167 exhibition space was transformed into a video and sound installation2 where film footage of Bowie was projected onto three sides of the gallery and the textile covering the costume display was repurposed as a giant screen. The viewer became enveloped within the audiovisual presentation, head tilted upwards to take in the spectacle of the show. From our personal experience, the sheer size of the projected images imparted a sense of wonder—in the museological sense defined by Stephen Greenblatt as ‘the power of the displayed object to stop the viewer in his or her tracks, to convey an arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention’ (Greenblatt, 1991: 42). The installation positioned the gallery visitor not so much as a viewer but as an audience member participating in the presence of Bowie’s screened performance, and for many visitors the scale of the presentation may have had a similar impact, engaging the senses in the drama of performance. For some the footage could also have prompted memories of seeing Bowie in live performance, in other televised moments, or indeed of seeing this very same filmed performance re-presented this time in theatrical cinema scale. Nostalgia could inform reception of this film, awakened by a re-lived televised moment or engendered by the mediated performance itself: a snatched moment from another time, an experience of the past in the present. The communicative power of popular music as a museum subject was frequently commented upon by museum professionals in interviews. Curators discussed the usefulness of music within displays which did not have music as their core focus but were perhaps presentations of a broader social history or popular culture display. One curator remarked: I know it’s a cliché to say pop music is the soundtrack to our lives, if you look back to anything from the last 50 years you can usefully overlay it or underpin it with pop music and choose the story, and that for me is very exciting because it seems to me that if we think what we do in the museum is very important and can bring people together, we’ve got the perfect medium to do that with . . . something that everybody understands, and you can inject whatever you like. (personal communication, 2010). The signifying force of music was thus seen as somewhat plastic, able to be adapted within different communication strategies. The meta-textual potential of popular music as a curatorial interpretive technique could be exploited to bring out personal, social, and collective memorial frameworks and overlay historical narratives with alternate mnemonic readings. CURATING NOSTALGIA In appraising the ways in which popular music exhibitions engender nostalgic reaction it is important to consider not only the exhibition content but

168 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton also how exhibitionary practices have staged the conditions for particular emotional responses. Scott Alexander Howard has argued against viewing nostalgia primarily as a way of comparing a present situation with a past one. Although acknowledging that a longing to experience a bygone era is one important reading of the term, he instead proposes a ‘Proustian’ reading of nostalgia, directed at involuntary autobiographical memories. He urges us to ‘treat nostalgia as an occurrent emotion or affective experience, rather than simply a fascination with the past’ (Howard, 2012: 641). Brewer further elaborates that nostalgia ‘appears to be a “reliving” of the individual’s phenomenal experience during that earlier moment’ (Brewer, 1996: 60). This episodic, phenomenological dimension of nostalgia as a memory form makes it especially useful to exhibition-makers, who can aspire to deliver just such moments of Proustian anamnesis via the artefacts and narratives put on display. Such moments of recognition, recall, and emotion concentrate the attention of the visitor by offering material which has layers of meaning: public and private, social and individual. A curator for National Museums Liverpool who had worked on a number of popular music exhibitions commented on how she had observed this type of visitor response: Nostalgia doesn’t just belong to the far past, it can be the very recent past in historical terms . . . It just sparks off in people that kind of forgotten memories that they’ve stored long away: ‘Oh my God I remember that now’, that just looking at that object has made them think, ‘I used to have one like that’ or ‘I used to wear that kind of thing’. (personal communication, 2010) Keightley and Pickering write on the complexity of nostalgia in The Mnemonic Imagination, contending that nostalgia ‘cannot simply be equated with an uncritical escapism and bland consolation in the past, along with a concomitant loss of faith in the future. It cannot be reduced to a singular or absolute definition’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2012: 10–11). They view nostalgia as potentially being an interpretive stance, a way of analysing the present by reference to past (Keightley and Pickering, 2012: 11). By combining Howard’s concept of a phenomenological, ‘Proustian’ nostalgia with Keightley and Pickering’s interpretive, creative nostalgia we begin to develop a powerful set of memorial intermedial associations that can be adapted by museum exhibition. A further characteristic of the object of nostalgic reverie is that it is not only desired by the individual in its memorial grasp, but is also just beyond their reach (Howard, 2012: 641). This out-of-reach quality is one replicated by the museum glass case. We see this in the longing expressed in Walter Benjamin’s reaction to the museum case in The Arcades Project, where Benjamin expresses his desire to possess the museum artefact that would forever remain tantalisingly just beyond his reach (Benjamin, 1999: 415). A feeling of an irretrievable past is another key aspect of nostalgia acknowledged by Howard. Such feeling is well encapsulated by Svetlana

Engaging Nostalgia 169 Boym’s conclusion that we are ‘nostalgic for a time when we were not nostalgic’ (Boym, 2001: 355). A heightened sense of memory and history is made possible by the capacity for exhibition space to act heterotopically, containing a series of temporally distinct moments within a broader framework. Pop Peth, an exhibition focussing on popular music in Wales, can be taken as an illustration. The exhibition was shown in 2009–2010 at St Fagans near Cardiff, the national history museum representing the life and culture of Wales. Within a compact space the exhibition areas covered a range of subjects representing: 1960s and 1970s artists; a dance music group who began in the 1980s; the experience of music fanzine writers from north Wales in the 1990s; and the scene around an independent record shop in Cardiff which claims to be the oldest record shop in the world. Pop Peth’s curator emphasised that what might be viewed as a curatorially challenging small exhibition space, in practice combined with the experiential nature of some of the exhibits to enhance their memorial and emotive elements. As such it closely mirrored the responses of audiences to traditional social history tableaux depicting miner’s cottages and other spaces of working Welsh life found elsewhere within St Fagans: ‘As we were setting that up, a visitor came by and said, “Oh, I remember that gig”, and that made me feel, wow this is what we’re trying to get—that emotional attachment or remembering’ (personal communication, 2010). Thus the material on display provoked in this case at least an active remembering, engaging the attention of the visitor through personal connection, and perhaps indicating ‘that nostalgia, rather than being a phenomenon that manipulates and distorts the message is instead an intrinsic part of the understanding process, one which is often uniquely personalised and in itself, intangible.’ (Wilks and Kelly, 2008: 132). Recognising the power of the nostalgic response, some curators expressed a wariness of encouraging this emotive engagement, fearing that sentimentality might override critical engagement with the materials on display. We can take the example of a social history curator in Belfast who was developing an exhibition exploring how music and associated cultural practices could offer an escape from difficulties within everyday life as well as facilitate the establishment of new social bonds and forms of identity production divorced from sectarianism. She expressed concern that some of the exhibition communication might get lost as visitors might understand the display in terms of sentimental longing: ‘Inevitably although it’s not an exercise in nostalgia there are going to be those audiences that will see it as such, those people who were growing up at that time and did like that music and follow those bands’ (personal communication, 2010). This comment recognises that personal memories and attachments are powerful and might generate different engagements with exhibited material than those suggested within the curatorial interpretation. Davis’s (1979) delineation of three orders of nostalgic reaction is useful when considering the reaction that was being sought within this exhibition project. The curator’s

170 Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton reservation was that visitors might just understand the displays in terms of ‘first order’ or ‘simple nostalgia’ (Davis, 1979: 17–18) characterised by an unexamined valorisation of the past over the present. Instead she sought to encourage a more critical engagement, relating either to Davis’s ‘second order’ of ‘reflexive nostalgia’, which questions ‘Was it really that way?’ (Davis, 1979: 21), or his ‘third order’ of ‘interpreted nostalgia’, which ‘even as the reaction unfolds, questions and, potentially at least, renders problematic the very reaction itself’ (Davis, 1979: 24). The Belfast curator’s concerns are indicative of the fact that emotional responses cannot be ‘overcome’ through curatorial interpretation but have to be factored in and worked with. Moreover, even though visitor reception is considered when organising a display, readings ‘against the grain’ remain a distinct possibility. Another curator of an art exhibition featuring popular music was concerned that the culturally dominant ‘consumable mode’ (Grainge, 2000) of nostalgia might lead visitors to understand exhibited objects purely in terms of their surface style rather than connecting them with their broader cultural context: ‘it can be dangerous . . . it turns into something that is about nostalgia or a certain retro aesthetic that is appropriated primarily for the stylistic values and signifiers that get stripped of their . . . original, radical and revolutionary potential and become empty ciphers, and that is something that is very hard to avoid’ (personal communication, 2010). Furthermore, while this curator acknowledged that nostalgia could engage audiences, he pointed to the seductive qualities of archive materials where their very ‘pastness’ might be a strong part of their allure: ‘you try to tread that very fine line in between popularity and losing its original impetus. That’s always dangerous doing that and how do you deal with this patina of history which gives this object, and particular documentary objects and photographs, a certain appeal just because they are old’ (personal communication, 2010). These responses show how different types of nostalgic response can be elicited by displayed materials when the visitor values them in sentimental, aesthetic or romantic ways. CONCLUSION Museum culture is continually evolving, which is reflected in the widening of social and cultural subjects deemed appropriate for exhibition and in the development of multiple platforms and media for the delivery of museological narrative. Music has a significant part in this, both as a subject for exhibition and as part of the set of tools used for exhibition-making. Engaging with the processes of memory increasingly allows curators to de-emphasise their institutional authority via the inclusion of other voices, and adapt the techniques of other media such as theatre, film and television drama, music video or novels for the exhibition format. In this context, emotional points

Engaging Nostalgia 171 of connection with audiences can be triggered through nostalgia, activated by personal association, empathy, or recognition of shared experience. This chapter has focussed on exhibitions of popular music as a way to develop understanding of how nostalgia is worked with and has operated within museums. In doing so it has argued that nostalgia should not be summarily dismissed as an idealisation of the past or a celebration of an imagined golden era. Nostalgia for music sites, sounds and activities is also about recognising the ways in which they connect with personal and collective memory, identity, personal and social histories, and practices of leisure and sociality. By featuring these elements museums acknowledge the need for remembrance, while also allowing visitors to reflect on the importance placed on music at a personal level and more broadly as part of a wider cultural heritage. On one level museums are responding to a nostalgic impulse in helping to identify the materials with which people find emotional, cultural and social connection. In this sense nostalgia may inform curatorial decision making and potentially collecting decisions, as museums look for material which will speak to visitors. Nostalgia is an important, yet undervalued part of how visitors engage with such materials. While our research has focussed on the perspectives and intent of curators, we do acknowledge the importance of audience research to fully understand how visitors react to the materials they encounter in museums (rather than how it is hoped they will react) because ‘ultimately . . . it is the audience that does the interpreting’ (Jenkinson, 2004: 23). As we have discussed, nostalgia can be experienced in a range of ways. These might include it being felt as an impulse on unexpectedly hearing a song or encountering an object with personal resonance, being vicariously experienced through a set of materials, or being provoked by media forms redolent of particular moments in history, momentarily reanimated and yet achingly of the past. As Davis (1979) has argued, such feelings of nostalgia can be reflective and critically engaged, although they may not necessarily be. Like Davis, we do not mean to suggest that only critical forms of nostalgia are worthwhile, as each offers a connection point where the visitor is not just viewing the material on display but becomes involved and emotionally connected. What is at stake for the museum is how to work with such emotion, memory and nostalgia in the presentation of historical materials so that cultural heritage is made meaningful in the present. NOTES 1. Interviews were conducted between June 2010 and September 2011 with participants from across the UK museum sector. The research project, ‘Collecting and Curating Popular Music Histories’, was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Beyond Text programme. 2. As a curatorial technique, this is reminiscent of that used in a different context by The Big Picture Show at Imperial War Museum North, Trafford.

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12 The Remembering Heritage-Work at US Progressive-Rock Festivals, 1993 to 2012 Timothy J. Dowd

INTRODUCTION Music and heritage-work have long gone hand in hand—whereby past musicians and musical works are celebrated, and music history is (re)cast in terms of their impact. Across more than a century, for instance, individuals and organizations in the US have constructed an infrastructure to extol certain orchestral composers. This infrastructure—which included symphony orchestras, record companies and university curricula—has gone from emphasizing a few exemplars like Beethoven and Mozart to emphasizing an expanding range of composers from the past. Given the extent of this heritage-work, orchestral music in the US has often been described as “classical music,” a term that unfortunately glosses over the supply of orchestral composers and compositions from the present (Dowd 2011; Dowd and Kelly 2012). Of course, heritage-work is not limited to the realm of classical music. In this chapter, I examine heritage-work in what is now called “progressiverock.” Often associated with a few, high-profile bands from England, this genre actually had musical proponents in numerous countries, including the US (Dowd 2013). A commercially successful genre in the 1970s and 1980s (and disseminated by multinational corporations, i.e., “major” record companies), progressive-rock has since become an underground genre carried forward by a “scene” of musicians, entrepreneurs and fans rather than by large corporations. In the absence of attention from mainstream actors (e.g., major record companies and radio broadcasters), scene members have constructed their own “infrastructure” of small record labels, specialized stores and periodicals, as well as host progressive-rock festivals that have been small in nature and staged in 29 nations (Atton 2001; Covach 1997; Dowd forthcoming). This chapter deals specifically with heritage-work at US progressive-rock festivals from 1983 to 2012. This work occurred on festival stages in at least two ways. On the one hand, progressive-rock bands offered musical quotations of the genre’s early exemplars, thereby paying tribute to the past. On the other hand, bands from the first and second waves of progressive-rock

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 175 (pre-1994) shared the stage with contemporary bands, bringing to life the genre’s past. While progressive-rock has spanned only decades (versus the centuries of classical music), the heritage-work at these festivals somewhat resembled that described above for classical music: the celebration of the past has moved beyond a few exemplars as US festivals excavated a host of early progressive-rock bands. Unlike classical music, however, heritagework at these festivals has not overshadowed the present. Furthermore, this archaeological push in progressive-rock came not from the actions of well-situated entities that (officially) authorized this genre’s heritage (e.g., major orchestras, university music programs) but rather from scene members themselves (e.g., musicians, festival organizers) in “do-it-yourself” and “self-authorized” fashion (see Bennett 2009; Roberts and Cohen forthcoming). Before turning to this heritage-work, I first provide a short primer on progressive-rock. SITUATING PROGRESSIVE-ROCK Like other musical genres, progressive-rock is evolving rather than fixed in stone (see Roy and Dowd 2010). Consequently, precise definitions can be difficult—particularly when its fans have differentiated what they call “prog” rock into 20 or so subgenres (Anderton 2010; Dowd 2013). However, three elements have been at the core of this genre. First, progressiverock was one of several genres emerging in the 1960s that sought to make rock music into a type of “art” that would stand the test of time (see Regev 2011; Santoro 2004). Seen in this light, the emergence of progressive-rock paralleled (if not bore the imprint of) the experimentation in the later music of the Beatles (e.g., Sgt. Pepper’s) and the avant-garde music of Frank Zappa (Covach 1997, 2000). Second, progressive-rock was best conceptualized, not in terms of its common musical elements, but in terms of its musical ambition: prog bands and musicians have drawn upon a variety of sources (e.g., jazz, classical music, folk, blues) to move beyond conventional rock music (Anderton 2010; Keister and Smith 2008). Finally, the evolution of progressive-rock occurred in three successive “waves,” with cohorts of progressive-rock musicians responding to the past in deliberate fashion (see Schmidt and Holder 2010). Given their grappling with the past, it is not surprising that heritage-work has marked progressive-rock. I briefly present these waves by focusing on but a few bands in two nations and two subgenres.

The First Wave Progressive-rock emerged amidst a period of remarkable flux. The counterculture and political unrest of the 1960s fostered new sensibilities and expectations among music fans around the world, providing a ready audience for

176 Timothy J. Dowd those rock musicians seeking to make art (Bennett 2009; Santoro 2004). What would come to be called “progressive-rock” took root in various parts of the world, such as France, Germany and Italy. The most visible proponents, however, were a few bands in England who initially offered a mixture of rock and classical music—notably six bands: Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Yes (Anderton 2010; Dowd 2013). All of these “Big 6” were associated with major record corporations, giving them access to important promotional and distribution resources. Their musical fusion—which would later bear the subgenre label of “symphonic rock” (see Dowd 2013)—involved both a look to the future (in terms of a new type of rock music) and a look to the past (in terms of classical music’s influences). Their music was known “above all for its attempts to combine classical music’s sense of space and monumental scope with rock’s power and energy. Its dazzling virtuosity and spectacular live concerts made it hugely popular with fans during the 1970s” (Macan 1997: 3). Among these six bands, this classical “sensibility” was apparent in several ways. One involved the incorporation of works from classical music. On various albums, for instance, ELP featured arrangements of J. S. Bach’s “Two Part Invention in D Minor,” Béla Bartók’s “Barlegro,” Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” and “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Alberto Ginastera’s “First Piano Concerto,” and a live album devoted almost entirely to Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Meanwhile, Yes often opened their concerts with recorded excerpts from Stravinsky’s “Firebird.” It did not end there for Yes, suggested their first drummer: “In the early days huge lumps of [our] music were borrowed from classical music. Sibelius and Stravinsky stuff was stolen lock, stock and barrel.” (Morse 1996: 15–16). This sensibility was also evident when these bands drew inspiration from classical music by expanding the terrain of rock music, especially in terms of compositional development. Whereas the sonata and other forms of classical music emphasized the introduction and restatement of various themes in an unfolding fashion (Rosen 1972), so too did the Big 6 construct songs filled with themes and variations—as well as a compositional arc in which these various themes fit together into a larger whole (Covach 1997; Holm-Hudson 2002; Josephson 1992, Macan 1997; Palmer 2001). This had at least two implications. First, the length of their early songs sometimes more closely resembled those found in a symphony hall than on pop radio. For instance, Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” clocked in at 23 minutes and 31 seconds, with Genesis’s “Supper’s Ready” (22:58), Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a Brick Part One” (22:45), Yes’s “The Gates of Delirium” (21:54) and ELP’s “Tarkus” (20:42) being nearly as long. These extended compositions were more “suites” than songs. Second, the notion of a larger musical whole carried over from individual tracks to the album itself, with the album viewed as an aesthetic entity (Covach 2000; Josephson 1992; Martin 1996). This was particularly evident in their various “concept albums” (Covach 2000;

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 177 Macan 1997). For example, Yes’ Tales of Topographic Oceans purported to set Hindu shastric scripture to music via four songs, each around 20 minutes long (Rycenga 2002). While the Big 6 enjoyed success in England (Macan 1997), they also enjoyed success abroad—such as in the US, where FM radio of the 1970s was marked by a willingness to broadcast lengthy songs, if not entire albums (Barnes 1988). Their international success had an impact on the genre, like spurring the rise of prog bands in the US (Covach 2000). A number of these US bands also engaged in symphonic prog, with a few having secured contracts associated with major record labels (e.g., Kansas, Starcastle); some securing contracts with small record labels (e.g., Cathedral, Hands, The Load); and one going for decades without having a recording released (e.g., Glass) (Covach 2000; ProgArchives.com). Of these, Kansas were the only ones to receive widespread attention. While their hit songs were remarkable for distilling grand lyrical themes and classical sensibilities into but a few minutes—most notably, “Carry On Wayward Son,” “Dust in the Wind,” and “Point of Know Return”—their best-selling albums also contained extensive suites with intricate arrangements, such as “Song for America,” “Cheyenne Anthem,” and “Hopelessly Human.”

The Second Wave As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, substantial developments were underway in progressive-rock. Three of the Big 6 enjoyed considerable success, as they each streamlined their music in the wake of personnel changes. That success was evidenced by the massive tours and sales that flowed from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Yes’s 90125 (and its hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart”) and Genesis’s Invisible Touch (Dowd 2013). In fact, Phil Collins would eventually become one of three individuals who sold 100 million albums both with a group (Genesis) and as a soloist—Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson being the other two (Lester 2011). To some observers, the success of these bands in the 1980s was more pop than prog, more sales than symphonic (e.g., Macan 1997). Amidst such developments, a second wave appeared in England in the early 1980s that championed a return to the roots of symphonic prog. These new bands included Marillion and IQ, as well as Arena, Pallas, Pendragon and Twelfth Night. They would soon earn the subgenre label of “neo-prog.” To some, the label denoted a more melodic, if not song-oriented, approach than that originally espoused by Genesis and the like (e.g., Lucky 1999), and to others it denoted a simplified version of symphonic prog (e.g., Kime 2000). In any event, the subgenres of symphonic prog and neo-prog were closely linked. Of these neo-prog bands, Marillion had the greatest commercial success. Signed to a major record company, they experienced a succession of best-selling albums in the UK and a few hit songs in the US (e.g., “Kayleigh” and “Lavender”). In general, though, they were commercially

178 Timothy J. Dowd on a downward trajectory—one that eventually saw them severing ties with the major record company (Collinge 1997b; Dowd 2013; Epstein 1997). Hence, Marillion was moving closer to the other neo-prog bands in terms of being known, not broadly by mainstream audiences, but by the limited audience of prog enthusiasts. Change was also afoot in US prog-rock of the 1980s. Amid their own personnel changes, (Livgren and Boa 1991), Kansas moved in a more streamlined, if not pop, direction (as exemplified by the song, “Andi”). While Kansas continued to have commercial success in the 1980s, it was not on the level that they enjoyed in the 1970s, and it dropped off dramatically from the late 1980s onward—going from album sales in the millions to album sales of 80,000 or so (Collinge 1997a; White 1990). Kansas’ trajectory during this time period resembled more Marillion’s (of the second wave) than that of Genesis, Pink Floyd, or Yes (the first wave). While Kansas was beginning to have difficulties, the second wave of prog bands arose in the US during the early 1980s. A portion of these new bands would eventually be classified by some as “neo-prog”—including Iluvatar, North Star and Salem Hill (ProgArchives.com). Meanwhile, some of the other new bands carried on the symphonic prog tradition—such as Glass Hammer, Rocket Scientists and Echolyn—by embracing the extended suites and elaborate arrangements of the 1970s. Of all these bands, Echolyn seemed most poised for commercial success. Having independently released three albums between 1991 and 1993, Echolyn signed a seven-album contract with a major record company, Sony. Unfortunately, their 1994 album, As the World, sold only about 5,000 copies at the time, prompting Sony to end the contract. Instead of attaining the commercial success of, say, Pink Floyd, Echolyn signaled the next wave of bands operating in underground, do-it-yourself fashion—as when Echolyn later sold 10,000 copies of their independently released album, Mei, that consisted of a single 59-minute suite recorded with a chamber orchestra (Collinge 2006a; Covach 2009; Gardiner 2008b).

The Third Wave Two trends in progressive-rock intersected as the 1990s unfurled and then gave ways to the 2000s. First, progressive-rock mostly disappeared from the mainstream—particularly given the fact that major record companies dealt with fewer and fewer prog bands, dropping those that they used to promote and paying minimal or no attention to prog-rock bands that emerged from the early 1990s onward (Dowd forthcoming). Of the Big 6, Genesis and Pink Floyd did the best in terms of sales. Genesis’s last studio album in 1997, Calling All Stations, still had connections to a major record company, albeit with sluggish sales compared to their previous albums (see Platts 2007; White 1990). Pink Floyd’s 1994 album (The Division Bell) was likewise with a major record company and did very well in terms of sales—but that would be their last studio album (see Ewing 2010; White 1990). Meanwhile—as did King Crimson in the 1980s—ELP, Jethro Tull and Yes all shifted from

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 179 major record corporations to independent production and distribution— a fate shared by Kansas in the US. As they shifted in that direction, they lost access to the promotional and distributional muscle associated with the majors and consequently lost their visibility in the broader mainstream (see Brewer 2007; Dome 2012; Lawson 2012; Wilson 2010). Second, as prog-rock became fully ensconced in the underground, there was a third wave of new bands that flowed from the early 1990s to the present. These new bands were both numerous and underfinanced. “[The] ongoing prog resurgence of the 1990s created an environment in which most groups can expect little beyond indie-label support and the need to retain day jobs while making music as a sideline” (Gardiner 2008a: 20). The US was but one fruitful locale for this third wave. The number of neo-prog bands in the US grew several times over with the third wave (ProgArchives. com). Meanwhile, symphonic prog bands of the American first wave (e.g., a reformulated Kansas) and second wave (e.g., Glass Hammer) were now joined by new bands that carried the symphonic torch from the 1990s into the 2000s—such as Discipline, IZZ and Spock’s Beard. These new symphonic groups likewise favored compositions with a developmental arc and detailed arrangements. Spock’s Beard especially leaned towards long compositions—with such suites as “The Water” (23 minutes, 11 seconds), “The Great Nothing” (27:02) and “A Flash Before My Eyes” (31:12). However, prog bands of the 1990s and 2000s did not encounter many (if any) US radio stations willing to play such long songs, as FM radio programming had grown much more restrictive since the free-wheeling heyday of the 1970s (see Barnes 1988). Apparently, most mainstream radio no longer welcomed prog songs of even short length (Wilson 2013). Thus, in all three waves, both symphonic prog and neo-prog bands were “going forward by going backwards” (Wilson 2013: 50). They strove to create something new while also building upon classical music and the efforts of early prog exemplars. SITUATING AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE-ROCK FESTIVALS Cut off from the mainstream, and operating on shoestring budgets, prog bands at the turn of the century targeted their small but global fan base via the scene’s infrastructure. With increasingly low costs of production and distribution afforded by digital music, they could disseminate their music widely—aided in part by (online) record shops devoted specifically to progressive-rock. With the rise of prog-rock periodicals, fanzines and websites, the efforts of prog bands were documented and conveyed to the far-flung scene. With the rise of prog-rock festivals, prog bands found hospitable places in which to gather with each other and with prog entrepreneurs (e.g., record shop owners), prog journalists and fans (Anderton 2010; Atton 2001; Bennett 2002; Covach 2000; Dowd 2013, forthcoming). As a result, festivals provided an ideal place to do heritage-work in face-to-face fashion.

180 Timothy J. Dowd As there was no master list documenting all progressive-rock festivals in the US, I used the following sources to identify them: prog-rock periodicals such as Progression magazine; online prog sites such as ProgArchives.com; progressive-rock band websites and their attendant fan forums; and Google and Yahoo searches. (I also used these same sources to compile information about the musicians appearing at prog-rock festivals.) I decided to focus only on prog-specific festivals so did not include general “rock” festivals featuring the occasional prog-rock band. I also did not focus on festivals that had a certain overlap with progressive-rock but nonetheless had their own respective scene and infrastructure; hence, I did not include prog-metal (e.g., ProgPower) or space-rock (e.g., Strange Daze) festivals. I ultimately identified the 18 progressive-rock festivals listed in Table 12.1. Most of these involved more than one event. For example, the Table 12.1 Sample of US Progressive-Rock Festivals, 1993–2012 Festival 3 Rivers Progressive Rock Festival Bay Area Rock Fest CalProg Colorado Creative Rock Festival Cuneifest EthelFest MARPROG Festival Milwaukee Art Rock Showcase NEARFest Progday Progfest Prog Fury Prog in the Park Progman Cometh Progscape Progwest ROSFest Rogue Fest Totals:

Festival Years

Festival Location

Number of Events

Number of Prog Acts

2008–2009

Pennsylvania

2

20

2007–2008 2005–2010 2008–2010

California California Colorado

2 6 3

18 29 12

2011 2010–2012 2009–2010

Maryland Illinois Connecticut

1 3 2

6 9 11

Wisconsin

1

14

Pennsylvania North Carolina California

13 18

146 3

5

23

California New York Washington Maryland California Pennsylvania Georgia 12 States

1 3 2 2 2 9 5 80 FestivalEvents

153 41 18 16 14 97 55 685 Prog Act Appearances

2007 1999–2010, 2012 1995–2012 1993–1995, 1999, 2000 2010 2004–2006 2002–2003 1994, 1996 2001–2002 2004–2012 2002–2006 20 Years

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 181 Progday Festival has occurred 18 times since 1995 (with another edition scheduled for 2013). Thus, the 18 named festivals resulted in 80 “festivalevents.” Although progressive-rock festivals have not been limited to the United States, the US has played a leading role in sponsoring them (Dowd forthcoming). Befitting their underground nature, the festivals in Table 12.1 were small events—as was mostly true for prog-rock festivals outside the US (Dowd forthcoming). Progday’s largest audience, for example, involved more than 300 people, while audiences in the 200s were its norm (Collinge 2007). Some of these festivals attracted audiences numbering in the 500 to 1,000 range (e.g., ROSFest 2010), and some even had audiences that approached 2,000 (e.g., NEARFest 2002). Such numbers were a far cry from those associated with mainstream rock festivals—like Bonaroo 2010, which drew 75,000 (Collinge 2002a, 2002b, 2010; Sundermann 2010). Given the dearth of progrock concerts and venues in the US (Gardiner 2010), and given the passion of prog enthusiasts (Atton 2001; Bennett 2002), the audiences at these festivals have hailed from different towns, states and even from different nations— with local attendance often being minimal (Collinge 2008; 2009; Wimer 2010). Consequently, many prog-rock festivals have taken on a pilgrimage type flavor—with far-flung friends reuniting while also having the opportunity to mingle with the prog performing acts (Atton 2001; Dowd 2013). Despite their small size—and financial challenges (Dowd forthcoming)— US prog festivals have featured a remarkable number of “performing acts” (e.g., bands, soloists, duos). On average, there have been 8 performing acts per festival-event, with 34 festival-events having presented 10 or more performing acts. Remarkable too have been the national origins of these performing acts. More than 40% of all festivals appearances involved performing acts from 23 nations besides the US. Geographic proximity was not solely at play: while Mexican and Canadian acts, respectively, had 6 and 19 festival appearances, they were equaled or exceeded by those from France (19 appearances), Italy (29), Sweden (42) and the UK (80). HERITAGE-WORK ON PROG FESTIVAL STAGES Table 12.2 lists the prog-acts with the most appearances at US festivals. No particular band commandeered an inordinate amount of stage time; instead, nearly all prog acts received but a few appearances, with one appearance being most typical. Furthermore, it was not the “first wave” acts receiving the most performances but rather those that emerged in the second and third waves.1 In fact, none of the exemplars of the first wave (i.e., the Big 6 from England, or Kansas from the US) even appeared at US festivals—due to those bands being defunct, on extended hiatus, or being occupied with touring larger venues. Yet, that does not mean that the first wave had no presence at prog-rock festivals. That was where heritage-work came to the fore—particularly in terms of “quotation” and “excavation.”

182 Timothy J. Dowd Table 12.2 Prog-Rock Acts With the Most US Festival Appearances, 1993–2012 Prog Performing Act

Nation of Origin

Year of Debut Album (Wave in Parentheses)

Number of Appearances

IZZ Discipline Echolyn The Flower Kings Frogg Café Helmet of Gnats Iluvatar Spock’s Beard Cobweb Strange IQ

USA USA USA Sweden USA USA USA USA USA UK

1999 (3rd) 1993 (2nd) 1991 (2nd) 1995 (3rd) 2001 (3rd) 2004 (3rd) 1993 (2nd) 1995 (3rd) 1996 (3rd) 1983 (2nd)

12 8 8 7 6 6 6 6 5 5

Notes: Total number of prog acts with festival appearances = 455; Average number of appearances for all prog acts = 2.

Musical Quotation Lena (2004) compellingly demonstrated that performers can acknowledge musical history by quoting musical forebears, thereby celebrating the contributions of the past while also incurring prestige for themselves in the process. Lena’s case involved the use of “samples” in hip hop, as when musicians inserted short snippets of a James Brown recording into their own songs. In progressive-rock, however, such quotations have overwhelmingly relied on performance rather than samples—and they have often referenced the exemplars (e.g., the Big 6, Kansas) that were absent from US prog festivals. These musical quotations of past prog could be fairly brief. At NEARFest, for example, Museo Rosenbach slipped an excerpt of a Kansas song (“Paradox”) into their performance. Hence, that first wave band from Italy gave a musical nod to their fellow first-wavers from the US (Collinge 2012). In keeping with prog’s fixation with long songs, quotations of past contributors more often have been lengthy rather than short. The extended medley has been a common type of quotation—which has provided opportunities for heritage-work at festivals, if not for audience education. At a festival that I observed in 2011, for instance, a group named District 97 offered a medley that paired a piece by U.K.—another first wave group who did not attain the same widespread attention that the Big 6 did— with a piece by Genesis. As this young band launched into the U.K. song “Presto Vivace,” there were nods of approval and comments of welcome from some of the audience members in front of me, which prompted some looks of puzzlement and questions from others. When the medley eased into the Genesis song (“Back in N.Y.C.”), the musical recognition by all those in

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 183 front of me was now complete, as evidenced by their cheers, and so forth. Once the set ended, there were conversations in which some folks explained the significance of both “Presto Vivace” and the group U.K.—which elicited from the previously uninitiated words of thanks and promises to explore U.K.’s music. These medleys also provided an opportunity for expanding the heritage of progressive-rock beyond its first wave. Hence, a third wave band, Cryptic Visions, presented festival-goers at ROSFest 2005 with a medley of songs drawn from ELP (“Karn Evil 9”), Genesis (“Turn It on Again”), Kansas (“Song for America”) and Yes (“Yours Is No Disgrace”)—along with musical excerpts from Spock’s Beard (“The Water”) and Dream Theater (“Erotomania”) (Morley 2005). In effect, then, Cryptic Visions had elevated two bands from the third wave (Spock’s Beard and Dream Theater) to the level of the hallowed first-wave bands. The most common form of musical quotation at prog-festivals have arguably been “covers” of entire songs from the past. These covers could be accurate reproductions of a previous song in note-for-note fashion, or they could be arrangements that drastically transform the original song in new, if not unexpected, ways—thereby breathing new life into a past chestnut. The practice of prog-rock covers extended well beyond the stages of festivals. Both fan groups and small record companies have released albums comprised completely of covers that honor particular prog-rock acts—with bands of the first waves often claiming that honor. One example among many is provided by Magna Carta Records. It released cover albums devoted, respectively, to ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Yes—with Rush (a first-wave band from Canada) garnering three cover albums. Each of these Magna Carta albums brought together musicians from various waves of prog-rock, so that they could combine in one-off performances to cover what the record company labeled the “titans” of progressive-rock (Collinge 2006b; Magna Carta 2012). Covers have likewise found a place at prog-rock festivals. In fact, the organizers of the CalProg Festival went so far as to implement a policy: “ ‘What if we asked each band to perform a classic prog cover to pay homage to the music that inspired them?’ And so we DID ask them and they embraced the idea enthusiastically . . . It was so much fun for both the fans and the artists that it became an instant tradition” (CalProg 2012). The result was that CalProg acts took time from performing their own music to call attention to music of their predecessors—that of first wave bands like Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Yes of the Big 6, as well as lesserknown first wave acts (Gentle Giant, U.K.) and even jazz-fusion legends, Return to Forever. Musical quotation has taken its most expansive form when involving not a single song or a medley, but rather the precise and faithful rendering of numerous songs, if not entire albums, by “classic” bands of the past. This type of heritage-work has not been limited to progressive-rock. Bennett (2009) noted the rise of new phenomena in rock music in general: the

184 Timothy J. Dowd tribute band that recreated a past band musically, if not visually in terms of appearance during performance (e.g., recreating the Beatles); and the “classic albums live” concept in which a past album was performed in its entirety by people who were not involved in its original production (e.g., the Led Zeppelin II album). The upshot of these efforts, Bennett argued, was that they transformed this music away from the typical performances of rock and towards the recitals of classical music, with the music now offered for reverential listening. Given that prog-rock already had one foot in classical music and one eye on the past (as noted above), it is not surprising that such extended quotations (e.g., tribute bands) have made their way into this scene. In light of financial challenges associated with prog-rock festivals, we could expect to see a bounty of tribute bands—who were not as expensive as original bands but nonetheless could draw crowds eager to hear the “classics” (see Gardiner 2010). In fact, a new festival appeared in 2010 that mostly featured tribute bands—EthelFest. Its organizers proclaimed, “we aim to bring progressive rock fans together to spend an evening to bond over the music we love” (EthelFest 2012). As it so happened, most of this music was devoted to prog of the distant past—with seven of its nine acts being tribute bands that performed, respectively, the music of ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Yes; and one of the acts performed an emerging prog “classic”—a rendition of The Shaming of the True, which was a posthumously released concept album by Kevin Gilbert. However, tribute bands were actually not that common at US prog festivals. Of the 685 appearances (Table 12.1), only 16 of them involved tribute bands performing the music of past masters—and eight of those were at EthelFest. Nonetheless, even though numerically rare, the extended quotations offered by tribute bands and by performances of classic albums (e.g., The Shaming of the True at ProgWest 2002 and EthelFest 2010) provided instances of heritagework: along with excerpts, medleys and covers, they linked audiences at prog-festivals to past contributions—especially those exemplars who had been repeatedly referenced on stage.

Musical Excavation Although the Big 6 and Kansas were absent from the stages of US prog-rock festivals, the first wave of prog-rock was not reduced to musical quotation only. Instead, festival organizers proved adept at drawing other first-wave acts to their stages. While none of these individual acts garnered numerous appearances, their collective presence showed the impact of such efforts, as organizers combed through the past in search of prog-rock’s forebears. The most straightforward form of excavation involved picking through the remnants of celebrated exemplars. Progressive-rock bands have been notoriously fluid in terms of their membership: individual members of a given band could take brief or extended periods to focus on solo projects;

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 185 the roster of a band could change as individual members came and went; and those leaving a band often took up membership in other bands (see Livgren and Boa 1991; Macan 1997; Platts 2007; Welch 1999). This fluidity allowed the exemplars to have more of a presence at US prog-rock festivals than would appear at first glance. The following individuals appeared at US festivals as solo acts or as frontmen for eponymously named bands: Keith Emerson (ELP), Steve Hackett (Genesis), Steve Howe (Yes), Tony Levin (King Crimson), David Ragsdale (Kansas) and John Wetton (King Crimson). Meanwhile, the following appeared as members of other groups: Kansas’ Kerry Livgren in ProtoKaw, King Crimson’s John Wetton in U.K. and Yes’s Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood in Circa. These various incarnations have often (but not always) augmented the quotation practices described above, frequently offering their own versions of exemplars’ songs. If that form of excavation was the most straightforward, it was not the only form embraced by festival organizers. These organizers often looked, not towards individuals associated with the well-known exemplars, but rather beyond them. That fit with broader shifts occurring in progressiverock. As prog went from the mainstream to the underground, scene members began to piece together collectively the history of the genre. This entailed the ongoing documentation of first wave acts that initially flew under the radar in the early decades—as well as an accounting of first wave acts from various nations. This excavation was evident, for instance, in the growing number of albums made available by record companies like Esoteric Records and Voiceprint Records—which excelled at bringing to light once rare and overlooked recordings of early prog bands. The excavation was also apparent at such online shops as Syn-Phonic Music, which made easily available progressive-rock (both past and present) from more than 60 nations (Anderton 2010; Atton 2001; Bennett 2002, 2009; Dowd 2013, forthcoming). US prog-festivals and their organizers were likewise part of this archaeological digging into prog’s musical past. Admittedly, a few of these festivals were solely and resolutely focused on the present—such as RogueFest (Ziegler 2003–2004). However, attention towards an expanding past was so common that it almost became formulaic for festival organizers. One observer quipped, “The formula for a festival was once familiar: get a ’70s group or two back together and fill the bill with ‘breakthrough’ neo-prog, avant-garde or third wave acts that demonstrated the genre’s current viability. The formula worked well because reunion acts put butts in the seats and the ‘breakthrough’ acts were willing to play for next to nothing.” (Gardiner 2010: 57). US festival organizers did not have to look far to find additional firstwave bands, as there was already a domestic supply. Unlike Kansas, these early US bands did not attract much attention, let alone commercial success, and often did not survive for long. Yet, most of them did leave traces of their existence—including albums and demos that were eventually picked

186 Timothy J. Dowd up and distributed as part of the scene’s post-1990s excavation project. That renewed interest sparked a number of bands to reform (see Collinge 1999)—with prog-rock festivals offering convenient places to make their comebacks. Indeed, 17 of these US acts would grace festival stages from 1993 onward—such as Crack the Sky, Happy the Man, Holding Pattern, Mirthrandir and The Muffins. Festival organizers also looked abroad for the first wave of prog. For instance, they turned to international acts that enjoyed some modicum of success in the US during the 1970s—such as Italian group Premiata Forneria Marconi. Not only did they invite such groups to appear at US festivals, they also invited those bands’ contemporaries who had not similarly enjoyed such success—like Italian groups, Il Balletto di Bronzo, Consorzio Acqua Potabile, Metamorfosi and Le Orme (see Dowd 2013). These Italian acts were each purveyors of another sub-genre of prog known as “Rock Progressivo Italiano”—one that drew on classical music, opera and folk musics in distinctive fashion. In the spirit of excavation, festival organizers also turned to prog-rock acts that were already somewhat underground in the 1970s—those that had lacked visibility in the US, as well as in their own countries. One such collection involved musicians associated with the “Canterbury Sound” subgenre. As Bennett (2002) and others (e.g., Macan 1997) have noted, these musicians were lesser-known contemporaries of the Big 6, but their music was marked more by jazz influences than classical ones; although tenuously connected to Canterbury in geographical terms, their version of prog would earn a place-based moniker. Such “Canterbury” bands as Caravan and Hatfield and the North—as well musicians like Steve Hillage, Hugh Hopper and Richard Sinclair—would eventually find their place on US festival stages, bringing their version of progressiverock with them. Due to these excavation efforts, nearly 15% of acts appearing as US festivals were from the first wave. While that may seem a low share, such appearances came decades after those acts made their initial debuts. In fact, as shown by Figure 12.1, the presence of the first wave was more pronounced in the 2000s than the 1990s. What Figure 12.1 does not show is the international presence: 73% of all first-wave appearances involved acts from abroad—with those from the UK and Italy leading the way. In contrast, only 40% of second wave appearances, and 37% of third wave appearances, were by non-US acts. The past has clearly been present at US festivals—not just in terms of musical quotations, but in actual appearances by a range of acts that extend well beyond the exemplars like the Big 6 and Kansas. Yet, musical excavation does have its limits. As time passes, fewer first-wave acts will be capable of taking the stage (Gardiner 2010). By then, appearances by second-wave acts will come to the fore in terms of musical excavation, while homage to the first wave will rely completely on musical quotation.

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 187 70 Third Wave Second Wave

60

First Wave 50

40

30

20

10

95

96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12

19

94

19

19

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Figure 12.1 Annual appearances by prog-rock acts at US festivals.

CONCLUSIONS “The Remembering” is a song by Yes. It is an appropriate title for this chapter because the term nicely captures the heritage-work that occurred on the stages of US prog festival. By way of musical quotation, those acts on stage often recalled the well-known exemplars of progressive-rock, celebrating the past on which their own music was based. By way of musical excavation, prog-rock festivals aided in the rediscovery of the past, extending the genre’s roots to the lesser known and distant acts of the first wave. By focusing on the remembering that occurred on US festival stages, it might seem that I have emphasized a fleeting rather than permanent type of heritage-work. After all, musical performances could be more ephemeral than official plaques that mark the important moments and musicians of a given genre (see Roberts and Cohen 2014). However, what occurred on festival stages was captured not only by reviews and reporting but also by recordings that were eventually circulated via YouTube, CDs and DVDs. The heritage-work that occurred on US festival stages, then, offered opportunities for the next “stage”—whereby scene members discussed, debated

188 Timothy J. Dowd and enjoyed the genre’s past and present. Such scene engagement has kept progressive-rock from turning into its classical music counterpart: while both have been oriented towards the past in terms of musical tradition and heritage, progressive-rock has so far balanced the remembering with the genre’s forward movement. NOTE 1. It was difficult to assess systematically the years in which prog acts first formed. So I relied on a proxy: the year of their debut studio album. Bands with debut years prior to 1982 were part of the first wave. The second wave commenced with 1983, the year that the first neo-prog album was released by Marillion (Epstein 1997). The third wave began in 1994, the year following Echolyn’s shift from major to independent status, which signaled the explosion of underground prog (Gardiner 2008b).

REFERENCES Anderton, C. (2010). ‘A many-headed beast: progressive rock as European megagenre’. Popular Music 29: 417–435. Atton, C. (2001). ‘Living in the past?’ Popular Music 20: 29–46. Barnes, K. (1988). ‘Top 40 radio’. In S. Frith (ed.) Facing the Music. New York: Pantheon. Bennett, A. (2002). ‘Music, media and urban mythscapes’. Media, Culture & Society 24: 87–100. ———. (2009). ‘Heritage rock: Rock music, representation and heritage discourse’. Poetics 37: 474–489. Boehm, M. (1994, 3 November). ‘A prog-rock renaissance?’ Los Angeles Times. Brewer, J. (2007). Classic Artists: Yes. [DVD]. UK. CalProg. (2012). CalProg. Retrieved from www.calprog.com/ (accessed 22 November 2012). Collinge, J. (1997a). ‘Prelude’. Progression 24: 6. ———. (1997b). ‘This strange tour’. Progression. 24: 18–20. ———. (1999). ‘Prelude’. Progression 32: 5. ———. (2002a). ‘Doing it right’. Progression 40: 69–72. ———. (2002b). ‘A Jersey delight’. Progression 41: 61–63. ———. (2006a). ‘Sweeter the second time around’. Progression 49: 11–19. ———. (2006b). ‘Tracing Magna Carta’s role in bringing “prog” back to the masses’. Progression 49: 74–78. ———. (2007). ‘ProgDay ’06’. Progression 51: 78–81. ———. (2008). ‘Festival happenings 2008’. Progression 55: 104–108. ———. (2009). ‘A Pittsburgh swan song?’ Progression 58: 62–64. ———. (2010). ‘ROSFest 2010’. Progression 60: 58–63. ———. (2012). ‘NEARFest bowing out in style’. Progression 64: 45–49. Covach, J. (1997). ‘Progressive rock, “Close to the Edge,” and boundaries of style’. In J. Covach & G. M. Boone (eds.), Understanding Rock. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (2000). ‘Echolyn and American progressive rock’. Contemporary Music Review 18: 13–61.

Heritage-Work at US Festivals 189 Dome, M. (2012). ‘Hallowed be thy name’. Prog 27: 34–43. Dowd, T. J. (2011). ‘Production and producers of life styles: Fields of classical and popular music in the United States’. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 51: 113–138. ———. (2013). ‘Music travels: The transnational circulation of Italian progressive rock at small-scale music festivals, 1994–2012’. Polis 17(1): 125–158. ———. (forthcoming). Music festivals as transnational scenes: The case of progressive rock in the late 20th and early 21st centuries’. In A. Bennett, J. Taylor, & I. Woodward (eds.), The Festivalization of Culture: Place, Identity and Politics. London: Ashgate. Dowd, T. J., & Kelly, K. (2012). ‘Composing a career: The situation of living composers in the repertoires of US orchestras, 2005–2006’. In C. Mathieu (ed.) Careers in Creative Industries. New York: Routledge. Epstein, J. (1997). ‘Tracing Marillion’s neo-prog legacy’. Progression 24: 22–23. EthelFest. (2012). EthelFest. Retrieved from www.ethelfest.com/ (accessed 14 December 2012). Gardiner, M. (2003–2004). ‘A Tangent across the sea’. Progression 44: 46–50. ———. (2008a). ‘Heritage or heresy?’. Progression 53: 20–26. ———. (2008b). ‘3-star prog lounge’. Progression 55: 67–68. ———. (2010). ‘3-star prog lounge’. Progression 61: 57. Ewing, J. (2010). ‘The hero’s return’. Classic Rock Presents Prog 17: 36–41. Holm-Hudson, K. (2002). ‘A promise deferred’. In K. Holm-Hudson (ed.), Progressive Rock Reconsidered. New York: Routledge. Josephson, N. S. (1992). ‘Bach meets Liszt: Traditional formal structures and performance practices in progress rock’. Musical Quarterly 76: 67–92. Keister, J., & Smith, J. L. (2008). ‘Musical ambition, cultural accreditation and the nasty side of progressive rock’. Popular Music 27: 433–455. Kime, P. (2000). ‘Defining progressive rock’. Progression 34, 53–56. Lawson, D. (2012). ‘Grand designs’. Prog 24: 38–51. Lena, J. (2004). ‘Meaning and membership: Samples in rap music, 1979–1995’. Poetics 32: 297–310. Lester, P. (2011). ‘Throwing it all away?’ Classic Rock Presents Prog 13: 36–39. Livgren, K., & Boa, K. (1991). Seeds of Change. Nashville: Sparrow. Lucky, J. (1999). ‘The myth of neo-progressive rock’. Progression 14: 44–55. Macan, E. (1997). Rocking the Classics. New York: Oxford University Press. Magna Carta (2012). Magna Carta. Retrieved from www.magnacarta.net/Catalog/ (accessed 28 December 2012). Morley, J. (2005). ‘Rites of Spring Festival 2005’. Retrieved from www.dprp.net/ concrev/rosfest2005.php (accessed 12 December 2012). Morse, T. (1996). Yes Stories. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Palmer, J. R. (2001). ‘Yes, “Awaken”, and the progressive rock style’. Popular Music 20: 243–261. Platts, R. (2007). Genesis: Behind the Lines 1967–2007. Ontario: Collector’s Guide. Prog Archives (2013). Neo-Prog: A Progressive Rock Sub-Genre. Retrieved from http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=18 (accessed March 15, 2013). Regev, M. (2011). ‘Pop-rock music as expressive isomorphism’. American Behavioral Scientist 55: 585–573. Roberts, L., & Cohen, S. (2014). ‘Unauthorising popular music heritage: outline of a critical framework’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3). Rosen, C. (1971). The Classical Style. New York: Norton. Roy, W. G., & Dowd, T. J. (2010). ‘What is sociological about music?’ Annual Review of Sociology 36: 183–203. Rycenga, J. (2002). ‘Tales of change within the sound’. In K. Holm-Hudson (ed.), Progressive Rock Reconsidered. New York: Routledge.

190 Timothy J. Dowd Santoro, M. (2002). ‘What is “cantautore” ’? Poetics 30: 111–132. Schmidt, A., & Holder, J. Z. (2010). Romantic Warriors: A Progressive Music Saga [Documentary]. Zeitgeist Media. Sundermann, E. (2010). ‘Bonaroo by the numbers’. Spin. Retrieved from www.spin. com/articles/bonnaroo-numbers/ (accessed 12 December 2012). Welch, C. (1999). Close to the Edge: The Story of Yes. London: Omnibus. White, A. (1990). The Billboard Book of Gold & Platinum Records. New York: Billboard. Wilson, R. (2013). ‘Through a glass darkly’. Prog 33: 50–53. Wilson, S. (2010). ‘The logician’. Classic Rock Presents Prog 18: 70–73. Wimer, D. (2010). ‘3RPR’. Progression 61: 70–71. Ziegler, T. (2003–2004). ‘How poor are they that have not prog?’ Progression 44: 82–85.

Part 5

Pilgrimage and Sacred Sites

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13 Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation The Real and Imagined Geography of the Grateful Dead in Song, on Tour, and in Cyberspace John V. Ward ‘When Garcia and I go out and play together, for instance, it goes completely different places every night.’ —Bob Weir (Jackson, 1985)

Music can have strong ties to the images and feelings people have about places (Hudson, 2006: 626) as well as the journey between places. While often ignored by geographers, music can serve as an important influence on the prior perceptions that mediate our experiences of both places (Huefe, 2003) and travel (Krim, 2003). It can do so by creating iconographic imagery through lyrics and sound, and by helping to imprint our experiences in memory. The fact that listening to music can itself be seen as a journey or a spatial exploration of words and/or sounds is a quality which perhaps explains why music is so effective in this role. In this chapter I will argue that through extensive touring, song lyrics, and the dissemination of live concert recordings, perhaps no band in history has been more closely associated with place, as well as mobility, than the Grateful Dead. While this association can be at times either real or imaginary, in both instances it serves to underpin relationships between experiences, memories, and sound and thus helps give meaning to the world around us and our everyday lives. The identity of the Grateful Dead can be tied to various places on different geographical scales ranging from the local to the global. We can, using Carney’s (2003) typology, view this as a hierarchy of places and music. For example, the Grateful Dead can be described as a Haight-Ashbury band identifying them with this particular San Francisco neighbourhood, and through it, with the counterculture and hippie lifestyle of the 1960s. They can also be described as a San Francisco band, a California band, and a West Coast band. While the former is certainly not as strongly homogenous in terms of association with certain musical characteristics as say Chicago is with urban blues or Seattle with grunge, the latter two both exemplify the stereotypical laid-back connotations that might come to mind when one thinks of the western coast of the United States. Finally, the Grateful Dead are without a doubt an American band, as evidenced by both the complete dominance of US cities on their tour schedule throughout their entire career

194 John V. Ward as well as the stories and places found in the lyrics of their songs. Further, I would argue that they have come to define the characteristics of American ‘jam bands’. But the geography of the band extends beyond these physical markers of space and place. I contend that above all else the place most associated with the Grateful Dead is the live concert ‘show’, carried out by both band and fans alike, through activities that took place during as well as between concerts (Reist, 1999; Wilgoren, 1999). The show therefore consists of a complex set of performances during which the band and fans exercise agency within a holistic system exhibiting properties of interdependence and unity, and it is this network of relationships and their inherent feedback loops that give rise to the show (Chase, 1997). It is important to point out that from their earliest days this performance included the taping and dissemination of live concert recordings by fans of the band. It was what the band and fans did at the show that gave identity to both the people and the places. This act of creating a sense of place through performance or action has been termed ‘performance geography’ (Stanley-Niaah, 2010). It is an act of place-making that builds a collective memory filled with symbolic representations of, in the case of the Grateful Dead, an alternative lifestyle or escape from the toils of everyday existence. Through words, sounds, dance, fashion, drug use, and the free association of individuals the show can be seen as a convergence of characteristics in a real space, but to many it became a place that transcended time and space to become a delocalized embodiment of itself. It was in many ways also both a re-enactment and a reimagining of Woodstock, which is for many the ultimate symbol of the American counterculture lifestyle of the 1960s. At the same time, through time, the Grateful Dead show became what has been called a ‘mythscape’ (Bennett, 2002). However, it is also important to point out that this was not something that was location specific such as an urban mythscape, but was in fact a mobile or travelling mythscape that derived meaning and created a sense of place through performances repeated at various locations throughout a tour, and thus was a show that can be seen as both permanent and mobile. The performance itself though, while never containing the same collection of songs, was in a constant state of reconstruction. Tour dates served to both demarcate separate instances or combinations of song performances, but also worked in unison to temporally and spatially demarcate collections of songs and thus parts of the mythscape took special significance. Examples of this might include the series of New Year’s Eve shows performed annually in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1976 to 1991, the ‘east coast’ or ‘west coast’ portions of a tour, the shows that included a revived performance of the song ‘Dark Star’ starting in 1989, or the ‘Branford Marsalis’ shows during which the American saxophonist sat in with the band during the 1990s. Further, I contend that the Grateful Dead show was in fact always in the act of becoming what has been termed a ‘mediated mythscape’ or ‘mediascape’ (Smart, 1993) because the live music performed by the band

Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation 195 at each show was recorded and almost immediately disseminated after the show. It became at this point a simulacrum of a mythscape, being disseminated through the recorded medium, and thereby allowing it to maintain much of its symbolic meaning while now serving as the soundtrack to other activities of fans as they travelled between Grateful Dead shows. This sort of iterative process I will call a ‘performance mediascape’. It allowed the mediascape to influence the everyday, altering the everyday geographies a person interacts with daily, by connecting them constantly to the musical world of the Grateful Dead. This served to not only bring the sacred element of a show into the everyday experience but also maintained a connection to the place of pilgrimage to which the fan would ultimately hope to return. A fan, for example, could hear the band perform a song like ‘Truckin’ live in concert and then listen to a recording of the same performance as they themselves were ‘truckin’ to the next show. This would be done with reflection on the past performance, but also with a hope of the next time the pilgrimage would take them to a live performance of this song. Today, the experience of a Grateful Dead show continues to be mediated through space and time by live concert recordings and discourse disseminated electronically on the World Wide Web (WWW). These developments made possible by cyberspace are related to, yet distinct from, the geographies developed beforehand. As I will layout below, the ‘journey’ to a Grateful Dead show found on the WWW today is obviously not the same as a physical journey to the live show in the past, yet from a symbolic perspective both can, for many fans, take on quite similar meaning. This chapter will focus on three important aspects of the Grateful Dead that contributed to the real and imagined geography of the Grateful Dead show— the tour, the lyrics and cyberspace. While there are certainly other geographical aspects that could be examined to offer insight into the Grateful Dead phenomenon (among these regionality and fan identity, diffusion of musical influence, drug use and counterculture politics in the USA), I will focus on the three I find most significant to my thesis. Each of these, I will argue, played a vital role in both the performance geography and mediascape creation that forms the theoretical framework for my contentions. I will conclude with the argument that by allowing fans to record shows, the Grateful Dead preserved not only their music but have provided, through the dissemination of these recordings on the WWW, an opportunity for fans to re-experience much of the imagined geography of a Grateful Dead show. THE TOUR A Grateful Dead tour was something quite unlike any other modern musical phenomenon. Throughout a tour the band and fans alike performed a series of ritualistic place-making actions giving identity to the spaces in which the

196 John V. Ward shows took place. It has been described as a ‘carnivalesque’ atmosphere in which existing society was transformed into something else (Culli, 2004). It was experienced by some as a social release from their everyday lives. For others, such as the Deadheads who followed the band from show to show, it was a ritualistic event celebrating a more permanent separation from traditional society and the adoption of egalitarian and communal conditions existing on the edges of mainstream American life. This came about through a combination of live and recorded music, communal living, informal economy, pilgrimage from show to show, drug usage, storytelling, costumes and so forth. From audience participation at the early Acid Tests (Lucas, 1999; Wolfe, 1968) to the parking lot vendors and spinning dancers, to the ‘tapers’ at the final tour in 1995, it was a synergy between the band and its audience, all of whom participated in the performance of a Grateful Dead show. Far removed from the relatively passive (apart from applause) audience found at some theatrical and musical performances, the audiences at a Grateful Dead shows were performers themselves. Often dressed in bright colours and tiedyed fabrics, many were also adorned with items such as bells, face paint, and glow sticks contributing to both the visual and auditory experience of the event and being a precursor of similar agency by fans at various musical events in the 21st century. Fan mobility was a major part of a Grateful Dead tour. Touring with the Dead represented freedom from the materialistic world of the so-called American Dream (Culli, 2004; Palm, 1999) and each show provided a space for fans to feel free from the normal world and to adopt a different, if only temporary, identity. Between each show there was a pilgrimage of fans that followed the band from show to show on tour like a travelling carnival (Culli, 2004). This act of pilgrimage was to fans both a real and symbolic journey to seek this alternative to the normal world and to become while doing so a part of the greater whole that was the Grateful Dead and its following. This journey was both real in the sense that people were physically travelling from one performance to the next but also symbolic in constructing the identity of a ‘deadhead’ or follower of the band. The shows themselves took on for many a symbolism that has been described as a ‘sacrament’ (Jackson, 1999: 219). Yet, unlike most places of pilgrimage the destination in this case was a moveable one, requiring fans to take the physical and spiritual journey to the next show. As I have described it, a Grateful Dead show was at its essence a moveable place that was performed over and over again in a different space with its identity being bound up, like that of a carnival, in the idea and practice of being on the road. And while major elements of the performance remained relatively similar at each show, such as psychedelic imagery and the overall structure of the setlist after 1978 into two distinct sets separated by an ‘interlude’ of ‘Drums/Space’ (see discussion below), the music itself did not. In fact, the band never played the same songs at any two shows nor did they ever play their songs exactly the same way. Due then to factors

Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation 197 such as the performance of rarely played songs and/or the performance of personal favourite songs, the performance of certain songs at certain shows gave meaning to certain places. In addition, some venues such as the Fillmore West in San Francisco were played repeatedly by the Grateful Dead. Thus certain venues also took on a significance based on legendary performances (such as the February/March 1969 Fillmore West show, found on the 1969 “Live/Dead” album, as well as the Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings limited edition box set). However, as I shall argue below, it is not a pilgrimage to a physical location, but a pilgrimage in cyberspace that fans continue to take to these places today. According to The Setlist Program website, which documents the Grateful Dead’s setlists for shows, the band played a total of 2,355 shows between 1965 and 1995. Of these 2,269 were played in the US, 54 in Europe, 29 in Canada, 3 in Egypt, and 4 at unknown venues (Lundquist, 2007). Visualizing tour data for the Grateful Dead using geographic information systems (GIS) technology,1 it is easy to see that the Grateful Dead were certainly an American band (Figure 13.1). A closer look at the tour geography of the band shows that the band performed over 100 times in only 3 US states (California, New York and Pennsylvania) and indeed the top three venues in terms of the number of shows played (Winterland Arena, The Spectrum

Figure 13.1 Grateful Dead concerts in North America, 1965–1995.

198 John V. Ward and Madison Square Garden) are in these states (Lundquist, 2007). Being from San Francisco it is not surprising that three of the top five cities (San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley) are in the Bay Area (Lundquist, 2007). Other venues hold special significance due to their natural setting. Rural areas such as Deer Creek in Indiana, Alpine Valley in Wisconsin and Red Rocks in Colorado were quite popular pilgrimage destinations for fans (Culli, 2004). In addition, the popularity of other venues was based on legendary performances. While this included venues in popular cities such as the Fillmore West in San Francisco (for example the above mentioned February/March 1969 set of shows which are lauded by fans for the musicianship, song selection and emotions of the performance), and venues in popular settings such as Red Rocks (for example the 8th July 1978 show), it also included lesser known places such as the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, which gained instant fame in the Grateful Dead mythscape following the 9th October 1989 performance of the fan favourite song ‘Dark Star’. Long popular for its improvisational musical journey through the ‘transitive nightfall of diamonds’ (Dodd, 2007), the ‘Hampton Dark Star’ marked the first time since 1984 that the song had been played and only the third time during the 1980s. It is in fact the third most commented upon show on the SetList Program website forum today (Lundquist, 2007). It is interesting to note that while certainly not the musical highlight of ‘Dark Star’ performances, the ‘Hampton Dark Star’ illustrates how the rarity of performance had a profound effect on reception. While more ‘everyday’ songs such as the oft-performed ‘Playing in the Band’ are to some more musically enjoyable, other songs such as ‘St. Stephen’ served to demarcate special performances due to their inclusion in the setlist. These more rarely played songs often held special significance to fans that were lucky or dedicated enough to encounter their performance. Other venues famous for particular musical performances include Barton Hall in New York and the Old Renaissance Faire Grounds in Oregon. Unique in the history of music, a Grateful Dead tour was a travelling carnival-like ritualistic place-making event that was performed by the musicians in the band as well as the fans both at and between shows. It was a communal and timeless experience, recreated but remade within the framework of both the ever-changing setlist and the pilgrimage between performances. Preserved on tape, recordings by fans are a simulacrum of what once was while continuing in their now digitized medium (see later discussion) to serve many fans as a soundtrack to their everyday lives. THE LYRICS The music of the Grateful Dead mediated to a large degree the entire Grateful Dead concert experience, from highways to parking lots to practically

Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation 199 everything that took place between shows. Taping allowed this to happen. Whether driving to the ironically uplifting sounds of ‘Going Down the Road Feeling Bad’, or venturing into the limitless journey of ‘Space’ while getting stoned, or falling asleep after a show, the Grateful Dead provided the soundtrack to the lives of many of their fans, especially the most dedicated followers known as Deadheads, by acting as a meta-narrative inflecting the everyday lives of fans through the overlaying of a mythic mediascape onto the geographies experienced outside the performance itself. One of the major themes of Grateful Dead lyrics was mobility (Culli, 2004), especially the idea of being on the road travelling from town to town. From the famous ‘Truckin’’ to the aforementioned ‘Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad’, their songs told tales of travelling across America to places like Chicago, New York, and Detroit. Songs like ‘Jack Straw’ and ‘Friend of the Devil’ were about drifters wandering the American West (Palm, 1999; Whisenant, 2011), moving between towns like Tulsa and Santa Fe. Still others take fans on journeys to more local places such as ‘Shakedown Street’ or to the far reaches of space in ‘Standing on the Moon’. The lyrical landscapes of the Grateful Dead also include many natural and cultural features such as rivers and seas, mountains and deserts, highways and towns, coal mines and railroad tracks. Along the way these places were lyrically populated with flora and fauna including birds and fish, mosquitoes and fireflies, roosters and dogs, and willows and pines. Their tales were also filled with descriptions of weather including rain and snow, chilly winds and ocean breezes, sunrise and morning dew, as well as all four seasons of the year. This lyrical focus on meteorological phenomena is perhaps best witnessed in their 1973 three-part piece ‘Weather Report Suite’. Throughout their songs, the lyrics of the Grateful Dead contain a vast array of references to geographical phenomena including cultural and natural landscapes, flora, fauna, and weather. As a whole, the geography of their lyrics paint a picture of mobility in an imaginary world containing both real and imagined places but firmly grounded in themes of natural landscapes and weather. However, the lyrics could take the fans through a journey of varying emotions. While songs like ‘Eyes of the World’ seemed to speak of a peaceful hope-filled relationship between humans and nature through its fantastical and anthropomorphic imagery, other songs like ‘Throwing Stones’ turn quickly to lyrical images filled with stark reality and hopelessness in the face of greed and power as the earth is turned into a wasteland by the rich and powerful members of the human race (for lyrics see Dodd, 2007). INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE In addition to their lyrics, the band’s ability to improvise provided a means to take their fans on musical journeys as well. I contend that the most

200 John V. Ward geographical of these are the instrumental pieces ‘Drums’ and ‘Space’. Consisting, respectively, of a multi-drum piece and improvisational guitar jam these pieces of music took fans on a ritualistic journey. Appearing as early as 1967, ‘Drums’ was played 1,598 times (Lundquist, 2007), by far the most of any song (‘Me and My Uncle’ was next at 605 times). In my opinion, ‘Drums’ represented at one extreme the most geographically ‘localized’ music played by the Grateful Dead, evoking the traditional tribal drum circle surrounded by bodies dancing in unison. It was a ritualistic communal experience. It is also interesting to note the juxtaposition (and the potential role of contestation and subversion) of ‘Drums’ to many of the Grateful Dead’s American West–themed lyrics dealing with both the frontier notion of the American dream as well as its tribulations and dark underbelly. ‘Space’ on the other hand, in addition to being perhaps the most geographical/spatial of all Grateful Dead song titles, was first played in 1972, and was first played in tandem with ‘Drums’ in 1978 (Lundquist, 2007). In contrast to ‘Drums’ the music improvisation of ‘Space’ represented the farthest of musical journeys a fan could take. While ‘Drums’ was communal, ‘Space’ was a more individual experience. In addition, the placement of the ‘Drums > Space’ medley in the middle of the second set of music allowed it to serve as a transitional piece between the shorter more danceable songs played in the first and early second set, with the more improvisational pieces that followed. The makeup of the set itself was a type of journey or pilgrimage through the ritual communal space. This journey can be seen as existing within a context of ecological relationships narrated by lyrics that espouse a truth not easily put into words and encompassing a philosophical ambiguity (Dodd, 1995). Taken as a whole, the lyrics, music, and performance of the Grateful Dead contained much that was geographical and played a large role in mediating the experience of their fans both at and between shows, as well as beyond, and maintained for many an ecological relationship with the band and other fans through which both the sacred and profane, the everyday and the special event, the real and the imagined, all merged into a heterotopia (Foucault, 1984), a space of otherness that was and is the Grateful Dead. CYBERSPACE The technological advancements predicated by the digital storage and webbased dissemination of music have enabled the accumulation of exhaustive catalogues of music performances across many different genres of music. While the collection of live music recordings has long been popular to fans of the Grateful Dead, the move from cassettes to digital media has provided a newly viable option for many Grateful Dead fans by both expanding access to existing recordings and by greatly easing access for fans outside traditional cassette tape trading circles. In addition, digital media provides a

Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation 201 much better format for the preservation of music recordings (IASA Technical Committee 2005). Music on the WWW falls into three general categories: (1) in-print commercially available recordings; (2) out-of-print recordings; and (3) unofficial recordings (Ward, 2010). The bootleg recordings of the Grateful Dead fall into this last category. Throughout their history the Grateful Dead have allowed and even encouraged fans to make and freely disseminate recordings of their live performances, going so far as to create a special ticketed section for ‘tapers’ at their shows. This practice set an example for other acts of a strategy of embracing rather than fighting the recording of musical performances by concert attendees, a practice that was not only very popular amongst fans, and thus likely served to help increase attendance at concerts, but set a precedent that has been utilized by other acts in dealing with new media developments; this can be seen for instance in current debates over musician royalties from online music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify. By allowing fans to tape their concerts the band in effect ensured that their live music would survive (Pfahl, 2001) while also creating an unprecedented collection of live music recordings that is today available on the WWW. By allowing fans to record their live performances, the Grateful Dead have also created opportunities for existing fans to re-live the concert experience. This desire to re-experience a show is evidenced by the preference of many fans for audience recordings over those taken directly from the mixing desk. While many audiophiles prefer these usually higher quality (though some would argue more sterile) ‘soundboard recordings’, many Grateful Dead fans prefer the ambience and crowd noise of the audience recordings for the very reason that they allow the listener to take a journey back to a sacred space (Goodenough, 1999) at a Grateful Dead show, and have the added attribute of preserving crowd noise. In the last few years fans have taken steps to further recreate this experience by creating ‘matrix’ recordings which combine higher quality ‘soundboard recordings’ with the more organic sounding audience recordings, thus enabling them to experience both the music and the crowd ambience to its fullest extent. In doing so these fans are mixing a hybrid sonic experience that thus represents a space that only exists in the digital realm. As a band the Grateful Dead were always about live performance rather than studio albums. In fact, the band primarily earned money through concert performances rather than album sales (Rodriguez et al., 2009). By allowing fans to freely tape and disseminate their performances, the Grateful Dead have to a large degree unintentionally circumvented and subverted the music downloading issues that arose along with the advent of the WWW and digital file sharing. Their model of music dissemination has had several other very significant outcomes. Today there are many bands that see the free dissemination of live music as a desirable means of marketing their

202 John V. Ward music. This is evidenced by the more than 4,700 ‘taper friendly’ bands that are currently available on the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive (Internet Archive, 2013; Ward, 2011). In addition, the predilection of the Grateful Dead and their fans for the performance and recording of live music has changed music discography in two important ways. First, the Grateful Dead helped to expand the focus of ‘traditional’ music discography as documentation (Merriam-Webster, 2011; Ward, 2010) to include live recordings along with studio recordings. Secondly, the band has certainly helped to shape the ‘new’ definition of music discography as it applies to music file sharing on the WWW. In this sense discography has been redefined as a collection of recordings by a band (Urban Dictionary, 2011) made available for download on the WWW (Ward, 2010). The result has been that both in conceptual terms and in practice, the web itself is a space of pilgrimage—containing a multitude of sites of popular music heritage as they contain historical recordings and other artefacts. While Grateful Dead bootlegs are available in many places on the WWW, there is no website, or I would argue any other place at all, as significant to the musical heritage of the Grateful Dead as the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive. As of 12 October 2012 the site contains 8,950 different recordings of Grateful Dead shows (Lundquist, 2007). Most of these shows are available for streaming broadcast and all audience recordings are also available for download. This provides extraordinary access to perhaps the most comprehensive live performance recordings archive of any single band in music history and provides opportunities for fans around the globe to experience and re-experience, from the musical side, almost every Grateful Dead show ever performed during their history. It embodies a digital version of the musical component of the Grateful Dead’s travelling performance mediascape. In addition, the site contains many elements that enable interaction with both the digital music files and other fans. This includes functions that allow for temporal-driven browsing of the site’s contents by specific date, year, or even viewing shows that were first performed on ‘this day in history’. Other options allow fans to encounter shows based on the number and/or timing of previous downloads (‘most downloaded items last week’) and the recommendations of website staff. In addition, many performances are available in recordings of varying quality. This variation can take different forms, such as soundboard versus audience recordings. Further variation is found due to both the recording equipment used as well as the location of the taper relative to the performers. Additionally, the availability of multiple formats (mp3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC) and bitrates (64 Kbps and variable bit rate) provide yet more variation. Beyond the music itself, the site contains user forums and reviews contributing to the shaping of place and space by offering the ability for fans to both create and contest memories of shows, which also serves to provide information to listeners and downloaders. Conceptually this site can be seen as a type of heterotopia (Foucault, 1984). It exists both in and outside of time, and offers digital representations

Pilgrimage, Place, and Preservation 203 of the past while containing a juxtaposition of elements both spatial and temporal. As a heterotopia, the website offers up a space that includes at least memories of all that is at the heart of the culture of the Grateful Dead alongside the music itself, including counterculture, drug use, and so forth. As such it allows fans to take a journey into, or back to the imagined geography of the Grateful Dead, offering opportunities to both experience and re-experience Grateful Dead performances, and as such I would argue it is the most important site of musical heritage for the band and its fans. CONCLUSION Throughout their career the Grateful Dead performed songs filled with geographical references. They sang about the earth and sun, cities and streets, rain and snow, railroads and coal mines, as well as birds and wolves. Along the way they developed a fan base and many fans chose to follow the band as they toured around the country (and in some cases the world) on a pilgrimage, travelling the highways from city to city to catch the next show and experience the carnival-like atmosphere that was a Grateful Dead show. Along the way destinations of seemingly mythical proportions were constructed in the memories of these fans. Once inside the show fans entered what has described as a sacred space (Goodenough, 1999), with both individual and shared meaning for fans. This sacred space can also be seen as a lived space or ‘thirdspace’ encompassing both perceived and conceived space. In this space fans incorporate both the concrete and the abstract to create, or ‘perform’ this imagined and socially created spatiality (Soja, 1996: 30). While through the years many of the venues in which the band played took on mythical significance to their fans, above all else the Grateful Dead was about the live music they performed at a show. By allowing fans to tape their performances the Grateful Dead have also allowed fans to re-live the concert experience, creating an imaginary space where they could return to re-take the musical and geographic journey of a particular concert. In doing so they also created one of the greatest, if not the greatest, collection of live music recordings in the history of music. With the advent of the WWW and digital music technology this collection can now be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, giving fans the ability to re-experience the music of the band’s concerts. The music, combined with discourse or ‘show talk’ (Dollar, 1999) disseminated on the web, provides fans with the opportunity to both re-live and reimagine a Grateful Dead show, series of shows, or an entire tour because it has now become what has been called a ‘virtual scene’ (Bennett, 2002). Musical fans often journey to places that are associated with the music they enjoy. Unlike places which serve as sites of musical heritage for other artists—such as Chicago, Liverpool, Seattle, or Manchester—I contend that

204 John V. Ward today the most important site of musical heritage for the Grateful Dead is not a city or a venue. For while they are identified with places like San Francisco, I contend that the Grateful Dead were beyond all else a travelling performance mythscape that was presented to fans as a series of sites of musical pilgrimage on a journey to a place that was both always the same and always different. This journey between shows was as significant perhaps as the shows themselves, in that neither could have existed without both the music of the Grateful Dead and the performance of the fans. Since the passing of Jerry Garcia in 1995 the band has no longer performed live or toured under the name the Grateful Dead, yet today a unique simulacrum of the band exists in cyberspace. It is a mediascape which is easily and repeatedly disseminated through the WWW via the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive. The site itself was created in 1996 by Brewster Kahle, an advocate of universal access to knowledge, as a digital library whose mission is to provide access to digitized books, music recordings, archived webpages, and videos along with other materials (Evangelista, 2012). What this website has created represents an incredible repository of musical history, preserved for generations to come. More importantly it also represents a model of what can be done with other bands and genres of music in order to embrace and preserve the enormous collection of live music recordings that are being disseminated on the WWW (Ward, 2010, 2011). But perhaps most importantly, it allows fans to re-experience the musical journey that was a Grateful Dead show. NOTE 1. GIS refers to any system that uses computer technology to record, edit, analyze, share, and display varied geographical data.

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14 Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography Tom Vague’s Musical Mapping of Notting Hill Alex Lawrey This chapter explores the musical mapping of Notting Hill by the fanzine writer and local historian known as Tom Vague. Since 1979 he has published a fanzine called Vague, which focuses on the history and the musical heritage of the Notting Hill area in north-west London. Beginning in 1979 as a handprinted fanzine in Wiltshire, Vague is irregularly produced and has covered a broad range of music. Initially the publication was focussed on punk but has moved on to feature any music genre with a connection to Notting Hill. Tom Vague is a self-proclaimed psychogeographer and chronicler of London, and his writings about musical heritage follow this conception, defining the music of place. This chapter examines the theoretical underpinnings of Tom Vague’s publication, considering the concept of psychogeography and how it represents the city. It then moves on to examine the importance of Vague as a document which presents a particular history of an area and its musical life. Furthermore, it argues that Vague provides a useful entry point to open up discussion of how the musical heritage of place is established and promoted. VAGUE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES Tom Vague, real name Stephen Thomas, began his journalistic forays at the Salisbury Technical College, Wiltshire, in 1979 with a small circulation fanzine called Vague. He moved eastwards to London in 1983, living in squats in places like Brixton, Lavender Hill, Elephant and Castle, Hackney and the Anarchy Centre in Rosebery Avenue, Islington before moving to Notting Hill in the late 1980s. Besides writing most of the content of Vague and editing it, he also wrote for the music magazine Zigzag. Throughout the 1980s Vague followed a path set by other UK fanzines such as Mark Perry’s Sniffin Glue which began in 1976, and later publications such as Kill Your Pet Puppy. It covered a fairly typical range of anarchist and punk topics, with interviews, cartoons, and articles on political issues. Tom Vague found a more settled home in a Notting Hill housing association flat and the focus of the fanzine began to change, though it maintained a concern with music, the avant-garde and outsider culture. Vague had relocated and

208 Alex Lawrey location became the defining editorial factor. Although Tom has worked with Stewart Home, the media prankster, artist and writer—who also has strong Notting Hill connections—the production of Vague is a largely solo effort. Tom Vague became a psychogeographer, presenting cartographies of music, Notting Hill as the site of musical heritage. This did not mean that the publication covered radically different themes; it was rather that place became the signifying factor. For example, it featured the Sex Pistols, since they were photographed in Kensington Park Road (during their time signed to Richard Branson’s Virgin label, and the release of the single ‘God Save the Queen’) and so were part of the signification of the Notting Hill area. Similarly, the Beatles were included due to the fact that they filmed a section of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on Clarendon Road, setting up a Notting Hill Gate / Fab Four connection. Whilst these geographic connections are hardly substantive, Vague also charts more long-standing links to Britain’s musical history which emerged from the offices of independent label distributors Rough Trade, and from venues like Acklam Hall/Subterania, that hosted bands from local heroes the Clash to British acts like the Happy Mondays and international stars like Eminem. Tom Vague’s descriptions of the area’s musical heritage is presented as inseparable from its political, social and cultural history. His writings on music, which continually overlap with his sociopolitical histories, accord significant artists (like the Clash, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley or All Saints) their due, but only as exemplars amongst many locally based musicians. The interest is always with place as mediated by people. Notting Hill is the superstar and Bob Marley is the soundtrack, rather than pop musicians as stars and Notting Hill just a setting. Vague is an example of a psychogeographical approach to musical heritage, and a self-conscious reinvention of the French Situationist movement, as developed by the (post) Marxist philosopher Guy Debord. For Guy Debord and Situationists, ‘the known city would be eclipsed by the unknown’, and this would be achieved through ‘intoxication and random journeys into urban environments and their hidden pasts and paths’ (McDonagh, 2005: 10). The Vague approach to psychogeography, as I shall explore, is less random, more considered and always well researched. His trajectory is always focussed on uncovering the hidden paths and histories of music and its attendant cultures, breaking down the sheen of the area and remembering seemingly inconsequential moments of the musical past, which have been celebrated as seminal within music histories. Peter Ackroyd once commented that we could ‘think of London as a living organism’ (Ackroyd, 2000). This quote highlights the role of psychogeography in mapping urban functions and seeing the dynamics of place acting as biological entities, a view shared by the early 20th century planning theorist and biologist Patrick Geddes. At the start of the 20th century a new intellectual movement was evident that believed in an idea of consciously created urban spaces, designs for progressive and rationalistic life, and an ethos of eutopic, eutechnic eugenics. This intellectual current

Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography 209 spawned the first UK town planning act of 1909, led to the opening of the world’s first planning department at the University College of Liverpool (the ‘Civic Design’ school) and found, in the figure of the Scottish biologist Patrick Geddes, its spiritual and ideological guru (Meller, 1980: 199–224; Hall, 1996: 145–148). Geddes’s writings explored the idea of the city as a biological entity, a living, breathing organism that was in a constant state of evolution and change. He saw the human inhabitants of urban and rural spaces as essentially created by their spatial surroundings, his famous ‘valley’ diagram illustrating this notion with miners living in the mineral-rich mountains, foresters residing in upland, wooded areas, shepherds tending their flocks on the lowland hills, ‘peasant’ farmers and gardeners living in the fertile flood plains and fishermen appropriately housed in coastal settlements. The suggestion being that place created people (Hall, 1996: 142). The city was seen as the theatre of action evident in the civic architecture of the period, the Edwardian baroque or ‘Wrenaissance’, such as Aston Webb’s 1912 Admiralty Arch which crowns the entrance to the Mall from Trafalgar Square, a site for imperial pomp and circumstance. The bombastic grandeur of the Edwardian baroque and Tom Vague’s musical journeys around the heritage sites of Notting Hill share the central conception of place creating culture and of the urban environment acting upon its inhabitants. Geddes suggests that there is a psyche of place, a ‘living’ identity to any given spatial situation that music may participate in. In Cities in Evolution Geddes described town planning as ‘healthy upgrowth’ where ‘fuller cultivation’ could lead to the flowering ‘in regional and civic literature and history, art and science’ and ‘fruit in’ the ‘social renewal of towns and cities, small and great’ (Geddes, 1949: v–vi). He suggested that even ‘the professed town planner’ who was already knowledgeable ‘in the facts’ could gain from an understanding of his ‘definite principle’ that to plan meant more than appreciating the ‘aesthetic qualities of perspective’, as planners must ‘seek to enter into the spirit of the city, its historic essence and continuous life’ (Geddes, 1949: vi). Geddes saw the city as an evolving organism, a concentration of human essences and guiding spirits. The changes mapped by Vague in Notting Hill arguably adhere to such a model. The idea of geographical determinism, as seen through Tom Vague’s musical maps and journeys, is both supportive of Geddes’ deterministic approach and yet leaves room for nuanced and divergent readings. Notting Hill is familiar as the site of a world renowned carnival, as the setting for the Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts 1999 ‘rom-com’ film, and before the 2010 general election many leading figures from the future Conservative government such as David Cameron, George Osborne and Michael Gove were residents there, leading to Tory MP Derek Conway, and later the press, dubbing them the ‘Notting Hill set’. This reflects a substantive change in the demographic profile of Notting Hill from a relatively down-at-heel west London slum to a prosperous and desirable residential enclave—an ongoing process of gentrification. Tom Vague has mapped the musical heritage of Notting Hill

210 Alex Lawrey as both a participant in the scene and as an unofficial musical archivist, documenting the sites of musical recording, writing, performance and most crucially musical living—that is the places where musicians like the Clash, Bob Marley and Dire Straits lived, drank, danced and died. The position taken by Tom Vague adapts the Situationist techniques of psychogeography to map musical culture, and further to associate place with significant moments of cultural expression, political action, and develop an organic sense of spatial awareness. Tom Vague’s writings fall broadly within the anarchist tradition, exploring the alternative currents of society, countercultures, and both historic and contemporary rebels, revolutionaries and terrorists like the Red Army Faction, the Notting Hill Carnival riots and squatters from the 1960s hippies, ‘Frestonia’—the name given to Freston Road during residents’ attempted secession from the United Kingdom in 1977—and the 1980s anarchourbanists of the ‘Centro Iberico’. Vague’s methodology however relates to the ideas of Guy Debord’s Situationist International. Debord developed the Situationist platform around the notion of psychogeography, what a later author would call ‘a new way of walking’ (Hart, 2004) which in Paris created a brief revolutionary movement, the syndicalism of May ’68. Debord saw capitalism as an oppressive system producing consumerist, dictatorial illusions: the myth of freedom wrapped up and enveloping the capitalistic, consumer-desire way of being. Through acts that break the myths of consumer freedom Debord thought people would recognise the spectacle of domination and liberate themselves, the Paris 1968 stifled revolution being the one spectacularly unsuccessful example of his thesis. Psychogeography however is a term that has had far wider currency than Debord and one of the main practices of psychogeography has been the urban walk, either guided by random factors or culturally significant landmarks. This approach can be seen in the maps Vague reproduces which show the sites of musical heritage, and in Tom Vague’s writings which illustrate the lost worlds of Notting Hill music and countercultures (Figure 14.1). The publication is heavily peppered with the more extreme examples of the life of this area through discussion of the notorious landlord Rachman, the murderous goings-on at John Christie’s home in 10 Rillington Place, the Teddy boy dustups and race riots of the 1950s, right through to the Notting Hill Carnival riots of the 1970s. This is not just Notting Hill psychogeography, it is Notting Hill psycho-psychogeography; as Vague 30 says this is ‘REVOLUTION— TERRORISM—PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY—URBAN MYTHS—SPEED HISTORY’ (Vague, 1998: 4). THE FANZINE AS HISTORICAL DOCUMENT In addition to its psychogeographical functions, Vague can be situated within a tradition in British musical and political writing based within Notting Hill.

Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography 211 It inhabits the same overlapping literary and physical spaces as the underground Oz magazine, which relocated from Australia to Ladbroke Grove in the 1960s. Oz magazine was a predecessor to Vague, and its story features in Tom Vague’s fanzine. Like Oz and other Notting Hill underground press connections such as the International Times and Frendz, Vague features hippy-era icons like the Angry Brigade, the music of Hawkwind, and the alternative cultures around the Frestonia squats, thus linking place to moments of cultural expression and political action. The punk fanzine canon of the late 1970s and 1980s can be seen as an example of primary source documentation for the historian of popular musical culture. The punk fanzine ethos of DIY publishing and anarchoentrepreneurship suited the Thatcherite age, the fanzine editor-publisherjournalist was necessarily outside of society but also located outside of the NUJ chapels and traditional printing worlds. Punk fanzines have been credited with being ‘sites of oppositional practice’ embodying an anarchist ethic and discourse of ‘a do-it-yourself culture where direct action begins’ (Triggs, 2006: 73). Tom Vague’s early publications are a prime example of the 1970s and 1980s anarcho-punk fanzine genre, and his later output as a musical cartographer and Notting Hill psychogeographer mirrors much of genre’s regular patterns of evolution (Figure 14.2). Another example of this genre of anarcho-urbanism is the South London–based writer Christopher Jones, who mapped another form of underground culture in his 2003 booklet ‘Subterranean Southwark’, a tale of ‘Disused tube lines, nuclear bunkers, crypts and catacombs, underground toilets . . . remnants and rumours’ (Jones, 2003: back cover). Tom Vague similarly maps the Acklam Hall/Subterania—a former local music venue—and the dark haunts of Notting Hill’s goths in the 1980s, but the basic format of home-produced, ‘hand made in Southwark’ ( Jones, 2003: back cover) booklets and stapled together fanzines remains. These were often produced with a conspicuous disregard for systems of academic referencing; in Vague 30, the notes and references section is headed ‘Bibliography/Plagiarism/Sources’. Vague 14 announced that it was ‘a new and disturbing concept in journalism’ (and ‘a new and disturbing concept in fertilizer’) keeping true to itself, like Patrick Geddes’s metaphorical seed and flower. When a contemporary asked Geddes to explain his theories, he ‘replied that a flower expressed itself by flowering, not by being labelled’ (Hall, 1996: 146). The writings of Tom Vague likewise organically respond to place. They are clear and accessible yet still positioned outside of the mainstream. MAPPING MUSIC HERITAGE—‘UP AND DOWN THE WESTWAY’ The cultures of punk and of reggae as located in alternative social spheres have faded, time has passed and punk is no longer the shocking youth movement of the Silver Jubilee year but rather a historically documented music

212 Alex Lawrey scene. However, the role of punk and reggae in shaping Notting Hill’s culture was vital and rightfully has been well documented in Tom Vague’s writings. The area’s reggae inheritance makes it arguably one of the most important sites in the world for the genre outside of Jamaica. Vague’s writings such as ‘50 Years of Carnival 1959–2009’, produced with the ‘HISTORYtalk’ community history collective reflect this. As Notting Hill’s answer to Herodotus tells us, the Clash’s first gig, supporting the Sex Pistols, took place in 1976 at the Screen on the Green in Islington, the day before the Notting Hill Carnival riot which Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon witnessed from the relative safety of the Elgin pub, where Strummer’s earlier pub-rock band ‘the 101ers’ had regularly performed. The ‘50 Years of Carnival’ pamphlet documents the reggae scene’s reaction to the riots that can be heard in titles of songs that followed such as Delroy Washington’s ‘The Streets of Ladbroke Grove’, Have Sound Will Travel’s ‘Police and Youth in the Grove’ and the Pioneers’ ‘Riot in Notting Hill’. Tom Vague succeeds in encapsulating the vast range of musical meanderings that Notting Hill witnessed: with Teddy boys and race rioters in the 1950s, to West Indian carnivals from the 1960s, to hippy stalwarts Hawkwind drinking in the local rock ‘n’ roll pub, the Duke of Wellington on Portobello Road. It was also the haunt of Dire Straits, with their song ‘Portobello Belle’ celebrating the area, and Vague mentions the Apollo Studios where the 1990s all-girl band All Saints met and recorded much of their material, their name a tribute to the Notting Hill street All Saints Road. Comparisons can be drawn between Tom Vague and Owen Hatherley, the author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2011), a critique of Blairite architecture and urbanism. Vague and Hatherley are both proponents of a near nihilistic nostalgia, a geographical determinism which situates musical people and places as frozen moments of idealised rebellion. A point of comparison between Vague and Hatherley’s New Ruins is a sense of geography bounded by music and modernist architecture. Vague’s musical maps of Notting Hill feature the classic monument to modernism remade as yuppietopia, Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower—a brutalist block built in 1966. Crossing its path is another modernist icon: the Westway, where, as Tom Vague informs us, the Clash were photographed, and which provided inspiration for at least one Clash song. In Vague, as elsewhere, the Clash are innately tied to this motorway flyover situated next to the tower-block home of guitarist Mick Jones, or rather his granny’s flat, where he lived for some time. In fact none of the members of the Clash were born in Notting Hill. Mick Jones and bass player Paul Simonon hail from Brixton, and drummer Terry Chimes (aka ‘Tory Crimes’ during his brief time as the first Clash drummer) is from east London, Joe Strummer was the son of a diplomat and born in Ankara, Turkey. However Notting Hill provided a musical base for the band and acted as inspiration. The words of the song ‘London’s Burning’ directly reference the Westway, and the song ‘White Riot’ was written after Simonon and Strummer witnessed the 1976

Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography 213 Carnival riot. As the HISTORYtalk pamphlet notes the fourth Clash album ‘Sandinista’ is ‘the least acclaimed’ but ‘the best in local history terms’ with references to ‘the staple Ladbroke Grove themes of tower blocks, blues clubs and the Carnival’ (Vague, 2009: 31). The back cover of The Clash’s bootleg album ‘Blackmarket Clash’ featured their favoured documenter and filmmaker Don Letts walking towards a line of police during the 1976 riot. The riot itself—or at least a benefit gig for legal costs for arrested participants— provides an early instance of the name ‘Clash’ appearing in print, on a poster where the name Clash lacked the definite article. Though Tom Vague’s histories inform us this was in fact a gig Strummer and Simonon did not end up playing. Similarly for Hatherley, the council estates of Hulme in Manchester are redolent with the sounds of A Certain Ratio and Joy Division: ‘the stark, “eastern European” aesthetic, the sense of a Modernist utopia decaying, gone, crumbled’ (Hatherley, 2011: 127). This is music as creation of place, inseparable from the built environment. Whilst psychogeographers take often complex, contradictory literary and textual routes through defined spaces, a consistent feature of the genre has been the notion of a firm identity of place. This involves identifying a place with noticeable moments in its history and elements of its heritage—either in terms of built environment or definite impressions from culture such as books, art and music. Peter Ackroyd described how in London ‘certain areas didn’t only acquire moods but they also acquired a very firm identity’, giving the example of Clerkenwell as a ‘home to radicalism for almost 1200 years’ from Watt Tyler to Lenin editing newspapers (Ackroyd, 2000). This identification of place and perceived cultural makeup becomes over-representative of place, its defining feature. It is not though the exclusive provenance of psychogeographers to map music onto place; city marketing managers are equally often adroit musical cartographers. There are many examples of this for instance in Liverpool: the ‘John Lennon Airport’, the Beatles museum, and all manner of Beatles themed tourist ephemera such as a hedgerow clipped to look like the Fab Four at a Liverpool railway station. Flying from John Lennon Airport to Frederick Chopin Airport in Warsaw, we find benches that play Chopin music along a Chopin trail, a Chopin museum— and echoing Liverpool, an Ulica John Lennona. There is no special reason for a John Lennon Street in Warsaw except that it is located near to the Sejm parliament building and the Beatles were symbols of opposition and democracy during the years of communism. Music—particularly popular music—speaks of freedom, but can also add interest to mundane places like an ostensibly dull cemetery in Paris or a motorway flyover in west London. Père Lachaise cemetery has historic connections to the Paris Commune and houses the graves of Oscar Wilde, Saint Simon, Chopin and others, but for youth culture it is enlivened by being the site of Jim Morrison’s grave, so much so that the gravestone suffers from continually refreshed graffiti and necessitates cemetery guards. The Westway motorway flyover in Notting Hill has not quite achieved similar status as a

214 Alex Lawrey site of popular musical pilgrimage, but it becomes more than just a road since Mick Jones of the Clash grew up within its environs, plus due to its proximity to an alternative punk festival at the Meanwhile Gardens. These connections create a psyche of place, a spatial conception of spirit. Musical devotees and Beatles fans travel across the globe to witness the sites that inspired the songs about Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, two unremarkable areas of Liverpool. As Père Lachaise shows, these may be the spirits of the dead, and of cultures long past, but it is precisely in their absence that these associations with a music of the past—Chopin, Jim Morrison, the Beatles or the Clash—become transformative expressions of place, turning a monotonous cemetery into a site of pilgrimage for Doors fans, dreary streets in Woolton into an exciting urban environment redolent with Beatles-esque connotations: not just Strawberry Fields, but Strawberry Fields forever—and the west London relics of a transport scheme from a Modernist hell into the intoxicating scenes of the proto-punk world of the Clash, and latter-day pub rock. The sounds of the Westway highlight a common theme of rock ‘n’ roll: the road song, examples being ‘Route 66’, ‘Highway 61’, and Jah Wobble’s ‘A13’ (which was also the setting for psychogeographic author Iain Sinclair’s 2004 novel Dining on Stones). Yet whilst these songs essay the road as a journey, the Westway is about the world beneath: for Mick Jones and Joe Strummer the journey taking place above had already reached its destination, and under the influence of Tom Vague’s hagiography of place it is a wonder that they ever wished to leave. Witness this description of Frestonia, the short-lived ‘squatters republic’: part William Blake Albion Free State, part Marx brothers’ ‘Freedonia’, with some Chestertonesque whimsy and Orwellian nightmare thrown in . . . hippy/punk crossover group Here & Now appeared at the Freston Road Ceres bakery . . . the actor David Rappaport . . . was the Frestonian minister of state for foreign affairs, the Tory MP Geoffrey Howe wrote . . . in support of Frestonia and Chesterton’s ‘small is beautiful’ principle. (Vague, 2006) There is a stark contrast between the Vague rendering of Frestonia and the Ulica John Lennona in Warsaw. Warsaw’s Lennon Road demonstrates that the musical heritage of place can be shaped by entirely invented connections. These arbitrary associations with the icons of popular music (see also the ‘Lennon Wall’ in Prague, condemned by communist authorities because of ‘Lennonism’) create a sense of the past lacking depth. There is little that is truly alive about the musical heritage in Ulica John Lennona, or in the bizarre topiary of the Beatles hedge at Liverpool South Parkway station. Peter Ackroyd’s notion of the city as living organism seems questionable when it is possible to invent cultural identities, to carve out heritage from a hedge, inscribe it in block of stone or simply rename a street. By comparison

Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography 215 Tom Vague’s mapping of Notting Hill relies for its impact and emotional power on a sense of both continuity and incremental musical evolution. Vague maps music culture as much as music itself: the ‘Notting Hill History Timeline’ for the 1990s, ‘All the Sinners Saints’, is largely a report on the drinking habits of pop stars and the neighbouring illegal rave scene and the upmarket people travelling downmarket known as ‘trustafarians’. All Saints were, according to Vague, ‘the last pop group to have any street credibility’ and challenged the Clash ‘as top local act’ (Vague, 2008: 17). They drank Coca-Cola in the Market Bar whilst Joe Strummer favoured the Star, and the ‘less street credible 192 Bar’, apparently because he was banned from the Warwick Castle where fellow Clash old-timer Mick Jones was ensconced with his girlfriend Wendy ‘Transvision Vamp’ James. Meanwhile ‘anarcho ravers’ were squatting a house near the home of the Australian clean-cut boy turned wild-child soap actor Jason Donovan. The gentrification of Notting Hill is consistently explored in Vague through moments of protest, press coverage and change. Even the eponymous film could be seen as reflecting the ‘yuppie’ culture of the era. There is a significant qualitative difference between this conception of musical heritage and the Beatles hedge or Morrison’s grave. Vague represents a musical past definitively alive, even if deaddrunk and incoherent. SELLING HERITAGE—‘NO FUTURE’ The city is not ‘alive’ as such: buildings alter, people change and the music of place, however much it may have at one time been synonymous with a locality will eventually become externalised, separated from its roots and commodified as a way to sell products, real estate or the idea of place itself. Places therefore are shaped by their cultural heritage but not determined by them. Guy Debord wrote in The Society of the Spectacle that ‘History has always existed, but not always in its historical form.’ (Debord, 1995: 92). Situationism emphasises capitalism’s reduction of life to mediated second-hand experience—labelled spectacle—so the only resistance available to the modern (or postmodern) revolutionary is to reverse society’s spectacles. Carnival becomes riot, the symbol matters more than what it signifies. For art to become liberating it has to merge with destruction. This reversed spectacle is viewed in Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten wearing a ‘destroy’ t-shirt and singing his alternative anthem to the Jubilee celebrations. Humanised time in Tom Vague’s writings has meant a gradual journey from anarchist histrionics to the local history of Notting Hill. With its colourful and tabloidesque history it is not so surprising that the music associated with streets like Westbourne Park Road and Ladbroke Grove has proved to be controversial or threatening. What makes the musical heritage of Notting Hill interesting and unique is its multitude of connections to geographically diverse cultures: ‘Westway to the world’, the fusion of punk and reggae in the Clash and Bob Marley, or

216 Alex Lawrey punk and hippy in the band Here and Now. The area attracted a wealth of up and coming musicians. It has been a unique cauldron of riots, music, carnivals and creativity. In such a context, to ignore the effect of place upon musical heritage would be foolhardy. However whilst it did ‘happen here’, as Tom Vague informs the world, whether it is still happening is another question. Has the process of documenting and archiving a global centre for musical performance and creation simply become the signpost to the death of an entire culture of music, as a living and evolving movement? Has the music died and Tom Vague become the gravedigger? As Hilda Kean has argued, ‘since the mid 1980s London no longer flourishes as a place where “people make history”; instead it has been repackaged as a place where people are required to fit into a history made for them . . . popular knowledge of former political-cultural practices is threatened with amnesia’ (Kean, 2003: 155–156). Vague challenges this political-cultural amnesia even whilst it contributes the reinvention of place as repackaged, made-to-fit history. The transition from hippies to yuppies, via punks and punky-reggae pioneers, is charted in the pages of Vague but the idea of Notting Hill as the home of the underground press and underground music has become an estate agents’ rather than musicologists’ dream. As Vague’s HISTORYtalk report on ‘50 years of Carnival 1959–2009’ makes clear, by 1991 Notting Hill was acquiring a qualitatively different reputation from its notorious past: ‘Rastafarians were succeeded by trustafarians’ and ‘street names’ like the All Saints Road and Portobello Road ‘began to appear in restaurant reviews more than crime reports’—at least until ‘the crack cocaine drug crime revival’ (Vague, 2009: 38). There is a cross-fertilisation evident in Vague’s writings beyond musical crossovers like ‘punky reggae’ and hippy-punk. Vague captures and celebrates every reference to the local environs imaginable: from the Chesterton’s ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ (and his brother’s local exploits as fascist) through to Julian Temple’s film of the Colin MacInnes novel Absolute Beginners. Tom Vague has provided commentary for the Notting Hill Film Festival and for guided walks which Paul Mansfield of the Observer has described as ‘From riots to our very own Rio’ (Mansfield, 2008). He has also worked with history groups and the local council and yet has never quite lost his connection to the underground culture that spawned the original Vague fanzine in the town of Mere, Wiltshire, in 1979. He provides a surprising workable blend of the avant-garde and agitprop mixed with more respectable histories of musical heritage. What makes Vague the fanzine—and Tom Vague the man—special is the lack of posturing and Puritanism. Vague is amorphous and has a malleable essence: it can interact with a Royal Borough or anarchist historiography without seeming to depart from its original course. CONCLUSION—‘A THEATRE OF HUMAN ACTION’ Tom Vague adroitly documents and humanises the musical history of this small area of London, and in doing so connects with the ideas of Debord’s

Putting the Psycho in Psychogeography 217 Situationists and Geddes’s sociology of place. In 1915 A. J. Herbertson, one of Patrick Geddes’s collaborators, wrote that ‘it is not merely a passive environment, a theatre of human action of which we must know the stage properties. It is something alive, active, not merely letting man act on it, but vigorously reacting on man’ (Matless 1992: 467). This encapsulates Geddes central conception of folk-work-place. The Vague view suggests that the location of stages, Subterania or the Carnival, connected historically to Rachman and Christie, to the 19th century ‘piggeries’ and 20th century fascists, to Teddy boys, and Mosleyite racists, creates a ‘mood’ and ‘firm identity’ of place (Ackroyd, 2000). In the direct references to place in songs by the Clash, and Dire Straits lyrics, in Jimi Hendrix’s death in the ambulance speeding away from his Landsdowne Crescent flat or Lemmy’s drinking habits in the ‘Alex’ pub, and in Bob Marley’s arrest in the Ladbroke Grove police station place does appear to vigorously react upon man. However as we can associate all of these musicians with many other places—Jamaica or Brixton as examples—then it may be unwise to follow the path to a geographical determinism along with Debord, Geddes, Ackroyd and company. Alan O’Connor has argued that there are recognisable punk scenes in North American cities such as Toronto and Washington, DC. Utilising the anthropological concept of habitus, he mentions punk as a musical subculture alongside ‘shared punk houses’ and ‘organised urban geographies’ (O’Connor, 2002: 226). The strength of the Vague approach, when seen against such resolutely academic endeavours is its multiplicity and breadth. Tom Vague might be a creature of the original English punk ‘scene’ but his musical interests are geographically rather than stylistically specific. The Vague path to musical heritage is a little less deterministic, and more open to inclusivity and cooperation with an array of disparate entities from the community-centred HISTORYtalk workshops to collaborations with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, whilst the history of confrontation that he narrates becomes necessarily less threatening once it is just that—history. The spatial aspects of place remain but the temporal affects on place render past danger zones as present-day colourful scenes of (topend estate agent) action, an exotic but remote cultural heritage, a bit of edgy glamour for the future Tory government ministers like David Cameron and George Osborne, who once resided in its hallowed dale. Biological determinists like Patrick Geddes describe place as creating people just as soil affects the seeds of future flowerings. Without the psychogeographical histories of figures like Tom Vague we might be forced to conclude that the gentrified Notting Hill is ripe ground for ‘Notting Hill the movie, part 2’ not for a new millennium’s punky-reggae. As Laam Hae has suggested ‘the wilder version of nightlife’ can be ‘increasingly purged out of gentrifying neighborhoods’ with this ‘wilder’ musical culture only remaining ‘as an image, a simulacrum of the neighborhood’s sub-cultural history’, the ‘communities that produced’ it and ‘its spaces’, ceasing ‘to exist’ (Hae, 2012: 32). Perhaps, however, the ‘humanisation of time’ that Vague represents will be slightly less bleak, and will show evidence of echoes and a ‘mobocracy’ capable of

Figure 14.1 ‘Portobello Counter Culture Guide’ (designed by Mark Jackson and produced in conjunction with the Portobello Film Festival, 2006), Tom Vague.

Figure 14.2 Cover of Vague fanzine issue number 14, 1983.

220 Alex Lawrey self differentiation and individuality, with as yet untold futures, and untold ‘imponderables’ in the cultural, social, political and musical spheres (Barzun, 1959: 392). REFERENCES Ackroyd, P. (2000, 9 September). ‘In Our Time: London’. Radio 4. Retrieved from BBC ‘In Our Time’ website, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546w3 (accessed 29 August 2011). Barzun, J. (1959). ‘Cultural history: Synthesis’. In Fritz Stern (ed.), The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present. New York: Meridian. Debord, G. (1995). The Society of the Spectacle (D. Smith, trans.). New York: Zone. Geddes, P. (1949). Cities in Evolution. London: Williams & Norgate. Hae, L. (2012). The Gentrification of Nightlife and the Regulation of the City: Regulating Spaces of Social Dancing in New York. London: Routledge. Hall, P. (1996). Cities of Tomorrow. Oxford: Blackwell. Hart, J. (2004, July–August). A New Way of Walking. Utne Reader. Retrieved from www.utne.com/2004–07–01/a-new-way-of-walking.aspx (accessed 22 September 2012). Hatherley, O. (2011). A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. London: Verso. Herbetson, A. J. (1915). ‘Regional environment, heredity and consciousness’. Geography Teacher 43: 147–153. Jones, C. (2003). ‘Subterranean SOUTHWARK’. Walworth: Past Tense Productions. Kean, H. (2003). ‘The transformation of political and cultural space’. In Gibson, A., Kerr, J., & Seaborne, M. (eds.), London from Punk to Blair. London: Reaktion. Mansfield, P. (2008, 17 August). ‘From riots to our very own Rio’. The Observer. Matless, D. (1992). ‘Regional Surveys and Local Knowledges: The Geographical Imagination in Britain, 1918–39’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 17 (4): 467–480. McDonough, T. (2005). ‘Delirious Paris: Mapping as a paranoiac-citical activity’. Grey Room 19: 6–21. Meller, H. (1980). ‘Cities and evolution: Patrick Geddes as an international prophet of town planning before 1914’. In A. Sutcliffe (ed.), The Rise of Modern Urban Planning 1800–1914 (pp. 199–224). London: Mansell. O’Connor, A. (2002). ‘Local scenes and dangerous crossroads: Punk and theories of cultural hybridity’. Popular Music 21 (2): 225–236. Triggs, T. (2006). ‘Scissors and glue: Punk fanzines and the creation of a DIY aesthetic’. Journal of Design History 19 (1): 69–83. Vague, T. (1997). ‘Entrance to Hipp: An historical and psychogeographical report on Notting Hill’. Vague 29. London: Vague. Vague, T. (1998). ‘London psychogeography, Rachman, riots and Rillington Place.’ Vague 30. London: Vague. Vague, T. (2006). ‘Counter Culture Portobello Psychogeographical History’. Retrieved from www.portobellofilmfestival.com/talkpics/talk-vague06.html (accessed 18 April 2013). Vague, T. (2008). ‘Notting Hill History Timeline 17 Subterania Late 1980s’. KCCHG. Retrieved from www.vaguerants.org.uk/wp-content/pageflip/upload/TL/timeline chap17.pdf (accessed 20 September 2012). Vague, T. (2009). ‘50 Years of Carnival 1959–2009’. Vague 54. London: HISTORY talk/RBK&C/Vague.

15 Unveiling Memory Blue Plaques as In/tangible Markers of Popular Music Heritage Les Roberts and Sara Cohen

MAKING MEMORY CONCRETE In the summer of 2012 four plaques were created to commemorate important sites of popular music heritage in England. One marked the venue where The Jam performed in Canterbury in 1978, which was the first gig ever attended by a wide-eyed young mod and his friend. Another paid tribute to an influential record shop in the north Kent coastal town of Whitstable, where several years earlier a fledgling music fan had bought his first-ever record. This was a second-hand single (costing five pence) by the glam rock singer Gary Glitter, a performer who since being convicted for child sex offences in the late 1990s has become someone most people would prefer to forget than remember. The 1970s were also commemorated by a plaque marking the site of a London teenager’s first and last experience of attending a disco. Another recalled the family home where many of her first musical memories had taken root, impressions that themselves bore the imprint of a wider musical and family heritage in the form of the records played by her father, ranging from Beethoven, Shirley Bassey, to the Arabic songstress Um Khultum (see Figure 15.1). These plaques were created in response to a series of plaque unveilings and other popular music heritage initiatives in England. In July 2012 a plaque was installed on a property in London’s Heddon Street marking the site where David Bowie had been photographed for the cover of his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It followed a spate of commemorative plaques honouring popular musicians in London in recent years, although this latest marked a departure in that it was the first erected for a fictional character. Meanwhile, the development of a popular music heritage plaque scheme in Birmingham was one of the recommendations of a report published in February 2012 by Birmingham City Council. This idea was partly inspired by the 2-Tone trail and series of plaques erected in nearby Coventry in 2009, which memorialised local bands such as The Specials and The Selecter who were part of the West Midlands ska revival scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later in 2012, the region’s music heritage industry was given a further boost by calls to rename Birmingham airport the Ozzy Osbourne International Airport in honour of

222 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen

Figure 15.1 “Plaques” created by the authors to commemorate important sites of popular music heritage in England.

the Black Sabbath singer and reality television star who was born and raised in the city. ‘Ozzy might not always have been a paragon of virtue,’ one of the backers of the bid was reported to have commented in defence of the idea, ‘but he is a genuine, flesh and blood Brummie’.1 More memorably, 2012 also witnessed the unveiling of popular music memory on a more epic scale in the form of the London Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. This truly global event, which sampled a roll call of British popular music icons and songs from previous decades, was widely hailed as a success.2 This was in no small part down to the fact that, as a personal as much as collective national vision of popular music heritage, for many the ceremony conveyed an authenticity all too often lacking in

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 223 ‘official’ and corporate representations of Britain’s popular music heritage.3 To a large extent a reflection of film director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce’s own personal cultural heritage (Boyle directed and Cottrell Boyce scripted the ceremony), this showcasing of musical memory was not all that dissimilar from heritage initiatives operating on a much smaller scale, such as celebrating a fondly remembered local record shop or a disconcerting encounter with the world of 1970s disco. The differences, such as they are, are chiefly ones of scale, but in other respects, as markers of UK popular music heritage the issues and questions they raise are the same: When does personal musical memory become collective music ‘heritage’? How does this heritage become authorised or validated and why? How representative or ‘inclusive’ can it be as a collective expression of place, history and identity? The desire to make popular music memory concrete, in both literal and figurative senses, thus raises a whole host of questions and dilemmas. As shown by the Olympic example, some expressions of popular cultural memory can become validated and authorised over those that anyone, given the resources and wherewithal to curate them, might otherwise choose to showcase, just as some heritage plaques are given more legitimacy than others. By way of illustration, the online discussion surrounding the playlist chosen for the Olympics opening ceremony was as much focused on what songs or artists weren’t included as those that were. Comments such as ‘What no Smiths? Roses? Joy Division? Elton John? The Fall?’ are typical (in form if not necessarily content) of many of those the event generated in the online media.4 That it is a list that anyone and everyone can legitimately contribute to highlights some of the difficulties involved in shaping an inclusive sense of popular musical heritage. Yet the question of how representative such initiatives are or should be can at times occlude consideration of the extent to which stories and memories are multiple, fragmented, often dissonant, and ultimately reducible to the level of individual experience. Relating this to the more specific case of popular music heritage plaques, it is clear that the perceived merits of one plaque nominee over another is a discussion that has limited purchase or relevance in relation to the more pressing questions surrounding the role and significance of music heritage in the wider social, cultural and economic life of Britain in the 21st century. The subject of music heritage is, as other contributors to this volume attest, one that is vexed. Whether the focus of enquiry is museum curatorship (see Knifton and Leonard, this volume), archival practices (see Baker and Huber; Collins and Long; Henning and Hyder; Withers, all this volume), or the proliferation of plaque schemes and heritage trails (Cohen and Roberts, 2014; Roberts and Cohen, 2014; Roberts, 2014a), the issues at stake are as much connected with the performative and instrumental function of these heritage initiatives (i.e. what it is they do) as those which address questions of inclusivity and representation (what it is they say, and who they say it about). Both are nevertheless deeply interconnected; the semiotic value of,

224 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen for example, Coventry’s 2-Tone trail is integral to the success of its performative role in terms of culture-led urban regeneration policies, local history and identity-building, or the development of a local and regional heritage industry. The heritage plaques referred to at the start of this chapter (Figures 15.1) do not exist other than as digital mock-ups: Photoshopped re-workings of a slice of English heritage. They were not made to be ‘tangible’ or erected at their actual locations (however tantalising this idea might be). They do not exude the collective cultural significance afforded to an ‘official’ plaque, such as the one attached to the Liverpool home of John Lennon, and if they were to be made ‘tangible’ and public they would not attract the same level of (or indeed any) tourist interest. However, as virtual markers of personal musical memory they are nevertheless authentic indices of musical pasts to which we may or may not choose to attach the term ‘heritage’, but which are no less important markers of events or periods in our formative years. Beyond mere nostalgic, personal or narrowly parochial significance, we use them here to prompt reflection on the place of ‘self authorized’ discourses of popular music memory in the increasingly crowded (at least in England) cultural landscapes of music heritage. In this chapter we therefore approach questions of popular music heritage, and plaque schemes in particular, by examining the processes of legitimisation and authority that underpin different music heritage practices in the UK, and reflecting on the dialogic structures and relationships that these reveal. Whilst categories or typologies of popular music heritage are in many respects problematic, and are best understood as part of wider processes of sociocultural dialogue and exchange, the distinction between ‘official’ and ‘self’ authorised heritage helps to highlight the practice of memory and how it is put to work in different social, cultural and institutional contexts. Drawing on the tripartite analytical framework we have elsewhere adapted from Laurajane Smith’s (2006) concept of ‘Authorized Heritage Discourses’ (AHDs) (Roberts and Cohen, 2014), the chapter’s three sections examine music heritage plaques from the perspective of: firstly, official authorized popular music heritage; secondly, self-authorized popular music heritage; and finally, unauthorized popular music heritage. Whilst heritage plaques provide an illuminating and very particular perspective on these processes of authorisation and legitimisation, the analytical framework that we are outlining here has no less bearing on other forms of music heritage practice, such as, for example, those relating to museums, archives and the curation of do-it-yourself (DIY) music heritage resources (see Baker and Huber, 2013). Moreover, with different forms of popular culture increasingly (and often—from a more conservative standpoint—controversially) becoming incorporated into discourses of national cultural heritage, this analysis extends beyond the particularities of popular music culture to potentially encompass wider debates on the heritagization of culture in the UK (Roberts, 2014b).5

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 225 OFFICIAL AUTHORIZED MUSIC HERITAGE Between 2011 and 2013 we participated in an international project entitled ‘Popular Music Heritage, Cultural Memory, and Cultural Identity’, which was based on collaboration between researchers in England, the Netherlands, Austria and Slovenia, and on comparative research conducted in each of these four countries.6 The research team in England consisted of the two authors and Gurdeep Khabra, a doctoral student focusing on English South Asian popular music. The first phase of our research, which provides the basis for this chapter, involved interviewing representatives from the music and media industries and tourism and heritage sector, and examining their role in the construction of dominant histories and heritages of English popular music through films, books, exhibitions and so on. The second phase involved research on audiences and their music memories and histories. Throughout this research we were struck by the increasing number of plaques that had been erected in honour of performers or others associated with popular music, and also that many of the initiatives being developed around UK popular music heritage were typically linked to plaque schemes. Relating these schemes to the analytical framework briefly outlined above, we begin by considering examples of Official Authorized Music Heritage plaques, and the consecration of sites linked to the lives and works of what several interviewees referred to as ‘the usual suspects’.7

English Heritage Blue Plaques Scheme The remit of English Heritage, the UK government’s statuary advisor on the historic environment, is to manage and conserve England’s physical heritage in the form of buildings, monuments, sites and landscapes. The organisation’s Blue Plaques scheme predates the establishment of English Heritage itself (which came into being as part of the 1983 National Heritage Act) and owes its origins to an idea initiated in the 1860s by the Royal Society of the Arts. The first official heritage plaque erected in 1867 as part of the scheme was at the birthplace (since demolished) of the Romantic poet Lord Byron. At the time of writing the Blue Plaque scheme has been suspended for the first time in its 150-year history and possibly for good, as a result of a drastic reduction in the funding English Heritage receives from central government. In July 2013 it was reported that the scheme was ‘in turmoil’ following the resignation of three members of the Blue Plaques panel in protest over the funding cuts.8 Amongst the published criteria that inform English Heritage’s evaluation of names suggested for commemorative blue plaques are requirements that: ‘there shall be reasonable grounds for believing that the subjects are regarded as eminent by a majority of members of their own profession or calling’; ‘they shall have made some important positive contribution to human welfare or happiness’; ‘they shall have had such exceptional and

226 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen outstanding personalities that the well-informed passer-by immediately recognises their names’; and that ‘[w]ithout exception proposals for the commemoration of famous people shall not be considered until they have been dead for twenty years or until the centenary of birth, whichever is the earlier’ (English Heritage, 2010: 144). As with many forms of eligibility criteria, in terms of the application of these guidelines the devil is to be found in the processual detail. A clearer exposition of the evaluative process can be evinced from specific examples of plaque nominations. The case of Keith Moon, the original drummer of the English rock band the Who, highlights some of the issues that are raised when an exponent of ‘popular culture’ is assessed in terms of their ‘official’ national heritage status. Moon died in 1978, and in 2008 a nomination to honour him with a Blue Plaque was rejected by English Heritage. Moon’s reputation as a drummer amongst ‘members of [his] own profession or calling’ is, of course, difficult to ‘objectively’ gauge without widespread consultation amongst other drummers and musicians. It would be even more difficult when confronted with the challenge of weighing up the diverse opinions that would inevitably ensue, and deciding which or whose opinion might be deemed more ‘authoritative’ in the appraisal of Moon’s merits as a music heritage icon. In the case of Moon, while it is not clear what, if any, wider consultation or ‘peer review’ was conducted in the evaluation of the plaque proposal, the views and opinions of the English Heritage panel members represented the officially authorized narrative concerning the legacy and historical significance of the Who drummer. A member of the Blue Plaques Team we interviewed in 2011, argued that as a rock drummer Moon needs to be measured against his contemporaries, citing Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, who died in 1980, by way of example. He explained that for the Blue Plaque Team the questions Moon’s nomination raised were: ‘Is he the most significant drummer of that era?’; ‘Would we commemorate the most significant drummer anyway?’; ‘Has enough time elapsed to determine how much of an original he was?’; ‘How much of his fame is actually connected with the hell-raising [i.e. Moon’s reputation as the wild man of rock]?’ The final judgement as to whether Moon was deemed worthy of honouring lay with the Blue Plaques Panel which is made up of distinguished figures from the arts and academia, such as actor and presenter Stephen Fry, the writer Christopher Frayling, the historians David Cannadine and David Starkey, and the former poet laureate Andrew Motion. The view of the panel was that the case had not been sufficiently proved. Frayling, who was on the panel that met to consider the Moon application, remarked that in order to properly assess whether he was a great drummer ‘you’d have to wait until Ringo Starr is dead and [Phil] Collins is dead . . . We decided that bad behaviour and overdosing on various substances wasn’t a sufficient qualification to get a blue plaque’.9 There are only three English Heritage plaques honouring the life and work of popular musicians, two of which are for John Lennon (at his childhood home in Liverpool, which is now managed by the National Trust, and

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 227 at the Montagu Square flat in London that was the former Beatle’s home for a few months in 1968). The third, for Jimi Hendrix, is erected at the house in Mayfair where he lived in the late 1960s.10 According to the spokesperson from the Blue Plaques Team we interviewed, the decision to award Hendrix a commemorative plaque in 1997 prompted many members of English Heritage to resign in protest, believing that figures such as Hendrix were ‘ephemeral’ in terms of their cultural significance and of dubious moral character, and therefore not the sort of people who the organisation should be seen to be honouring as heritage icons.11 The issue of ephemerality, addressed in part by the 20-year dead rule and considered not to apply in the case of Hendrix, was nevertheless cited by our interviewee as one of the foremost reasons why so few popular musicians have been awarded official heritage status. The factor that marked Hendrix out as something other than ‘just some pop star’ was his likely appeal ‘to a certain kind of classically trained person on the virtuoso level’, which is cited as the probable reason why Hendrix was the first pop musician (and, in view of the current fate of the Blue Plaques scheme, after Lennon, quite possibly the last) to be afforded ‘official’ heritage plaque status in the UK. The English Heritage website provides a list of some 285 plaque schemes throughout the UK. In actuality the number is likely to be even higher than this, but the very fact that there are at least this many already invites consideration of the sustainability or perceived value of the ‘official’ Blue Plaques scheme when compared alongside the many other local heritage initiatives in operation throughout London and the UK more generally.12 They include a diverse array of plaque schemes and heritage practices that exist alongside and independently of, and at times in response to, official processes of evaluation and consecration. There were clearly tensions between these ‘selfauthorised’ and ‘unofficial’ schemes, and official schemes, such as that overseen by English Heritage. From English Heritage’s standpoint, one of the key factors that distinguished its Blue Plaques scheme from the rest hinged on the stringency of evaluative criteria applied to respective applications for heritage award status.13 Although not cited as a factor in the 2013 news reports relating to the suspension or cessation of this scheme, the more culturally and geographically inclusive remit of localised heritage plaque schemes, not to mention—from a Conservative-driven neoliberal policy perspective—their attractiveness as ‘privatized’ or devolved forms of local heritage management, undoubtedly had at least some bearing on decisions made with regard to the cuts levied on English Heritage and its Blue Plaque scheme in particular. SELF AUTHORIZED POPULAR MUSIC HERITAGE The increasing number of ‘self authorized’ music plaque schemes and heritage initiatives in England prompted the tongue-in-cheek examples in our introductory discussion of plaques marking our personal music heritage.

228 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen These examples were in part intended to highlight the ways in which, irrespective of official discourses of cultural heritage management, anyone can claim legitimacy for music heritage practices that draw authority from vernacular memory, identity and habitus, and from an individual sense of musical history or selfhood. Yet the terms ‘official authorized’ and ‘self authorized’ are not presented in this chapter as fixed taxonomic categories into which specific examples and case studies may be neatly slotted. In fact a characteristic feature of self authorized music heritage discourses is the different ways in which they seek to claim or assume ‘official’ status and recognition, howsoever this may be defined in any given instance. As physical and tangible objects, plaques are bound by practical, bureaucratic and organizational challenges and constraints related to material geographies or landscapes of heritage. In this sense they are rather different from the development of online archives and virtual spaces of musical memory, which involve the mustering together of the requisite technological skills and resources, as well as the cultural or intellectual capital to get such DIY initiatives off the ground. When compared to their physical counterparts, the immateriality of virtual sites of popular music heritage allows for a greater degree of flexibility and control in terms of their overall management. As much as we may have wished to, we could not have erected an actual plaque on the facades of buildings that had particular significance for our personal musical pasts. If we had attempted to do so it would have become quickly apparent that we do not possess sufficient legitimacy or authority to prevent its inevitable removal. In this sense the example of heritage plaques helps to foreground issues of inclusivity and democratisation in relation to forms of cultural memory and how they are discursively negotiated and transacted. Keeping in mind the aforementioned point about the interplay between official authorized and self authorized popular music heritage, it is worth briefly revisiting the example of the plaque nomination for Keith Moon. Following the controversy surrounding English Heritage’s ‘snub’14 of the Who drummer, the charitable organisation The Heritage Foundation responded by unveiling its own plaque to Moon,15 an event which helped to raise the profile of the charity as well as prompt further questions as to what or who is legitimately perceived as embodying a nation’s cultural heritage, and how inclusive, representative or relevant ‘official’ institutions in fact are in the management and preservation of the nation’s popular cultural heritage. From its initiation in 1991 (as The Dead Comics Society, later to become Comic Heritage16), the Heritage Foundation developed mainly from the interests and background of its chairman and co-founder David Graham. Graham, a retired marketing consultant, drew effectively on his previous professional skills to establish a plaque scheme designed to raise both greater awareness of the contribution and legacy of British entertainers as well as the profile of the charities which the organisation supports. The plaques commemorate figures from the world of show business and entertainment and are

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 229 commissioned either directly by Graham and the Foundation, or by friends or fans of the celebrity in question. Unlike English Heritage, the Foundation applies no formal eligibility criteria other than that the recipient must be deceased (although there have been exceptions to this ruling too, as with the plaque erected in 2008 to the Bee Gees which was unveiled by former Bee Gee Robin Gibb who, until several months before his death from cancer in May 2012, was president of the Heritage Foundation). In most instances, the minimum requirements are merely that a name has been put forward. As self authorized markers of heritage status the only real obstacles to overcome in terms of authorizing a plaque are bureaucratic and financial: for example gaining, where necessary, approval from local authorities to permanently erect the plaque; or attracting corporate sponsorship to cover the costs of the unveiling (which are typically attended by celebrities and local or national media). Authority is exercised through the intentionality of the individual(s)—whether friends, family members, fans, and so forth— who propose the award. It is self-validating insofar as it is not subject to the official approval of a legitimising institution or panel of experts and peers. The publicity generated by debate surrounding the Keith Moon plaque helped confer the impression of a democratising or inclusive idea of cultural heritage which placed emphasis not so much on the legacy of the musician as professional or virtuoso artist as on his character and personality as a cultural icon with widespread public appeal. When we asked Graham to comment on English Heritage’s more narrow eligibility criteria with regard to plaque nominations, he replied: You’ve got to look at plaques in such a way as to say to yourself: this person deserves a plaque not just because they were top of their profession, whether it was a singer or a sportsman, but maybe because of what they contributed to the fans, to the followers, in terms of charisma and general entertainment, or the fact that they were so loved. Because that’s another criteria.17 However, looked upon as another criteria, the extent to which a musician was loved by his or her fans is a difficult factor to measure. By definition, a popular musician or artist who commands a devoted and loyal fan base is inevitably held with some degree of affection. To the extent that anyone can, in effect, commission and erect a plaque, this more ‘democratised’ or free-for-all model of popular music heritage brings with it the challenges of defining a sustainable and coherent set of eligibility criteria, particularly in light of the fact that, throughout England, more and more local councils, charitable organisations, businesses and trade associations are establishing their own commemorative plaque schemes, often for a variety of different reasons and objectives.18 Viewed against this somewhat variegated backdrop, English Heritage’s insistence on a more formal and rigorous approach to questions of eligibility undoubtedly enhances the perceived ‘heritage

230 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen value’ of an award received under this official (i.e. state-authorized) Blue Plaques scheme as compared to the others. One obvious mechanism by which to lend more weight and authority to self authorized music heritage initiatives is to seek the endorsement of celebrities and public figures. In the case of the Heritage Foundation, the appointment of the aforementioned Robin Gibb and former BBC Radio One disc jockey Mike Read as president and vice president respectively has enabled the charity to significantly enhance its public profile (former presidents have included the prog rock luminaries Rick Wakeman and Phil Collins). The ability to call upon celebrity members, patrons and trustees from the world of show business to attend charity events or plaque unveiling ceremonies lends additional support to the activities of the organisation and bolsters the heritage status of the performer being honoured. Similarly, the appointment of celebrity ‘ambassadors’ helps the charity Music Heritage UK19 to raise its profile and establish vital contacts in the music and cultural industries. As with the Heritage Foundation, Music Heritage UK represents the activities of a single individual, in this case, chief executive and founder James Ketchell, who, like Graham, is a popular music fan convinced that UK’s popular music heritage has not been sufficiently recognised. Ketchell, a professional in the charity sector, is much younger than Graham but nevertheless shares his recognition of the contribution of popular music histories to the UK’s national cultural heritage. As with many of the self authorized music heritage discourses we encountered during our research, it is as much the personal music heritage of individuals such as Graham and Ketchell that was being memorialised as that which was being claimed on behalf of a wider group or nation. One of the chief functions of self authorized music heritage discourses is therefore the performative process of rehearsing and valorising a sense of musical habitus and personal and collective memory: of ‘talkin bout my generation’ (Roberts, 2014b). As well as seeking the endorsement of celebrities or ambassadors, the ability to attract public funding (in the form of grants from the UK Arts Council, for example, or support from the Heritage Lottery Fund), or claim charitable status, can further boost the professional image of a self authorized heritage initiative and blur the distinction between ideas of official and ‘unofficial’. If, for example, a ‘DIY heritage’ initiative such as an online music archive or website (Music Heritage UK being but one of many) is successful in securing funding or developing partnerships with researchers in the higher education sector, this is likely to bring with it a greater degree of legitimacy and authority—and hence more of an ‘official’ heritage management profile— than if it was the product of entirely self-resourced DIY endeavours. The categories of ‘official authorized’ and ‘self authorized’ are thus not static indices of practices that otherwise operate independently from each other. They are part of an ongoing process of negotiation and dialogue in which the value and legitimacy attached to the act of authorization informs their role as part of a wider cultural politics of memory, place and identity.

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 231 UNAUTHORIZING POPULAR MUSIC HERITAGE During the first phase of our research we thus explored ways in which popular music was both officially and self authorised as heritage by various individuals, groups and organisations. As our research progressed, however, a national scandal emerged that occupied the British news headlines for several weeks and prompted us to reflect on the circumstances in which popular music heritage might become deauthorised or unauthorised. In this final section, therefore, we come at the question of authorization of popular music heritage from a slightly different angle by considering the practice and sometime necessity of its negation. The physicality of a music heritage marker such as a plaque or other forms of tribute that link a person with a specific place (e.g. statues, stars in a ‘walk of fame’, gravestones, shrines) means that the subsequent dis-honouring of a once-revered musical icon demands the physical dislocation of the marker, and this too can have its official and self authorized variants. The scandalous and posthumous revelations that the British DJ and broadcaster Jimmy Saville, who died in 2011, had for more than 50 years been a serial sexual offender and paedophile resulted in a comprehensive programme of official erasure of his memory from public life. Repeats of the long-running BBC popular music programme Top of the Pops, on which Savile regularly appeared (he presented the first-ever episode in 1964), were summarily pulled from the schedules once full details of his crimes became known in October 2012. A plaque that had been erected soon after Savile’s death at his former home in North Yorkshire by Scarborough Civic Society (and which was thus a ‘self authorised’ heritage plaque) was removed by the local authorities who also stripped Savile of all other honours that had been bestowed on him over the years. This official gesture of ‘unauthorizing’ and revoking Savile’s former heritage status followed on from the display of more ‘unofficial’ gestures in the form of graffiti that had been daubed on the memorial plaque. Alongside the words ‘philanthropist and entertainer lived here’ had been added ‘paedophile’ and ‘rapist’. In addition to this, and to complete the official dishonouring of the former television star, Savile’s ostentatious headstone was removed and dumped in a skip to be used as landfill, leaving the body lying in an unmarked grave.20 Although the circumstances surrounding the removal of memorial stones and plaques are, in this particular case at least, the exception rather than the rule, the example nevertheless provides a good illustration of the rationale and efficacy of stricter eligibility criteria (such as English Heritage’s 20-year dead rule), and the benefits of allowing for a person’s posthumous reputation to be more reliably assessed over time. In the case of Savile, despite boasting a long and illustrious career, a reputation as a devoted charity worker, as well as, in 1990, the bestowal of a knighthood from the Queen, in the end his reputation was decisively undone in a relatively short period of time after his death. The democratised clamour of short-term public opinion,

232 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen or the self-valorizing that underpins many cultural heritage initiatives, are themselves no guarantors of value or the kind of legacy that might warrant official recognition.21 Unauthorizing popular music heritage can thus encompass the official mechanisms by which honours are stripped and memorial stones removed but it can also take the form of critical perspectives applied to the general notion and practice of ‘heritage’ itself, and ways in which it is in some way confronted, subverted or circumvented. Applying such perspectives to the example of plaques is to question the validity of this particular practice of marking sites of popular music heritage and to challenge the normative heritage discourses that, in the UK at least (Smith, 2006: 134; Smith and Waterton, 2009: 297), reduce the inherent impalpability of memory to the a priori logic of immanent tangibility: the artefactual and material objects intended to establish an ‘authentic’ link with the history of a particular person or place. However, as Dean MacCannell has argued, while the ‘marker’ functions as a means of site recognition, signifying a place as a site of interest and potential touristic/heritage attraction (e.g. the site of the Marquee Club where Keith Moon performed with The Who), it does this at the cost of displacing or obliterating the actual site by processes of its own signification. In other words, the marker becomes the object, not the thing signified (1976: 109–133). A rather curious illustration of this may be found in relation to another example of heritage markers removed due to the precipitous fall from grace of high-profile figures from popular music and the music industries. The Cavern Wall of Fame in Mathew Street, Liverpool was unveiled in 1997 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the original Cavern Club which was located nearby. Engraved across the surface of each brick in the wall is the name of a specific band or artist who played at the club from its opening in 1957. In 2008 two of these bricks were removed due to the separate convictions for child sex offences of former glam rocker Gary Glitter and the producer, musician and pop impresario Jonathan King. To ‘mark’ the veiling or erasure of memory which the removal of the bricks was intended to symbolically enact, a brass plaque was erected on the Wall of Fame which read: ‘Two performers who played the Cavern Club between 1957 and 1973 have had their bricks removed’, thus naming and shaming the two disgraced performers. The double semiotic bind that comes with marking sites of absence is, in this case, made all the more explicit by drawing greater attention to the fact that these two performers did in fact play at the Cavern Club than would otherwise have been the case had the bricks either been left in place or removed without the attendant process of marking. In this example, therefore, the erasure of memory—the purposeful casting of these pariahs into oblivion (Augé, 2004)—reflects not so much a social process of forgetting but of redefining moral boundaries and of punitively shaming those who have transgressed or who have in some way sullied the music heritage map of Liverpool. The act of unauthorizing music heritage

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 233 can thus take the form of a conspicuous dishonouring. Whereas, for those responding in an ‘unofficial’ or self authorizing capacity the more desired intent may be to erase more completely any recollection of these individuals, or to give voice to their own (untrammelled) thoughts and feelings. This can perhaps be inferred from the attempt made by a passer-by to scrape or gouge out Gary Glitter’s name from the Wall of Fame plaque (see Figure 15.2). While the idea of unauthorized popular music heritage can be explored in a number of different ways—not least those that challenge the very idea of popular music as heritage (Roberts, 2014b)—these take us beyond the remit of the present discussion. By focusing on how sites of popular music heritage can be not only marked but unmarked, and how this heritage can be self and officially authorised as well as unauthorised, our aim is to highlight the relationships and dynamics underpinning the social and cultural production of music memory. Considering music heritage practices as part of a dialectical process of negotiation and contestation (see Figure 15.3) helps to provide clearer insights into some of the motivations and sociocultural uses (Smith, 2006) of heritage, and thus to more effectively evaluate the wider role and significance of popular music heritage in constructions of place, history and local and/or national identity. As we have seen, whether the erection of a commemorative plaque to, for instance, the Who’s former drummer represents an ‘official’ or ‘unofficial’ marker of popular music heritage proves not especially useful in terms of understanding how heritage functions and performs as part of specific popular music discourses. If seen only in terms

Figure 15.2 Plaque fixed to the Cavern Wall of Fame, Liverpool.

234 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen

Figure 15.3 Diagram illustrating music heritage practices as part of a dialectical process of negotiation and contestation.

of representing a populist or unofficial corrective to the official ‘snub’ of the English Heritage panel, then wider questions surrounding the performativity and intentionality of popular music heritage remain critically overlooked. Similarly, factoring into the equation examples of music ‘memory work’ (Samuel, 1994: xii) that articulate an altogether different understanding of ‘heritage’ or which undermine (or seek to) the discursive foundations on which ‘popular music heritage’ is precariously assembled can highlight other, more critical and creative ways of engaging with and practicing popular music histories. During the second phase of our project involving research on popular music audiences, it became clear that the vast majority of those who participated in this research did not consider ‘heritage’ to be a term that was relevant or appropriate for popular music or for their own personal musical past.22 Most referred instead to notions of music ‘inheritance’ or to ‘influences’ they could trace back and forth, whether through record collections or YouTube. Thus despite the authorizing claims of the music heritage industry (whether official or self authorized), just how meaningful authorized popular music heritage discourses are in terms of how individuals’ celebrate and curate their own musical memories, or exactly

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 235 how they might inform or relate to personal ideas of heritage, memory and identity, is by no means self-evident. As we have argued elsewhere (Roberts and Cohen, 2014), working alongside, or in some cases in opposition to, authorized forms of popular music heritage there exist a set of vernacular heritage practices that can provisionally be described as ‘unauthorized’ but which are in all other respects not really conceived of as ‘heritage’ at all. That is, they reflect processes of engagement with musical pasts that draw on as well as contribute to established and emergent educational or archival resources, and that appropriate the otherwise limitless reservoirs of popular music inheritance as precursors to exploration, innovation and creativity, and not merely as excavated relics of a memorialised past. In this respect, popular music ‘heritage’ is a form of memory work encompassing everyday social, cultural and pedagogic practices, and a process of tracing influences, connections, and ‘inheritance tracks’, or of mapping or navigating the diasporic web of music cultures extending across and beyond local, regional and national boundaries of place and identity. The ways in which audiences routinely engage with popular music histories suggest, therefore, that it is not so much the concept of ‘heritage’ that productively lends itself to ongoing analysis and debate in this area, but the altogether more diffuse theoretical terrain that encompasses the fields of personal and cultural memory. Accordingly, when approaching the different ways in which popular music memory work is practised, a productive distinction can be drawn between what we have elsewhere described as heritage-as-object (or Big-H Heritage) and heritage-as-praxis (little-h heritage) (Roberts and Cohen, 2014: 17). If the cultural heritage of British popular music can be likened to a landscape, then the Big-H/heritage-asobject music map of Britain represents a space dotted by markers (such as plaques) that demand no more engagement other than that which is instrumental to the production and consumption of a heritage or touristic gaze (Urry, 1990; Crang, 1994; Roberts, 2014a). The little-h/heritage-as-praxis music map, on the other hand, is a space composed not of fixed points but of the music pathways or journeys embedded in the flux and flow of everyday life, culture and creativity (Crouch, 2010). Heritage-as-praxis, therefore, connotes a more performative, embodied, and processual understanding of popular musical memory work, whereas, as Crang argues, conceptualising heritage as an object ‘freezes the processes through which users animate heritage . . . [leaving] the object in a static space from which temporality has been drained . . . There is no Heritage-qua-object ‘out there’; heritage exists only in the ways it is enacted’ (1994: 342, 351). During the 1980s there was fierce criticism of the emerging UK ‘heritage industry’ and subsequent creeping heritagisation of the arts and cultural sectors (Wright, 1985; Hewison, 1987; cf. Hartog, 2005). Three decades on the impacts of this, and the permeation of heritage management into hitherto untouched areas of cultural life such as popular music, have arguably been compounded not so much by the policies of official heritage institutions such as English Heritage or the National Trust, but by the growing

236 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen legions of DIY and self authorized heritage practitioners who have sought to exploit the opportunities and elisions of the rapidly expanding cultural heritage industry. This is not to suggest that the idea of popular music as heritage is unaccountably retrograde or that it discounts the possibility of a progressive cultural politics of heritage and ‘democratised’ public history (Samuel, 1994: 238). What is does alert us to, however, is the importance of paying critical attention to the processes of legitimacy that underpin specific forms of music heritage practice (outlined here in terms of ‘official’, ‘self-authorised’ and ‘unauthorised’), and that, by extension, popular music heritage need not always be just about Heritage.

NOTES 1. Retrieved from www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/birmingham-airport-couldbe-named-ozzy-1507939 (accessed 19 March 2013). ‘Brummie’ is a colloquial term referring to the people and dialect of Birmingham. 2. For a snapshot of international responses to the opening ceremony, see www. theguardian.com/media/2012/jul/28/world-media-london-olympic-openingceremony; www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19238284 (accessed 2 January 2014). 3. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/29/london-2012-openingceremony-reviews (accessed 11 July 2013). 4. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jul/27/olympics-openingceremony-british-pop?newsfeed=true; see also www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ olympics/9341231/London-2012-Olympics-the-full-musical-playlist-for-theOlympic-opening-ceremony.html (accessed 20 March 2013). 5. A case in point is the debate sparked by the National Trust’s decision, in collaboration with Channel Five television, to open up the reality TV ‘Big Brother House’ to the general public. The National Trust is a heritage organisation more commonly associated with stately homes (although they also manage the former Liverpool homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney). Commenting on the Trust’s decision on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former politician Anne Widecombe remarked: ‘I’m rather saddened by this. I do think something has to stand the test of time before you can seriously call it heritage. I don’t think it needs to be tawdry and celebrity-obsessed. There are lots of candidates around that I think you could choose for this sort of exercise’. ‘Big Brother Meets the National Trust’, The Telegraph, 10 September 2013: www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/big-brother/10299617/Big-Brother-meetsthe-National-Trust.html (accessed 12 September 2013). 6. The project was based on collaboration between Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Universities of Liverpool and Ljubljana, and Mediacult, Vienna, and we would like to thank HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) for supporting it, Gurdeep Khabra and our project partners and all the research participants. 7. This is term used by Andy Linehan, the Curator of Popular Music at the British Library Sound archive, with reference to the burgeoning Beatles heritage industry. The music historian Mykaell Riley also used this term to describe musicians who retain a dominant and ubiquitous presence in official narratives of popular music history (interviews conducted by Les Roberts with Andy Linehan and Mykaell Riley, March and April 2011). 8. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10158413/Blue-Plaque-schemein-turmoil-as-a-quarter-of-panel-resign.html (accessed 4 July 2013).

Unveiling Memory: Blue Plaques 237 9. ‘The Who’s Keith Moon to be honoured with “blue plaque” ’, The Guardian, 2 February 2009. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/02/ who-keith-moon-blue-plaque (accessed 14 April 2011). 10. In December 2013 it was reported that the Heritage Lottery Fund would be announcing a £1.2 million grant to restore the flat to its 1968 appearance and open it as a permanent museum devoted to Hendrix’s life, work and musical legacy, see www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/30/jimi-hendrix-londonflat-museum (accessed 2 January 2014). 11. Dissenting voices within English Heritage were highlighted in a BBC2 documentary about the plaque entitled ‘Picture This’ and broadcast on June 5th, 1999 (see Cohen, 2007). 12. Retrieved from www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/p-t/plaquesregister.pdf (accessed 4 July 2013). 13. On the Blue Plaque FAQ page on English Heritage’s website, it explains that ‘The plaques erected by the (Royal) Society of Arts, the London County Council, the Greater London Council and English Heritage are sometimes termed “official” and constitute the capital’s blue plaques scheme. Many other groups have erected their own plaques separately from the “official” scheme, often using very different criteria. Plaque schemes are, for example, run by various local authorities, and by organisations such as the Heritage Foundation, the Transport Trust and the Nubian Jak Community Trust.’ Emphasis added. Retrieved from www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/ faq/ (accessed 4 July 2013). 14. Retrieved from www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/keith-moongets-plaque-at-last-despite-english-heritage-snub-1522532.html (accessed 8 July 2013). 15. The plaque was unveiled in March 2009 at the site of the Marquee Club in Soho where The Who often performed in the 1960s. 16. As well as Comic Heritage, the Heritage Foundation now encompasses Musical Heritage, Sports Heritage and Films and Television Heritage. See www. theheritagefoundation.info/aboutus (accessed 23 March 2011). 17. Interview with Les Roberts, 24 June 2011. 18. For example, in a 2012 report published by Birmingham City Council a proposal for a plaque scheme and related tourist trail was put forward by authors of a report exploring popular music heritage in the city. By way of precedent, the report cites the examples of Liverpool, Coventry, Rochdale and Bristol as other UK cities that have also erected plaques honouring popular musicians (see Birmingham City Council 2012, 27–28). 19. Retrieved from www.musicheritageuk.org/ 20. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/21/jimmy-savile-topof-pops; www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-19822384; www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/10/jimmy-savile-headstone-removed (accessed 9 July 2013). 21. A further example that can be cited here is that of Ian Watkins, the singer of the Welsh band The Lostprophets. In December 2013 Watkins was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for child sex offences. The BBC reported that ‘Paving slabs bearing the lyrics of paedophile rock star Ian Watkins in his home town are to be pulled up after a children’s charity called them “tainted” ’. The slabs had been laid in Taff Street in Pontypridd as part of local heritage and regeneration initiatives, see www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25311223 (accessed 2 January 2014). 22. Audiences were invited to complete a central questionnaire hosted on the main project website in Rotterdam and made available in the language of each of the four countries involved, and answer questions about their background and earliest and most notable musical memories, about places and genres

238 Les Roberts and Sara Cohen connected to their music memories, and so on. They were also asked to indicate their willingness to be interviewed, which enabled us to follow up on some of the questionnaire responses and explore them in more detail and depth through face-to-face interviews. We received over five hundred responses based on popular music memories in England, thirty of which were explored further in interviews with the individuals concerned.

REFERENCES Augé, M. (2004). Oblivion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baker, S., & Huber, A. (2013). ‘Notes towards a typology of the DIY institution: identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation’. In European Journal of Cultural Studies, pre-published July 2013. doi: 10.1177/1367549413491721 Birmingham City Council. (2012). Destination Birmingham: Birmingham, a Music City. Report of the Leisure, Sport & Culture Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Birmingham City Council. Retrieved from www.birmingham.gov.uk/scrutiny (accessed August 2012). Cohen, S. (2007). Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cohen, S., & Roberts, L. (2014). ‘Heritage rocks! Mapping spaces of popular music tourism’. In S. Kruger & R. Trandafoiu (eds.), The Globalization of Musics in Transit: Musical Migration and Tourism. London: Routledge. Crang, M. (1994). ‘On the heritage trail: Maps of and journeys to Olde Englande’. In Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12: 341–355. Crouch, D. (2010). Flirting with Space: Journeys and Creativity. Farnham: Ashgate. English Heritage. (2010). Celebrating People and Place: Guidance on Commemorative Plaques and Plaque Scheme. London: English Heritage. Hartog, F. (2005). ‘Time and heritage’. Museum International 57 (3): 7–18. Hewison, Robert. (1987). The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline. London: Methuen. MacCannell, Dean. (1976). The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. London: Macmillan. Roberts, L. (2014a). ‘Marketing musicscapes, or, the political economy of contagious magic’. In Tourist Studies 14 (1): 10–29. Roberts, L. (2014b). ‘Talkin bout my generation: Popular music and the culture of heritage’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 262–280. Roberts, L. & Cohen, S. (2014). ‘Unauthorizing popular music heritage: Outline of a critical framework’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 241–261. Samuel, R. (1994). Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. London: Verso. Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Smith, L., & Waterton, E. (2009). ‘The envy of the world? Intangible heritage in England’. In L. Smith & N. Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Urry, J. (1990). The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Wright, P. (1985). On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso.

16 Why I Didn’t Go Down to the Delta The Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism Mark Duffett This is the great state of Mississippi, the most fertile place in America, but conversely one of the poorest too. I’m here because I love the blues, but as someone who is interested in food, I’ve been fascinated by the much-loved Southern dishes . . . This is a journey into the land of the Delta blues, guided by the tunes and the words I’ve enjoyed for the best part of fifty years. It’s also about the myth surrounding this powerful music, a journey to find out what’s real and what ain’t. (Stein, 2011)

On November 30, 2011, the television channel BBC HD aired a documentary in which a popular celebrity chef from the UK visited a series of music heritage sites in the Mississippi Delta. Called Rick Stein Tastes the Blues, the documentary drew together Stein’s love for Southern soul food and blues music. Stein had been a blues fan since the early 1960s and his visit to the South might well have taken place at a similar time to my own. I visited Memphis in September that year and saw a rockabilly band play in a club on Beale Street. There I encountered another blues fan who enthusiastically told me that he had just been down to the Delta and stayed at the Shack Up Inn. He recalled sitting on a front porch and listening to his iPod, just feeling the blues. One response to the idea that the highlight of your vacation is listening to recorded music, alone, on the porch of a reconstructed shack, would be to see it as a rather sad activity. However, when Stein visited the Inn for his television documentary he said, ‘What better place to put you in the mood?’1 He also visited a variety of sites across the region—the Clarksdale Blues Museum, Dockery Farm, a juke joint, the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland and the grave of Robert Johnson—places of rural poverty for Mississippi’s black population connected to the life stories of key blues musicians. Both the television chef and Beale Street blues fan were representative blues pilgrims, a group more actively engaging in heritage than many fellow travelers. Both affirm what Jennifer Ryan (2011) has described as the ‘fetishization of poverty’ that characterizes consumption of the folk blues. Given this apparent fetishization, my concern in this chapter is not to ask,

240 Mark Duffett as Stephen King (2011) did, how the Delta business community could turn a symptom of economic and racial oppression into an economic asset. Neither is it to debunk myths of the blues, nor show how the perceptions of current working musicians are at odds with those of their audiences (see Wald, 2005; Ryan, 2011). Neither will I offer an ethnographic study of blues tourism nor claim to speak for individual listener’s experiences. Instead I wish to theoretically locate the role of fans who visit heritage sites like those in Clarksdale and Leland. What does it mean for pilgrims to taste the blues? This chapter aims to create a working hypothesis that frames blues pilgrims as historical and ethical subjects. In order to understand a cross-racial, cross-class and often transnational activity, we need to contextualize the blues as a music genre in the racial history that gave rise to it and examine the context in which the cultural practice of blues tourism continues to flourish. How does the context for pilgrimage facilitate feelings that affirm and verify the experience of tourists? Why does the history of economic injustice that has continued to define the Delta undergird the structure of feeling that attracts visitors to heritage sites? What follows will explore the role of blues pilgrims by working through their different layers of cultural embeddedness. Using Stein’s documentary as a reference point, I will piece together a framework of analysis from relevant ideas, a framework that I hope will act as a way to understand blues tourism as pilgrimage. WHITE MAN’S BURDEN In 1974, the late Winthrop Jordan, then a professor of history at the University of Mississippi, published a book called White Man’s Burden. It explored the development of American race relations during the slavery and postslavery eras. The volume’s back jacket deplored ‘the brutality of authorities who castrated and mutilated blacks as punishment for crimes’. It continued by saying that the book was an ‘account of the history of the foundations upon which modern America has been constructed’. The title Jordan used was an indication of the burden of guilt that white readers might—and perhaps should—feel as the descendants of those who committed racist atrocities in the name of profit and the nation. In the documentary Examined Life (Taylor, 2008), Cornel West put the issue succinctly: ‘America is a very fragile democratic experiment predicated on the dispossession of the land from indigenous peoples and enslavement of African peoples’. In the wake of generations of rapacious exploitation of black labour, the social conscience of white people forms part of the context within which the blues is consumed and understood. The music arose and developed during the decades in which overt racism justified by primitivism gave way to liberal humanist perspectives. This has meant that primitivist conceptions of the blues have become transformed into awe at creativity in the face of social rejection. As

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 241 musicologists continually linked the blues to its imputed roots in Africa, at various times the music could be perceived by listeners as a primitive howl and/or a way to indirectly lament exploitative social conditions, with the two not necessarily in contradiction.2 Because music genres refuse the temporal closure of narrative form, attention to them can reveal the limitations of historical explanations based on linear time. Describing Jacques Rancière’s contestation of linear temporality, Kristin Ross summarizes the ways in which history rarely conforms to neat periodization: But in the history of social formations, there is a multiplicity of times, some of which present themselves as repetitions, while others effect tesseracts, wrinkles that join the ancient with the contemporary—different times, as Rancière puts it, ‘telescoping’ into one another. Thus the future appears in the present, the present repeats the past, and what some call anachronisms can inhabit an era. (Ross, 2009: 27) The past can evade our linear narratives and popular representations of it can also ignore linearity. Annette Kuhn’s notion of memory work offers a useful perspective here from which to consider heritage tourism. For Kuhn, ‘memory is a process, an activity, a construct . . . [that] has social and cultural, as well as personal resonance’ (Kuhn, 2010: 298). This means that memory is not just the province of individuals; it is institutionalized, socially managed and performed by whole communities. Moreover, Kuhn argues, the work of collective remembering is embodied in memory texts that can eschew a linear form: The memory text is typically a montage of vignettes, anecdotes, fragments, ‘snap-shots’ and flashes that can generate a feeling of synchrony: remembered events seem to be outside of any linear time frame or may refuse to be easily anchored to “historical” time. In the memory text, events often appear to have been plucked at random from a paradigm of memories and assembled in a mode of narration in which causality is not, if at all present, a prominent feature. (Kuhn, 2010: 229) Tastes the Blues is arguably such a memory text, created under commercial conditions to document one pilgrim’s journey through the Delta. Rather than offering a chronological history of the genre, it is guided by Stein’s own fandom. White liberal interpretations of the blues have tended to focus on the idea of personal pain stemming from the racial oppression that more or less directly licensed social injustice, economic hardship and its bitter harvest of infidelity, family trauma and depression.3 Expressing this perspective, Rick

242 Mark Duffett Stein discussed with a black restaurant owner how fried chicken was lunchpacked for segregated blacks who were forbidden to dine in public restaurants and he exclaimed: That is why the blues is so powerful, and the food, because the songs are so filled with that pent-up emotion for the hard times, and their love for the food and all that. We get it. That’s why we come to Mississippi! In comparison, African American blues performers have often expressed a less individualistic view. The working-class Southern musician Roosevelt Sykes explained: A blues player ain’t got no blues, but he plays for the worried people. He don’t really have no blues when he play ’em but he has got the talent to give to worried people. See they enjoy it. Like the doctor works from outside of the body to inside of the body. But the blues works . . . on the insides of the inside, see. (reproduced in Miller, 2010: 75) Both the personal pain (Stein) and communal pleasure (Sykes) interpretations have their own sense of audience engagement, their own sources of authenticity and their own locales (the porch and the juke joint). Both interpretations circulate and intermingle in descriptions of the emotional charge of the genre and both focus listeners on the social predicament of the black community. Both statements lay bare a sensibility that in turn one might expect to manifest guilt on the part of visitors who have come to enjoy music forged in shared suffering. Unlike countercultural travelers to places like the Haight-Ashbury and Greenwich Village in the 1960s, though they may also listen to live music, Delta blues pilgrims are exploring something that happened well before their time. In that sense, the music has become perceived as a memorial to social trauma; a way of ‘remembering’ social hardships that the visitors did not actually experience. The blues-as-pain perspective reflects the so-called ‘mouldy fig [purist] mentality [which] insisted that real bluesmen were old, illiterate, blind, toothless’ (Middleton, 1990: 143). Although the Delta blues is now a much broader musical and cultural form than the ‘mouldy fig’ notion suggests, the idea still holds sway in structuring the region as a heritage location. Speaking to Mark Humphrey in Frets magazine in 1969, Memphis-born guitar legend Johnny Shines—a figure who was born in 1915, had his boom years as a recording artist in the late 1940s, and was rehabilitated by the folk movement of the 1960s—described the blues as a kind of interracial burlesque: Everybody thinks of the bluesman as bein’ stupid, illiterate, not able to think for himself, that’s why he’s singing these dirty, lowdown songs.

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 243 They don’t realize that THEY’RE the one that’s stupid because they have been taught that these songs was dirty, they were filthy, they was no good . . . Because you read a lot about the conditions in which the blues came about. And your parents probably didn’t read about it and didn’t care about it. They didn’t want to hear about the nigger because he’s just a dirty, lowdown, nasty, filthy, diseased NIGGER. And if you don’t do somethin’ for him, he’s gonna starve. They didn’t realize this nigger was takin’ care of HIM. It’s all twisted around . . . I AM the privileged character. I’m the one wearing the crown, even though it don’t show. I’M the king, see. (Shines quoted in Tracy, 1999: 12; emphasis in original) For Shines, white audiences have been taught to equate the blues with subalterity and to forget the music as a mode of commerce. As Tastes the Blues reaches its climax, Stein positions the blues as a form of social expression: ‘A lot of it was about getting away from the Delta because everybody was so poor.’ Tastes the Blues does not just mention Stein’s fandom as he journeys across the Delta. Instead he affectively performs it on behalf of his viewers. Fandom itself becomes an entry ticket into locations where he might otherwise have felt out of place. The Shack Up Inn’s FAQ page reads, ‘the Ritz we ain’t . . . brochures? Hell no.’4 It also adds that a shack is a small, crudely built cabin and that to ‘shack up’ means to live in sexual intimacy without being married. The Inn offers blues fans a physical heritage environment in which to romanticize grinding poverty in a context in which the music can be seen as a form of redemption. In a recent piece on Elvis fandom (Duffett, 2013), I argued that cycles of capital accumulation in Memphis after 1977 have affected many heritage locations. I suggested that Elvis fans identified with specific places at particular times within an imagined, chronotopic container (Memphis 1945–1977) and that such places have since been either actively preserved, recycled, fallen stagnant or disappeared. In contrast, the whole of the Delta region can be understood as an extended heritage site, a constellation of places, both well known and lesser known, that are, by definition, located on the fringe of modernity and have been marginal to cycles of capital accumulation. These places were initially preserved through stagnation, although some have been recycled specifically by heritage ventures. The absence of industrial urbanization contributes to the Delta’s signature feel as a timeless, marginal and desolate landscape. To appreciate its resonance, we need to consider how knowledge of the genre helps to organize fans’ understandings. My argument in this section is that the blues has become used to chart social distance. The shift towards folk blues was arguably part of a larger project in which the American South was treated as an orientalist construct by the North. If we put together David Jasson’s (2003) argument that the USA perceived its Southern states through a process of ‘internal orientalism’ and Anahid Kassabian’s description of ‘the musical orientalisms of

244 Mark Duffett the nineteenth and early twentieth century’ (2004: 216), it is possible to talk about a gradual habilitation of the blues—its framing, distribution, understanding—as part of an eventual exoticizing process. In this sense, the genre does not just define a set of musical expectations (shared conventions), idioms (expressive languages) or tastes (affective sensibilities); it also demarcates a field of social politics at the centre of a popular form. The blues is more than a musical style. It has become an associated popular paradigm: a way of seeing the world. More specifically, Delta blues is not just any kind of blues. It is a very specific and dominant form of blues as ontological project. While the blues began as a carefully composed, vaudeville form—I am thinking here of W. C. Handy’s ‘Memphis Blues’, ‘St. Louis Blues’, and Mamie Smith’s ‘Crazy Blues’—once it became field recorded, the genre was quickly positioned as a racialized musical idiom.5 In other words, rather than emerging from an African musical tradition, the blues can be seen as a musical stylization, the definition of which entailed a certain amount of repression to locate it as a Southern, black, subaltern, masculine form of expression exemplified in the legendary figure of the lone blues man. Its development involved processes of selection that were geographic (focused on the South), musical (hiding early forms and inconvenient influences) and social (drawing attention to subalterity, masculinity and blackness, and neglecting other sources of input).6 At the same time that black populations were rapidly urbanizing, the new music was gradually associated with a certain conception of primitivism. In 1900, 90% of black Americans lived in the South, most of them on farms. America’s urban population was only 22% black. By 1930 this figure had almost doubled, so that African Americans constituted 40% of the urban population. The shift was not just geographic, but was associated with black people proactively asserting a new place in American society, assuming their role as a modern, urbanized population who aspired to social mobility (see Leland, 2004: 75–76). John Lomax was originally from Texas. By the time he recorded Leadbelly in Angola State Penitentiary, Louisiana, in 1933, his aim was to find ‘the Negro who has had the least contact with jazz, the radio, and with the white man’ (quoted in Filene, 2000: 51).7 Such claims positioned the folk blues not only as a genre that signified race and class, but also as a marker of social distance. Within the shared frames of evolutionism and primitivism that animated early 20th century discussion, this social distance was understood hierarchically in ways that enabled racist interpretations, even though the recognition of blues as a racialized form of creativity also supported more liberal perspectives. Primitivism remains sedimented in recent representations of the Delta blues. In Rick Stein Tastes the Blues, music expert Bill Abel played a diddley bow by rubbing a taut wire with a beer bottle on the cypress wood wall of a share cropper’s shack. Stein explained: ‘To me, this raw sound epitomized the Delta blues . . . I can hear that sound right through to the present day, something like Led Zeppelin’s

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 245 “When the Levee Breaks.” You can hear that slightly doomy slide and almost feel the sultry heat and maybe a storm coming in. It’s just straight there. [Points to own chest.]’ (Stein, 2011) Stein presents a ‘storm and stress’ model of subjectivity here in which bad weather is a metaphor to signify emotional dread.8 A diddley bow was also played on Robert Palmer’s 1991 documentary Deep Blues, which was subtitled ‘a musical pilgrimage to the crossroads’ (Mugge, 1991). The instrument does not seem to lose its mythic appeal even though the busker that W. C. Handy famously saw in Tutwiller, for example—a mysterious figure sometimes credited as inspiring the whole genre—played a more ‘advanced’ stringed guitar. The diddley bow lends itself to portrayals of the folk blues precisely because it appears to be the simplest and therefore most primitive instrument in the Delta that can create a blues-type sound. Blues tourism acts as a form of incantation of modern subjectivity: by partaking in the abject horror of generations of rural poverty it establishes the span of social difference between the original musicians and the tourists as a kind of ‘look how far we have come’. Genre rules of the Delta blues in particular mean that it is perceived as an uncommodified culture emerging from the distant past, a perspective that naturally frames the blues as a form of heritage: from the folk, slipping away, in need of preservation. Introducing a typical popular history of the genre, Craig Awmiller (1996: 7–8) invites us to imagine musicians like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly and Son House and ‘perhaps some of the haunting music they left behind . . . for each Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, it is possible that there is another unknown, unrecorded master whose voice will never be heard’. The idea of ‘haunting music’ conveyed in an oral tradition by ‘unrecorded masters’ does important cultural work here because it places the genre as a musical form beyond the machinations of commerce. Stanley Booth captured the idea in an early section of his romanticized account, Rythm Oil: So while we were eating and getting drunk I asked my friend’s English friends if they were enjoying Memphis. The girls, who were paying for their holiday by working as waitresses in a bad Memphis-Italian restaurant, were enjoying Memphis hardly at all, and what they enjoyed least was their customers telling them how good life is down among the magnolias on the Mississippi . . . The girls, one of whom kept falling asleep from pills some of the benighted people of Memphis had given her, wanted to know if I preferred Memphis to Paris, London, Rome, and then left to wait their tables. (Booth, 1991: 15–16) Booth’s portrait of these female tourists is one that suggests they are irresponsible and ignorant. He is then at pains to explain to them the innovations that have contributed to modern life which emerged from Memphis

246 Mark Duffett during an earlier era: supermarkets, Holiday Inns, drive-in diners, and of course the blues itself (Booth, 1991: 16). While his portrait juxtaposes past and present, the slowness of life amongst the magnolias with the frenetic action of the world cities, it also locates the blues as a commodity that informs modern life.9 The unappreciative girls had only ‘heard the blues because people in Memphis (notably Sam Phillips) had found ways to convert these things into groceries’ (Booth, 1991: 16). This notion of the latterday commodification of the blues is not entirely true: early musicians were successful precisely because they understood how to monetize their audiences (see Miller, 2010: 62). Nevertheless, the ambiguous melancholia of the blues has facilitated interpretations that have enabled fans to perceive it as a lament for immediate economic failure as much as a request for money. Indeed, as we know it now the folk blues is not outside of commodification, but is produced through it—whether in the shape of recordings, biographies, documentaries, guidebooks or museum tickets. Indeed, the folkloric tradition is one that lends itself to heritage, as folk culture is conceptualized as constantly on the verge of disappearing even while it is re-created through commercial means. It is seen as authentic, outside of the marketplace, and tainted or destroyed by market transactions. When the origins of the blues are traced back through such places they point to a mystery. Indeed, most claims romantically locate the genre as originally coming from in between places: jukes joints reusing abandoned buildings, swamps, crossroads, railway crossings. The Delta has become a place to find the blues not just because it contains a black population—as do many Northern cities—but also because of its economic marginality. The blues is configured as a kind of resource that is essentially outside of and before industrial modernity. This idea frames the music as a racialized variant of the Southern gothic. The genre then appears exotic to modern society: magical, hypnotic, seductive and redemptive. No wonder, then, that it is sought out by travelers. Many descriptions locate the blues as a natural, organic genre through agrarian metaphors that view Mississippi as the ‘cradle’ of the genre. In the documentary Deep Blues (Mugge, 1991), historian Robert Palmer read out lyrics that located the uniqueness of the region in relation to the natural spectacle of the Mississippi river. This does the work of indirectly speaking about ‘muddy waters’ (black labour): the persistent and fecund, yet troubled and exploited resource that was worked to contribute profits to the region. In Tastes the Blues, Stein rows a canoe with John Ruskey and asks him how the mighty river relates to local music. Ruskey (‘a consummate river man straight out of Daniel Boone’) replies in a language replete with naturalizing metaphors: The river created this very fertile, rich landscape that the blues was born in. The first plantation owners knew they could make gold out of mud, and that was through cotton. It used to be a jungle. This was our—, the

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 247 Amazon of North America. The top soils would average 32 feet and were sometimes as deep as 350 feet, and you can feel that fertility and power in blues music. The river created the landscape that created the blues. (Stein, 2011) In such terms, the Delta is exoticized as a location that is both within America and different to it: a region where natural catastrophe or extreme weather become symbols of a place where time goes by slowly and life remains ‘backwards’ in comparison to the bustle of the world cities. The temporal, social and geographic location of the blues has become emphasized in order to mark social distance between modern listeners and a series of authentic others. WOE ENJOYED GUILT DISPLACED It was Alan Lomax, rather than his father John, who tended to record in Mississippi. In 1933, he visited the Parchman Pentitentiary, Oakley Prison Farm in Jackson, and also Canton, returning to the state again in both the early and late 1940s. The younger Lomax saw field recording as part of a way of documenting and socially facilitating African American musicians. Writing in the 1990s, he framed his song collecting expeditions in retrospect as rescuing the expressions of ordinary, subaltern folk (sharecroppers, drifters) who had been excluded from receiving the rewards of modernity even as the rest of their cohort migrated northward in search of job opportunities. In the preface of his book The Land Where the Blues Began, Lomax explained that they inadvertently exemplified the modern human condition: [Southern blacks were] outcaste people, who were unfairly denied the rewards of an economy they had helped to build. One black response to this ironic fact was to create the blues—the first satirical song form in the English language—mounted on cadences that have now seduced the world . . . The Delta scene was, perhaps, more savage than that in some other parts of the South because it was a sort of industrial frontier . . . Now people everywhere begin to taste the bitterness of the postindustrial period, the Delta blues have found a world audience. (Lomax, 1993: xv) Lomax’s notion of the blues’ appeal is questionable, because blues tourists are not the victims of postindustrial society: they are its benefactors. Those who visit the region are not just lovers of a specific genre; they actualize their interest by following a heritage trail. Collectively, tourists are not simply travelers, but instead they shape local economies by requesting goods and services that cater to personal pleasures that primarily centre on getting

248 Mark Duffett something different to what is at home. Tourism can therefore be seen as a kind of consumerist update of the colonial encounter in which places become destinations with cultures and economies that are profitably reshaped to fit external revenue streams and perceptions, and that can be exploited as such in some cases. Academic literature on tourism therefore discusses the idea of ‘sustainable’ tourism (see, for example, Edgell, 2006; Gossling, Hall and Weaver, 2010). While they are ‘going home’ to the reputed site of origin of the blues, fans are also ‘on tour’, like musicians. They often visit Robert Johnson’s grave as part of their journeys. Stein’s visit involved him leaving a libation to the blues master and recalling, ‘He really loved women’, and a contemporary of his, Johnny Shines, said, ‘Robert treated women like motel and hotel rooms. He used them and then he left them behind’. The statement not only offers a perspective on Johnson’s notorious sexual ethics. It also expresses a sense of transience and potentially an exploitative relationship that is a dimension of tourism itself. Since blues fandom, for some, is consummated by a journey across the South, in the notion of pilgrimage the roles of tourist and fan are intimately entwined. ‘Pilgrimage’ is a word that locates music tourism as a form of religiosity: in other words, while they may be unaligned to a specific religion, blues pilgrims are thought to pursue what could be seen as a religious activity. The religiosity argument uses rhetoric to interpret ordinary cultural practice as ‘religious’ without any objective grounding, so elsewhere I have questioned this interpretation (Duffett, 2003). By thinking about ‘blues pilgrimage’ I am not suggesting that exploring the Delta is a religious practice, however. Rather, popular use of the term draws attention to how some fans use a spiritual rhetoric to define what they feel is a moving experience. While not all tourists are pilgrims, many blues fans have an affective connection to the place which they visit. A pilgrimage is a voyage: a voluntary and temporary journey in which the pilgrim moves out of place, but finds themselves fulfilled in the process of an in situ encounter somewhere else. Pilgrimage locates its destination as an authentic exotic other. It therefore defines the traveler as seeking something that they cannot find at home. In that respect heritage sites—whether ‘natural’ or constructed—can act to materialize parts of the landscape that were previously missing and help to make blues myths function in place at a deep, ontological level. Prominent performers like Dave Stewart and Robert Plant have expressed their fannish appreciation of the blues by participating in high-profile pilgrimages to the Delta. Pursuing the blues trail therefore means following in the footsteps of field recorders, musicians and other ‘pilgrims’ who have previously paid homage to the roots of the blues. While many media representations often presented fans as enthusiastic but ultimately passive participants in media culture, blues fans who visit the Delta as tourists are active precisely as pilgrims. Daniel Boorstin’s (1964: 85) dictum that the role of the tourist ‘is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him’ does not apply. The landscape of Delta blues heritage

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 249 has no one centre and needs to be explored by road transport, encouraging visitors to construct their own journey plans; indeed, King (2011: 15) calls visitors ‘non institutionalized tourists.’ As Fodor’s Rock & Roll Traveller USA explains, ‘The area looks daunting, but with a good road map it’s not difficult to explore, starting at Clarksdale, home of the Delta blues museum, and heading south’ (Perry and Glinnert, 1996: 113). The dispersed and uncoordinated nature of the local tourist industry means that fans usually drive their own rented motor vehicles and actively establish their own tour itineraries informed by guidebooks such as Steve Cheseborough’s Blues Traveling (2004) or Melissa and Justin Gage’s Memphis and the Delta Blues Trail (2009). While this means that such fans can be read as a kind of active audience (see Jenkins, 1992: 293), their actions are generally within the structures and sensibilities established by the genre. To be a blues pilgrim means to visit somewhere that others (working class, African American) were often keen to escape. Delta pilgrimages therefore explore a musical culture connected to hardship that is still available to generational memory, an activity that Foley and Lennon (2000) have called ‘dark’ tourism. Dark tourist practices include anything from a fascination with genocide and atrocity to, according to others, visiting the gravesides of famous people (see Levitt, 2010: 62). In her interesting case study comparison of dark tourist sites, Erika Robb (2009) argued that dark tourists must negotiate a tension between witnessing social injustice and voyeuristically consuming it: Dark tourism will, in some cases, result in the transformation of violence into one more attraction, wedged between more typical touristic activities. When [social] atrocity becomes recreation attraction, visitors are themselves inflicting further violence as they search out unique and ‘authentic’ experiences. Ethically, we must question whether tours undertaken in the name of social justice or global awareness are actually experienced as such or whether they might instead work to mask the recreational, voyeuristic allure of violence. At times, dark tourism can produce ‘recreational grief’ (West, 2004: 11), a form of grief in which mourning the deaths or afflictions of others becomes an enjoyable pastime. (Robb, 2009: 3–4) One way to negotiate the issue is to focus on witnessing through education. At the very least, as Foley and Lennon argue, dark tourism is frequently about this education in the context of commerce: ‘The critical features apparent in the phenomenon . . . [include that] the educational elements of sites are accompanied by elements of commodification and a commercial ethic which (whether explicit or implicit) accepts the visitation (whether purposive or incidental) is an opportunity to develop a tourist product.’ (Foley and Lennon, 2000: 11)

250 Mark Duffett Popular music heritage especially lends itself to this agenda of hybridizing ‘safe’ forms of education and commerce, because its sites and narratives focus on the history of entertainment. Indeed, it is the mix of education and entertainment—the one factor a pretext for the other—that defines Delta tourism. What does it mean, then, to ‘feel’ the blues? ‘Feeling the blues’ opens up a range of questions that are both affective and ethical. Does ‘feeling the blues’ simply mean experiencing a musical pleasure? Or does it mean understanding melancholy and therefore sensing the residue of generations of social and racial injustice? Moreover, can an affluent, white visitor from outside the Delta (and often outside the country) ever ‘feel’ the blues with a sufficient degree of empathy that they can justifiably (dis)place themselves in fellowship with the original folk blues musicians? Dean MacCannell, one of the foremost thinkers on the subject of tourism, has argued that sightseeing should be seen as an ethical practice. In a recent piece he explains: A person can go through life believing in ‘liberty’ without giving any serious thought to it. A tourist can stand in the presence of the Statue of Liberty and still not give much thought to the Meaning of ‘liberty.’ But there is a certain ethical insistence in the act of sightseeing, a demand— even if unmet—to engage the symbolic on its own terms. Much of my own work involves describing the institutional and psychic barriers to this engagement, especially those that have been built up within tourism even as they are ostensibly established to facilitate the tourist/other encounter. (MacCannell, 2012: 186) As MacCannell suggests, unless tourists depart from their destination’s obvious beaten track, they operate within a sanitized bubble. Discussing travel writing, Daniel Kilbride (2011: 340) explains, ‘There can be little doubt that travelers are handicapped by cultural baggage, language limitations, ignorance, outright prejudice, and other barriers militating against candid assessment of host societies.’ Visitors’ identities inevitably enter the mix, raising issues of whether as blues fans they are, in effect, blinded by love or encouraged to learn through their quest for empathy. Blues fans are estranged from a social trauma that they indirectly address by valorizing the associated music. To understand that we need to consider the relationship between learning about poverty and listening to music. On one level, genre fandom itself arguably acts as the sanitizing bubble mentioned by MacCannell: an affective barrier that prevents visitors engaging with the current social and economic realities of the Delta in anything more than a passing or romanticized way. Even as Rick Stein was distanced from the Delta inhabitants’ predicament, however, he found a kind of empathy with their suffering. Our shared conceptions of the blues put musical pleasure and social education hand in hand; each undergirding and affectively

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 251 amplifying the other. As detached subjects, blues pilgrims use their education to empathetically connect with the musicians. In other words, even though their quest for empathy is primarily placed within the context of their own entertainment, they do not compare to the worst examples of Western tourists as ignorant, detached and exploitative subjects. They demonstrate empathy, but their empathy is guided and structured through their musical pleasure as something that adds to it. Crucial here is that the question of guilt or blame for the plight of the bluesmen now seems less able to meet its mark. The listeners are de-centred and detached from any immediate responsibility for others’ hardship. They are a new generation, tourists, often non-Americans too—people from the other side of industrial modernity. Rather like self-appointed crime scene investigators they explore a social trauma when they do not have to do so; their interest in African American culture could therefore be read as an extension of their social responsibility. One element here is that the blues are now a relic of the past and their status as stockpiled memories distances us from confronting their contradictory nature as commodified cries from the margin of modernity. According to the Shack Up Inn’s website: Blues lovers making the pilgrimage to the cradle of the blues, the Mississippi Delta, should not miss the unique opportunity to experience Hopson Plantation, located only three miles from the legendary Crossroads, Highways 49 and 61, in Clarksdale. Immerse yourself in the living history you will find at Hopson. Virtually unchanged from when it was a working plantation, you will find authentic sharecropper shacks, the original cotton gin and see houses and other outbuildings. You will glimpse plantation life as it existed only a few years ago.10 As Robb notes, ‘In Situ’ dark tourism freezes time; temporal stagnation is signaled by the use of antiquated, period appropriate objects, which, while lending an air of realism, might actually work to distance the tourist from the event’ (Robb, 2009: 5). The sharecropper shacks, the diddley bows and even the early Delta recordings themselves are arguably now such period appropriate objects. Another way of mediating any potential collective guilt in experiences of the Delta is defined by experiencing the music itself.11 ‘Feeling the blues’ does some of the cultural work associated with salving diffuse guilt about social injustice in the Delta. It could be argued that blues tourism has to make the music ‘speak’ to negotiate the burden of social injustice in particular ways. As a reviewer for Blues & Soul magazine commented about Stephen King’s academic study of Delta tourism, I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now, ‘Blues fans should stick on a Robert Johnson album, pour themselves a large JD and ice, sit down with this thought-provoking little gem and make their own mind up’.12 The implication here is that fans affective understanding of Johnson’s music— their emotional knowing—might operate to counteract any uncomfortable

252 Mark Duffett truths raised in the book. ‘Feeling the blues’ itself becomes a way to contest those who—supposedly—in their critiques do not recognize the affective resonance of the music and its capacity to change minds. This approach potentially locates the music itself as a cultural form which both documents the suffering of those in the Delta and offers a healing, utopian space, a place where to be a fan means to transcend the social divisions gave rise to horrors of the Delta and at last find community. Music listening therefore becomes a utopian bid for assimilation by white consumers who have, ironically, also preserved conceptions of race and class difference at the heart of the genre. The blues has been canonized as a genre that begins in transit and references those left behind. By charting a path from what was once supposed primitive (imputed roots in Africa) to modernity (the Crossroads), the genre has been used to encourage a perception of black populations as postcolonial subjects. As visitors to the Delta, blues fans explore a heritage experience that they construct before, during and after their visit. By exploring Rick Stein Tastes the Blues as a representative memory text, I have suggested that as dark tourists they actively consume a kind of ‘edutainment’ about the region shaped by their interest in the genre. As pilgrims, they act like crime scene investigators embroiled in the mystery of discovering a line between commerce and its other, a line that simultaneously establishes the suffering of those left behind by modernity and their social distance from visiting pilgrims. The experience of social privilege ultimately allows blues fans a relationship to the genre and its creators that is both hedonist and humanist, empathizing with Richard Wright’s claim that ‘No matter how repressive was the American environment, the negro never lost faith in or doubted his deeply endemic capacity to live’ (Tracy, 1999: 12). In that sense, as dark tourists, blues pilgrims can both distance themselves from and emotionally reclaim the social trauma that they explore. As a way to share concern for racialized creativity in the face of social neglect, blues pilgrimage has become a matter of empathetically hearing of black woe expressed and white guilt displaced by music from a different time, place and culture. NOTES 1. The Inn’s website claims, ‘As you sit in the rocker on the porch, tipping a cold one . . . if you close your eyes [perhaps] even Muddy or Robert or Charlie might stop to strum a few chords in the night.’ See www.theshackupinn.com 2. See the debate in the first section of Tracy (1999) for discussion of the supposed African origins of the blues. What such historical claims marginalize is the idea of constant adaption in present time in the development of a genre. 3. For a graphic account of the racial injustices of the Delta, see Salvatore (2005: 4–6). 4. See www.theshackupinn.com/faq.html 5. The same person, the white talent scout Ralph Peer, significantly contributed to this shift by field recording Lucille Bogan in 1923 and creating ‘race’ records as a marketing category in 1925 (see Oliver, 2009: 19).

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 253 6. For example, Tagg (1989) argued that blue notes, call and response, syncopation, and improvisation were not unique to ‘black music’ but could be found in a range of earlier forms. Blues songs like ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’ had their origins in British folk tunes. Marion Harris, a white Broadway singer, was billed as ‘Queen of the blues’ and sang a rendition of W. C. Handy’s ‘St. Louis Blues’ for Columbia Records in 1920. Some blues had roots in the minstrel show and coon songs. As songsters, ‘blues’ performers also offered a repertoire that encompassed tunes from a range of genres (see Miller, 2010). 7. It is interesting to compare Lomax’s statement with two more recent academic discussions of cross-cultural listening. The first comes from Simon Frith: ‘The reason I was so knocked out by black American rock’n’roll in the 1950s— heard on Radio Luxemburg and AFN—was that it sounded so odd, so different, so difficult even’ (2008: 169–170). Anahid Kasabian has also said, ‘I . . . welcome, even celebrate, the circulation of musical vocabularies that are new to me, not least on the grounds that they produce and reproduce different social orders than those I routinely participate in’ (2004, 217). Neither statement reflects the primitivist assumptions of Lomax, but both celebrate social exoticism in their own ways. While Frith frames this as a musical difference, Kasabian understands it socially, but sees herself merely as a witness on another social world, not someone charting her own difference to that world. 8. Ironically, in relation to ‘When the Levee Breaks’, to my knowledge neither the Led Zeppelin song nor the song’s 1929 originators—Kansas Joe McKoy and Memphis Minnie—used diddley bows on their versions. Even more ironically, Led Zeppelin’s version was highly processed in the studio and its songwriting revenue divided four ways to band members with just a fifth going to Memphis Minnie. 9. Memphis is often contrasted with the world cities of modernity. In another example, Memphis Slim told Tony Palmer (1976: 56) ‘I remember when [during Prohibition] Beale Street was better than Paris, Chicago or New York. All the musicians would leave those cities and come to Beale Street. That’s how much it was blooming’. 10. See www.theshackupinn.com 11. Other means of mediating this hidden guilt include the use of middle class African Americans or other black subjects as cultural intermediaries. This strategy is evident in Martin Scorsese’s PBS documentary Feel Like Going Home (2003), in which the famous director takes a Denver-born acoustic blues revivalist, Corey Harris, to the Delta and then on to Africa. It is also evident in ITV’s April 2012 Southern states travelogue show, The Mighty Mississippi with Trevor MacDonald, in which MacDonald—a broadcaster born in Trinidad who became Britain’s first black news reader in the late 1970s— interviews the black actor Morgan Freeman about his famous club Ground Zero in Clarksdale. 12. This can be found reprinted on the book’s Amazon page: www.amazon.co.uk/ Feeling-Blues-Right-American-Music/dp/1617030104/ref=sr_1_fkmr()_1?ie= UTF8&qid=1343219519&r=8–1-fkmr()

REFERENCES Awmiller, C. (2001). This House is on Fire: The Story of the Blues. New York: Franklin Watts. Booth, S. (1991). Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

254 Mark Duffett Boorstin, D. (1961). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper Colophon Books. Cheseborough, S. (2004). Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of the Delta Blues. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Duffett, M. (2003). ‘False faith or false comparison? A critique of the religious interpretation of Elvis fan culture’. Popular Music and Society 26 (4): 513–522. Duffett, M. (2013). ‘Walking in Memphis: Elvis heritage between fan fantasy and built environment.’ In A. Bennett, S. Baker, & J. Taylor (eds.), Redefining Mainstream Popular Music. New York: Routledge. Edgell, D. (2006). Managing Sustainable Tourism: A Legacy for the Future. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Hospitality Press. Foley, M., & Lennon, J. (2000). Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. London: Continuum. Frith, S. (2008). ‘Why music matters’. Critical Quarterly 50 (1–2): 65–79. Gage, M., & Gage, J. (2009). Memphis and the Delta Blues Trail. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press. Gossling, S., Hall, C. M., & Weaver, D. (eds.). (2009). Sustainable Tourism Futures: Perspectives on Systems, Restructuring and Innovation. New York: Routledge. Jasson, D. (2003). ‘Internal orientalism in America: W. J. Cash’s The Mind of the South and the spatial construction of national identity’. Political Geography 22 (3): 293–316. Kassabian, A. (2004). ‘Would you like some world music with your latte? Starbucks, Putumayo, and distributed tourism’. Twentieth Century Music 2 (1): 209–223. Kilbride, D. (2011). ‘Travel writing as evidence with special attention to nineteenth century Anglo-America’. History Compass 9 (4): 339–350. King, S. (2011). I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Kuhn, A. (2010). ‘Memory texts and memory work: Performances of memory in and with visual media’. Memory Studies 3 (4): 298–313. Leland, J. (2004). Hip: The History. New York: Harper Collins. Levitt, L. (2010). ‘Death on display: Reifying stardom through Hollywood’s dark tourism’. Velvet Light Trap 65: 62–70. MacCannell, D. (2011). The Ethics of Sightseeing. Berkeley: University of California Press. MacCannell, D. (2012). ‘Commentary: On the ethical stake in tourism research’. Tourism Geographies 14 (1): 183–194. Middleton, R. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Buckingham: Open University Press. Miller, K. H. (2010). Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mugge, R. (1991). Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads [DVD]. USA: Shout Factory. Oliver, P. (2009). Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues. New York: Basic Books. Palmer, T. (1976). All You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music. London: Book Club Associates. Perry, T., & Glinert, E. (1996). Fodor’s Rock & Roll Traveler USA. New York: Fodor’s Travel. Robb, E. (2009). ‘Violence and recreation: Vacationing in the realm of dark tourism’. Anthropology and Humanism 34 (1): 51–60. Ross, K. (2009). ‘Historicizing untimeliness’. In G. Rockhill & P. Watts (eds.), Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ryan, J. (2011). ‘Beale Street blues? Tourism, musical labour and the fetishization of poverty in blues poverty’. Ethnomusicology 55 (3): 473–503.

Cultural Politics of Blues Tourism 255 Salvatore, N. (2005). Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, The Black Church and the Transformation of America. New York: Little, Brown. Stein, R. (2011, 30 November). Rick Stein Tastes the Blues [Documentary film]. UK: BBC. Tagg, P. (1989). ‘An open letter about “black music”, “Afro-American music” and “European music” ’. Popular Music 8 (3): 285–298. Taylor, A. (2008). Examined Life [DVD]. Canada: Zeitgeist Films. Tracy, S. (ed.). (1999). Write Me a Few of Your Lines: A Blues Reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Wald, E. (2005). Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Harper Collins. Winthrop, J. (1974). The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Contributors

Sarah Baker is an Associate Professor in Cultural Sociology at Griffith University. She is currently chief investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, ‘Do-it-yourself popular music archives: an international comparative study of volunteer-run institutions that preserve popular music’s material culture’ (2013–15). Her publications include Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (with David Hesmondhalgh, Routledge, 2011) and the edited collection Redefining Mainstream Popular Music (with Andy Bennett and Jodie Taylor, Routledge, 2013). Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. He has authored and edited numerous books including Music, Style and Aging, Popular Music and Youth Culture, Cultures of Popular Music, Remembering Woodstock, and Music Scenes (with Richard A. Peterson). He is also a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. Sara Cohen is a Professor at the School of Music at the University of Liverpool and Director of the Institute of Popular Music. She has a DPhil in Social Anthropology from Oxford University and is author of Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making (Oxford University Press) and Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond The Beatles (Ashgate). Jez Collins works at Birmingham City University in the Centre for Media and Cultural Research, where he researches popular music, cultural heritage and public history and activist archiving in online communities. Collins is interested in the role popular music plays in the manifestation of individual and collective memory and identity. Collins is the founder of the Birmingham Music Archive and co-executive producer of the film Made in Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra. He also sits on the board of Un-Convention and the Community Archives and Heritage Group as well as Birmingham Civic Society’s Heritage Committee.

258 Contributors Timothy J. Dowd is Professor of Sociology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). He specializes in cultural sociology, focusing on such issues as the evolving orchestral canon, the evolution of the recording industry, musician careers, underground music festivals, and the state of music sociology. He was the Erasmus Chair for the Humanities at Erasmus University Rotterdam (2007) and Fulbright Specialist at the University of Amsterdam (2013). He currently is Chair-Elect of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association, and he has been Editor-in-Chief of Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, Media, and the Arts from 2010 to 2014. Mark Duffett is a Senior Lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Chester with research interests spanning fandom and popular music culture. As well as publishing Understanding Fandom (Bloomsbury, 2013), he guest edited a recent special edition of the journal Popular Music and Society, and also edited a Routledge book called Popular Music Fandom (2013) which featured chapters by Cornel Sandvoss, Joli Jensen and Matt Hills. In 2010 he organized an International Symposium on music fandom at Chester and was keynote speaker in 2012 at the MARS music conference in Finland. He has recently finished a book on Elvis Presley for the Equinox Press series Icons of Popular Music. In April 2014 Mark co-organized a conference on rock music and love in Montpellier. See more at: http://www.markduffett.com Kenny Forbes is a Lecturer in Commercial Music at the University of the West of Scotland, where he teaches on a range of courses that encompass popular music research practice, popular music history, global music markets, and music copyright and technology. He is currently working towards the completion of his PhD at the University of Glasgow. The study, which is focused on the Glasgow Apollo theatre (1973–85), explores the local and historical significance of a leading UK music venue within the domestic pre-arena live music sector. Michelle Henning lectures in media at the University of Brighton. As an Associate Professor in Media and Culture at the University of the West of England she co-founded, with Rehan Hyder, the BLIMA project for researching Bristol music. With Hyder she has written another article on Bristol music for the Goethe Institute Nairobi’s 10 Cities project (forthcoming). Her own writing deals with new media, photography and museums: she is the author of Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Open University Press 2006) and her edited collection Museum Media will be published in 2014 by Wiley-Blackwell. She also works as an artist and photographer, producing record sleeves including PJ Harvey’s 2011 album Let England Shake.

Contributors 259 Alison Huber is a Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. From 2010–12 she was a Research Fellow in the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University, where she remains an adjunct. Her research interests include cultural studies, memory, the idea of ‘the mainstream’, and consumption. Her written work can be found in numerous journals and edited collections, including Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (edited by Homan & Mitchell, 2008), International Journal of Cultural Studies and Television and New Media. Rehan Hyder is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His past research has focused on the relationship between ethnicity, popular music and youth culture including the book Brimful of Asia: Negotiating Ethnicity on the UK music scene (Ashgate, 2004). He is co-founder, with Michelle Henning, of the Bristol music research project BLIMA and current research in this context focuses on issues relating to ethnicity, locality and the syncretic. He also is interested in representations of the colonial/post-colonial ‘other’ and is developing research exploring representations of Thuggee in popular literature, film and television. Craig Owen Jones is a Lecturer at the School of Music, Prifysgol Bangor University, under the auspices of the Welsh-language higher education institution, the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. His research interests include Welsh-language popular music, fandom studies, punk rock, popular music in lesser-used languages, and the use of popular music in science fiction television and film. He has published articles on various aspects of popular music in journals such as Music and Politics and Popular Music History among others. He is co-editor, with Dr Gwawr Ifan, of the journal Welsh Music History. A monograph on Welsh-language rock music is in writing. Robert Knifton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston University. Prior to joining Kingston, he worked on the AHRC Beyond Text research project ‘Collecting and Curating Popular Music Histories’ based at the University of Liverpool. In 2007, he co-curated Tate Liverpool’s Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde. He has also worked for RIBA, Cube, Whitworth Art Gallery, Walker Art Gallery, Castlefield Art Gallery, Victoria Gallery & Museum Liverpool, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Brett Lashua is Senior Lecturer in the Carnegie Faculty at Leeds Metropolitan University. His scholarship is concerned primarily with the ways that young people make sense of their lives through arts, leisure and

260 Contributors cultural practices such as popular music, as well as how young people are ‘made sense of’ through particular representational and narrative strategies. He recently co-edited (with Karl Spracklen and Stephen Wagg) Sounds and the City: Popular Music, Place and Globalization (Palgrave, 2014). Alex Lawrey is a town planner, independent scholar, and former musician and film-maker. In the 1980s and 1990s he was a vocalist with several bands. He later worked in community media and as a director of the video company Bamboo Dragon Productions Limited. He has taught media studies, video production and architectural history, and given many conference papers looking at utopianism, cultural, economic and labour histories, and architectural heritage. He is currently working on entries for the ‘Dictionary of Labour Biography’ on the Owenite architects Joseph Hansom and Thomas Steadman Whitwell, and writing a monograph entitled ‘The Chapel and the Lodge’ exploring fraternalism, cultures and militancy amongst printers and stonemasons throughout history. He graduated from the RTPI accredited Master of Civic Design degree at the University of Liverpool in 2011, and from London Guildhall University with a Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) degree in Communications in 1998. Philippe Le Guern is a Professor in the Department of Communication Science at the University of Nantes, where he teaches media sociology and popular culture. He is a member of the Centre Atlantique de Philosophie and an affiliate researcher of the Research Center for Arts and Language (CRAL-EHESS). His work focuses on the digital turn and its multiple incidences in the musical world. He has edited several books and journals on popular music, including Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain (with H. Dauncey, Ashgate, 2010); ‘Sociologie des musiques populaires’, Réseaux, No. 141–142 (with S. Frith, 2007); ‘Musique et technologies numériques’, Réseaux, No. 172 (2012); and ‘Patrimonialiser les musiques actuelles et populaires’, Questions de Communication, No. 22 (2012). He is currently working on music and the theories of modernism. Marion Leonard is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Music at the University of Liverpool where she is also a member of the Institute of Popular Music. She is author of Gender in the Music Industry (Ashgate, 2007) and co-editor of The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (Liverpool University Press, 2010). She has been principle investigator on an AHRC-funded research project examining popular music in museums, conducted in partnership with National Museums Liverpool and the V&A. She has published on a range of topics about popular music and has particular interest in issues connected with gender, collecting and museum practice.

Contributors 261 Paul Long is Professor of Media and Cultural History in the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University. He is the author of Only in the Common People’: The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain (2008). His writing on popular music includes studies of BBC4’s Britannia series, Tony Palmer’s All You Need is Love as well as the role of student unions in UK popular music culture. Les Roberts is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. His research interests are in the cultural production of space, place and mobility, with a particular focus on film and popular music cultures. He is author of Film, Mobility and Urban Space: a Cinematic Geography of Liverpool (2012); editor of Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice and Performance (2012); and co-editor of Locating the Moving Image: New Approaches to Film and Place (2014), Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-between (2012), and The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections (2010). See more at www.liminoids.com John V. Ward is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside, located on the far northern edge of the Chicagoland metropolitan area. His love of music began at a very young age when he discovered his grandfather’s large Big Band record collection. His current research interests include cultural resources, conservation, the World Wide Web, and applications of geographic information systems technology. John has presented his research at conferences in Jamaica, Finland, South Africa, Austria, the United States and the United Kingdom. He recently returned from teaching study abroad classes in Scotland. John was the recipient of the 2013 Stella Gray Teaching Excellence Award at his university. In addition to teaching at UW–Parkside, he directs the university’s Spatial Data Analysis Lab, coordinates their GIS Certificate program, and serves on their International Studies Steering Committee. Deborah Withers is a writer, curator, researcher and publisher. Her academic work has been published in a number of academic journals including the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of Oral History and Women: A Cultural Review. She also contributed a chapter to the 2012 collection Women Make Noise. Between 2010–2012 she was the co-curator of the online Women’s Liberation Music Archive, and she has curated two exhibitions about the cultural history of the UK Women’s Liberation Movement: Sistershow Revisited (2011) and Music & Liberation (2012). Deborah currently lectures at the Bristol Institute of Modern Music, is Honoury Research Associate at the Gender Research Centre, University of Bristol and Trustee of the Feminist Archive South. www. debi-rah.net

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Index

ABBA the Museum 163–4 AC/DC 15, 22–3, 144, 162; AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels 163 A Certain Ratio 213 Angers 31 anti-commercial music 128 ARChive, the 115–16 archives 3, 81; and activism 85–6, 126; and community 86–8; digital/online 85–6, 88, 125, 195, 200–4; and live music 106–9; and performance 107; of popular music 83; sound 100; see also Birmingham Popular Music Archive; Bristol Live Independent Music Archive; Folk Archives, the; ProgArchives.com; Victorian Jazz Archive, the; Women’s Liberation Music Archive Archiv österreichischer Popularmusik 114–15 Armstrong, Frankie 133 Arnolfini 103, 108 Asbri 67–8, 70 audiences: and nostalgia 170; and rock music 147–8 Auslander, Philip 102, 147, 152–3, 157 Australian Country Music Hall of Fame 118–19, 123 authenticity 148–51 Avignon 32–3, 34 baby-boomers 20, 21, 25 bamboo club 100, 105–6 Barthes, Roland 156 Beatles, The 2, 57, 164, 208, 213, 214, 215

Benjamin, Walter 168; The Arcades Project 168 Bennett, Andy 81, 125 Bhangra 87 Birmingham 87–92, 163–4, 221–2; Birmingham Music Heritage 87–8; Birmingham Popular Music Archive 87–8, 89; National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham 153 Black History Month 51 Black Roots 102 Black Sabbath 88, 90, 222 Blind Lemon Jefferson 245 blues 239, 240; commodification of 246; Delta blues 244–5 Blues & Soul 251 bootleg recordings 201–2 Bourdieu, Pierre 28 Bowie, David 82, 144, 221; David Bowie Is 2; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 221 Boyle, Danny 223 Bristol Sound 98–9, 101, 103, 105, 107 Bristol Live Independent Music Archive 100 British Music Experience 3 CalProg Festival 183 Canterbury 15–16; Canterbury Sound, the 186 Caravan 16 Cardiff 169 ‘Carnivalesque’ 196 Catatonia 62, 65 Cavern Club 52, 104, 232 Chants, The 52 Charlton Stadium 150 Clarke, Paul 107–8

264 Index Clash, The 151, 208, 212, 214, 215; Rude Boy 151 Classic Albums, the 18, 21–2 classical music 174–5, 176, 184 Classic Rock 2 Clubs and Venues 46, 51–3, 55; closure of 149 Comic Heritage 228 concerts 194; and memory 157–8 copyright 84 Coventry 221 Criw Sgiffl Llandegai 66 Cryptic Visions 183 cultural consecration 21 Cyfeiriadur Pop 68 Dafydd, Iwan 62, 66 Davis, Fred 156, 169–70 Debord, Guy 208, 210, 215; The Society of the Spectacle 215 Delta, The 239, 240, 243, 246–7, 250, 252; and primitivism 244 Derrida, Jacques 85–6, 91 Dijck, José van 92 Disc a Dawn 69 Disc Shop Zero 99 District 97 182 ‘DIY preservationism’ 81–2, 92, 125 Donovan, Jason 215 Dug Out club 100, 102–4 Echolyn 178, 188 Emerson, Lake & Palmer 176 Eminem 208 emotion 165 English Heritage 225–7, 234, 235 Eskimo Joe 15, 23 Esoteric Records 185 EthelFest 184 Fabulous Dirt Sisters 130 Fall, The 223 fan culture 194, 196, 201–3, 243, 248 fanzines 210–11 Fedurok 32–3 Festival of Britain, The 6 Fillmore West 197 Florida, the 32 folk: and feminism 133–5 Folk Archives, the 31–2 Freemantle 15 Frendz 211 Frets 242 Frith, Simon 147

Gaye, Marvin 46, 47 Geddes, Patrick 209, 211, 217 Genesis 176, 177, 182 Glasgow Apollo 81, 143, 154, 156–8 Godflesh 88 Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci 65 Granary, The 102 Grateful Dead 193, 194, 195, 203, 204; ‘Dark Star’ 198; ‘Friend of the Devil’ 199; and Instrumentals 200; ‘Jack Straw’ 199; Setlists 197; ‘Shakedown Street’ 199; and soundboard recordings 201; ‘Standing on the Moon’ 199; and the American dream 196; ‘Truckin’ 195; ‘Weather Report Suite’ 199 Greenwich Village 242 Haçienda 104 Haight-Ashbury 193, 242 Hall, Stuart 5 Happy Mondays 208 Hatherley, Owen 212 Hendrix, Jimi 208, 217, 227 heritage: activism 4; as an industry 221; and audiences 235; authorised heritage discourse 4, 224; Black Music heritage 46, 47, 57; commercial interests in 16, 17; concept of 18; and digitisation 28–9, 30; and DIY 112, 114, 118, 224, 236; feminist 132; hidden heritage 57–8; intangible 5; and live performance 101–3, 107; mapping 211–15; and marketing of music 215–16; and memory 235; and memory tourism 241; and modernity 29–31; in museums 160; of music 99, 107; of music and food 239; online 3; popular music 18–20, 162; and psychogeography 207, 210; and rock 28–30, 31–9; and self-authorization 227–30; and space 57; territoriality 1; and the built environment 213; and unauthorizing of 231–3; vanishing 53–5; as waste 112–13, 118, 120–1, 122; whose heritage? 20; see also popular music heritage Heritage Foundation, The 228–30

Index 265 heritage industry 1 Heritage Lottery Fund 107 heritagization 127–8, 224, 235 Highway 61 214 Hogia Bryngwran 66 Home, Stewart 208 Home of Metal 87, 88–9, 163, 164 Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame 3 Huyssen, Andreas 28, 29–30 Ibo Club 46, 51, 53, 54 I’m feeling the blues right now 251 Institute of Popular Music 1 Intangible Culture Heritage 126, 127, 131–3, 136–7 International Times 211 Jah Shaka 102, 105 Jam Today 129, 130 jazz 105 Jazz Scenes Federation 32 Jethro Tull 176 John, Elton 223 Johnson, Robert 245 Jones, Heather 66 Jordan, Winthrop D. 240 Joy Division 213, 223 Judas Priest 88, 90 Kansas 177, 181, 182 Keightley, E 164, 168 Kerr, Sandra 133 Kill your Pet Puppy 207 Knebworth Festival 18 Kof 45, 56–7 Kuhn, Annette 241 L8: A Timepiece 46, 51, 58 Laval 35, 37, 38; Rock in Laval 37, 38–9 Leadbelly 245 Led Zeppelin 88, 90, 226, 244 Lennon, John 213, 224, 226 live music 194; and arena tours 153–4; conditions of 150; experience of 145–7, 158; and geography 196; and myth 194; recorded preservation of 201–3; ticketing 155; and violence 150–2, 158 liveness 101–2, 152–3 Live Performance 100–2, 108; DJing 101–2, 104 Liverpool 164, 226, 232; Liverpool 8 45–59; and music marketing 213

Lomax, Alan 247–8 London 221–2, 227; London Olympic Games Opening Ceremony 222 lyrics 198–9; and mobility 199 Mad Professor 102 Magna Carta Records 183 Marley, Bob 105, 210, 215, 217 Massive Attack 97, 98, 99, 101, 103 Melbourne 113 memory 1, 109, 241; collective 92–3, 162; Cultural 131, 235; and identity 235; and museums 162; social 45 Memphis 239, 243, 245–246 Merseybeat 57, 70 Mills, CW 46–7, 55 Minogue, Kylie 2, 82 Mistakes, The 130 Mojo 2 Moon, Keith 226, 229, 232 Moon Club 105 Muddy Waters 245 Museo Rosenbach 182 museology: and performance 162 Museum of Liverpool 160 museums see Abba the Museum; Arnolfini; British Music Experience; Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame; Music exhibitions; Museum of Liverpool; National Centre for Popular Music; National Museums Liverpool; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; St Fagans National History Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum Music & Liberation 125 music exhibitions 22–3, 37–40, 75, 82, 103, 125, 160–72; and sound 165–6; and audio-visual productions 166–7 Music Festivals and Carnivals 75 Napalm Death 88 National Centre for Popular Music 3 National Eisteddfod 75 National Museums Liverpool 168 National Trust 235 Newcastle 163, 165 New Musical Express 45, 161 nightlife economy 101–2 night-time economy 146 North East Beat 163, 165

266 Index Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band 127, 135 Norway 163 nostalgia 156, 160, 161, 224; and curating 167–8; Proustian 168; vicarious 164 Notting Hill 207, 208, 209, 213, 215; and Goths 211; musical heritage of 208; Notting Hill Carnival 212–13, 215, 217; politicians resident in 209; and riots 210 online music sites 86 oral history 50 Osbourne, Ozzy 221 Oz 211 Palmer, Robert 246; Deep Blues 246–7 Peel, John 73, 106 Penny Lane 214 performance 144, 196 performance art 107–8 Performing Rights Society 98 Perth 23–4 Pesda Roc music festival 73 Pickering, M. 164, 168 pilgrimage 195–6, 204, 240, 248 Pink Floyd 176, 177 place 193–4, 243, 246–7; affective notions of 16; and authenticity 17 POPID 6 popular culture 19–20 popular music 160; disposability 115–16; and exhibitions 160; and heritage 225; and heritigisation 127; and memory 143; and nationality 222 popular music heritage: and audiences 235; blue plaques 221, 223, 225; commercial 16, 126–7, 128; and curating 87–92, 223; geographies of 3, 74–5, 92; and hybridisation 250; and memory 223; and music industry 18; Online 81, 83–4; theories of 1; and tourism 2; and transcience 74–5; and the Welsh; language 62, 70; see also heritage popular music studies: and locality 97, 100–1 Portishead 97, 98, 99, 101 Presley, Elvis 243 ProgArchives.com 180

Progressive rock 174, 175–88; Covers 183; Musical excavations of the past 184–7; Musical quotation from the past 182–3, 186, 187; Neo-prog 178, 179; Prog rock festivals 179–80, 183, 184, 186–8; Rock Progressivo Italiano 186; Symphonic prog 177, 178, 179; tribute bands 184 Punk 106, 130 Queen 144 racism 51–2, 55–6, 240, 241 Ranciere, Jacques 241 Real Thing, The 45, 46, 47, 48, 56; 4 from 8 50, 54 Recordiau Sain 66 Reggae 105 Reynolds, Simon 121; Retromania 7, 92, 161 Rialto Theatre 52 Riot Grrrl 130 Roberts, Les 5 Rock 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 147–51; historiography 33; mythology 35 Rockheim 3, 163 Rock ‘n’ Roll 36 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland 22 Rolling Stones, The 144, 155 Route 66 214 Saizmundo 76 San Francisco 193, 198 Savile, Jimmy 231–2 scenes 97–8, 101, 103 Scott, Bon 22–23 Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre 154, 156 Seeger, Peggy 133 Selecter, The 221 Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The 148, 155 Setlist Program, The 197 Sex Pistols, The 106, 208, 212, 215 Shack Up Inn 243 Shines, Johnny 242 Situationists 208, 217 Size, Roni 101, 104 Smith, Bessie 245 Smith, Laurajayne 4 Smiths, The 223 Sniffin Glue 207 Soho Road to the Punjab 88

Index 267 Somali Club 46, 54 Sothach 71, 73 Soul 47 Specials, The 221 Spencer Davis Group 70 Spock’s Beard 179, 183 Spotify 82 Springfield, Dusty 70 Star Walk 15, 22 Steedman, C. 85–6 Stein, Rick 239, 240, 242, 250 Stepney Sisters, The 135 Stevens, Meic 66 Stewart, Rod 154 St Fagans National History Museum Cardiff 169; Pop Peth 75, 169 Strawberry Fields 214 Super Furry Animals 62, 65, 73 Sykes, Roosevelt 242 Syn-Phonic Music 185 Talisman 102 Temple, Julian 216 Touché, Marc 28, 34, 36 tourism 163–4, 247–8, 250; dark tourism 249, 251 Toxteth Riots 48, 54 town planning 208–9 Triawd Y Coleg 66 Tricky 97, 101 Tropic Club 105 U.K. 183 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 4, 126, 127, 137 Urbeatz 46, 50, 55, 58

Vague, Tom 207, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216; Vague 207, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216, 217 Victoria and Albert Museum 2, 166; Black British Style 166; David Bowie Is 166 Victorian Jazz Archive, the 113, 119–20, 123 Voiceprint Records 17, 185 Wakeman, Rick 148 Warren, Julian 107–8 Web 2.0 3 Welsh Language Act 64 Welsh language hip-hop 76 Welsh Language Society 64 Westway, The 214 Who, The 144, 150, 153, 232 Wilde Flowers, the 17 Wizzard 88 Wood, Ronnie 154 Women & Music 127 Women’s Liberation Music Archive 83, 125, 126, 128, 129–30 Women’s Revolution Per Minute 126, 135 Wonder, Stevie 46, 47 Woodstock 21 Y Chwlydro 71 Yes 148, 176, 177, 187 Youth 145–7 YouTube 3, 234 Y Pelydrau 68 Y Tebot Piws 70 Zigzag 207