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Researching Live Music offers an important contribution to the emergent field of live music studies.
Featuring paradigmatic case studies, this book is split into four parts, first addressing perspectives associated with production, then promotion and consumption, and finally policy. The contributors to the book draw on a range of methodological and theoretical positions to provide a critical resource that casts new light on live music processes and shows how live music events have become central to raising and discussing broader social and cultural issues. Their case studies expand our knowledge of how live music events work and extend beyond the familiar contexts of the United States and United Kingdom to include examples drawn from Argentina, Australia, France, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Poland.
Researching Live Music is the first comprehensive review of the different ways in which live music can be studied as an interdisciplinary field, including innovative approaches to the study of historic and contemporary live music events. It represents a crucial reading for professionals, students, and researchers working in all aspects of live music.
List of contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Live Music Studies in Perspective
Chris Anderton and Sergio Pisfil
PART I: Promotion
- Festivals, Free and Unfree: Alex Cooley and the American Rock Festival
Steve Waksman
- As Long As They Go Home Safe: The Voice of the Independent Music Festival Promoter
Danny Hagan
- Under the Cover of Darkness: Situating "Covers Gigs" within Live Music Ecologies
Pat O'Grady
- Showcase Festivals as a Gateway to Foreign Markets
Patryk Galuszka
- Disruption and Continuity: Covid-19, Live Music, and Cyclic Sociality
Chris Anderton
PART II: Production
- Live Sound Matters
Christopher James Dahlie, Jos Mulder, Sergio Pisfil, and Nick Reeder
- Mobile Spectacle: Es Devlin's Pandemonium Tour Design
Glyn Davis
- Fulfilling the Hospitality Rider: Working Practices and Issues in a Tour's Supply Chain
Gabrielle Kielich
- Vocaloid Liveness? Hatsune Miku and the Live Production of the Japanese Virtual Idol Concerts
Kimi Kärki
Part III: Consumption
- Making Music Public: What Would a Sociology of Live Music Promotion Look Like?
Loïc Riom
- Dead Stars Live: Exploring Holograms, Liveness, and Authenticity
Kenny Forbes
- Live ... as You've Always Heard It Before: Classic Rock, Technology, and the Re-positioning of Authenticity in Live Music Performance
Andy Bennett
- Approaching the Live from a Distance: The Unofficial Led Zeppelin Archive
Stephen Loy
Part IV: Policy
- Music Cities, or Cities of Music?
Christina Ballico and Dave Carter
- State of Play: Tensions and Interventions in Live Music Policy
Adam Behr
- "Por Más Músicas Mujeres en Vivo!": The Live Music Female Quota Law and Its Implications for Argentine Music Festivals
Sarah Lahasky
- Beyond Live Shows: Regulation and Innovation in the French Live Music Video Economy
Gérôme Guibert, Michaël Spanu, and Catherine Rudent
Index
About the author
Chris Anderton is Associate Professor in Cultural Economy at Solent University, Southampton. He is the author of
Music Festivals in the UK: Beyond the Carnivalesque (2019) and co-author of both
Understanding the Music Industries (2013) and
Music Management, Marketing and PR: Creating Connections and Conversations (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of
Media Narratives in Popular Music (forthcoming)
and has guest edited issues of the journals
Rock Music Studies and
Arts and the Market.
Sergio Pisfil is a Lecturer and researcher at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. His PhD, gained at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Simon Frith, focused on the history of live sound and its connections to rock music between 1967 and 1973. His research interests include live music, and the history and esthetics of popular music. His work has been published in various edited collections, including
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research,
Gender in Music Production, and the forthcoming
Oxford Handbook of Progressive Rock; and in journals such as
Popular Music and Society and
Communiquer (forthcoming). He is currently guest editing a special issue on live music for the journal
Arts and the Market.
Summary
Researching Live Music offers an important contribution to the emergent field of live music studies, a field which has, over the past ten years, seen a steady growth in publications that examine the history of live music venues and promoters, the economics of the live music industry, and the operations of the sector.
