1st Edition

Researching Live Music Gigs, Tours, Concerts and Festivals

Edited By Chris Anderton, Sergio Pisfil Copyright 2022
    272 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Focal Press

    272 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Focal Press

    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 illustrations

    List of contributors

    Acknowledgments

     

    Live Music Studies in Perspective

    Chris Anderton and Sergio Pisfil

    PART I: Promotion

    1. Festivals, Free and Unfree: Alex Cooley and the American Rock Festival
    2. Steve Waksman

    3. As Long As They Go Home Safe: The Voice of the Independent Music Festival Promoter
    4. Danny Hagan

    5. Under the Cover of Darkness: Situating "Covers Gigs" within Live Music Ecologies
    6. Pat O’Grady

    7. Showcase Festivals as a Gateway to Foreign Markets
    8. Patryk Galuszka

    9. Disruption and Continuity: Covid-19, Live Music, and Cyclic Sociality
    10. Chris Anderton

       

      PART II: Production

    11. Live Sound Matters
    12. Christopher James Dahlie, Jos Mulder, Sergio Pisfil, and Nick Reeder

    13. Mobile Spectacle: Es Devlin’s Pandemonium Tour Design
    14. Glyn Davis

    15. Fulfilling the Hospitality Rider: Working Practices and Issues in a Tour’s Supply Chain
    16. Gabrielle Kielich

    17. Vocaloid Liveness? Hatsune Miku and the Live Production of the Japanese Virtual Idol Concerts
    18. Kimi Kärki

       

      Part III: Consumption

    19. Making Music Public: What Would a Sociology of Live Music Promotion Look Like?
    20. Loïc Riom

    21. Dead Stars Live: Exploring Holograms, Liveness, and Authenticity
    22. Kenny Forbes

    23. Live … as You’ve Always Heard It Before: Classic Rock, Technology, and the Re-positioning of Authenticity in Live Music Performance
    24. Andy Bennett

    25. Approaching the Live from a Distance: The Unofficial Led Zeppelin Archive
    26. Stephen Loy

       

      Part IV: Policy

    27. Music Cities, or Cities of Music?
    28. Christina Ballico and Dave Carter

    29. State of Play: Tensions and Interventions in Live Music Policy
    30. Adam Behr

    31. "Por Más Músicas Mujeres en Vivo!": The Live Music Female Quota Law and Its Implications for Argentine Music Festivals
    32. Sarah Lahasky

    33. Beyond Live Shows: Regulation and Innovation in the French Live Music Video Economy

    Gérôme Guibert, Michaël Spanu, and Catherine Rudent

    Index

    Biography

    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.