Simon Frith

Howard Horne

Om kunstens indflydelse på engelsk pop-musik.

Art Into Pop

Lawrence Grossberg

Andrew Goodwin

The first significant collection of new and classic texts on video, bringing together some of the leading international cultural and music critics writing today.

The Music Video Reader

Sound and Vision

The Sociology of Rock

Lee Marshall

"First Published in 2004, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."

Music and Copyright

An academic study of the sociology of rock looks at the roots of the musical form, the social importance and power of rock as reflected in the music industry itself, and the relationship between rock music and its consumers

Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'roll

Sound Effects

Popular Music: Music and identity

An influential writer on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to academic critics, Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject—and discloses their place at the center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives.

On the Value of Popular Music

Performing Rites

selected essays

Taking popular music seriously

Classic sociological analyses of 'deviance' and rebellion; studies of technology; subcultural and feminist readings, semiotic and musicological essays and close readings of stars, bands and the fans themselves by Adorno, Barthes and other well-known contributors

Rock, Pop and the Written Word

On Record

Popular music studies is a rapidly expanding field with changing emphases and agenda. This is a multi-volume resource for this area of study.

Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies

Popular Music

Tovey Professor of Music Simon Frith

Matt Brennan

Martin Cloonan

Emma Webster

To date, there has been a significant gap in work on the social history of music in Britain from 1950 to the present day. The three volumes of Live Music in Britain address this gap and do so through a unique prism--that of live music. The key theme of the books is the changing nature of the live music industry in the UK, focused upon popular music but including all musical genres. Via this focus, the books offer new insights into a number of other areas, including the relationship between commercial and public funding of music, changing musical fashions and tastes, the impact of changing technologies, the changing balance of power within the music industries, the role of the state in regulating and promoting various musical activities within an increasingly globalised music economy, and the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture. Drawing on new archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and a series of interviews with key personnel, the books have the potential to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history. The second volume covers the period from Hyde Park to the Hacienda (1968-84).

From Hyde Park to the Hacienda

The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume II, 1968-1984

As a sociologist Simon Frith takes the starting point that music is the result of the play of social forces, whether as an idea, an experience or an activity. The essays in this important collection address these forces, recognising that music is an effect of a continuous process of negotiation, dispute and agreement between the individual actors who make up a music world. The emphasis is always on discourse, on the way in which people talk and write about music, and the part this plays in the social construction of musical meaning and value. The collection includes nineteen essays, some of which have had a major impact on the field, along with an autobiographical introduction.

Selected Essays

Taking Popular Music Seriously

Popular Music: The rock era

Will Straw

John Street

"Todo lo que hasta ahora no se ha contado acerca de la música popular, desde su origen, producción, evolución y consumo hasta los detalles más sorprendentes sobre su profunda repercusión social. Frente a las convencionales historias del rock, esta obra presenta las claves fundamentales que permitirán al lector alcanzar una comprensión global de la expresión musical con mayor éxito en nuestros días. A lo largo de sus páginas, comentaristas expertos destacan la evolución tanto de la producción como del consumo de la música popular, explicando desde sus inicios la aparición de una enorme industria capaz de generar incontables e inimaginables beneficios, así como el nacimiento de estrellas mundialmente conocidas, de la talla de Elvis Presley, Nirvana o las Spice Girls. Estos reconocidos analistas ponen de relieve cómo el desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologías (desde el amplificador hasta internet) ha hecho cambiar el sonido y la práctica de la música popular" - tapa posterior.

aspectos clave del desarrollo de la música popular: desde las nuevas tecnologías hasta la política y la globalización

La otra historia del rock

To date there has been a significant gap in existing knowledge about the social history of music in Britain from 1950 to the present day. The three volumes of Live Music in Britain address this gap and do so through a unique prism—that of live music. The key theme of the books is the changing nature of the live music industry in the UK, focused upon popular music but including all musical genres. Via this focus, the books offer new insights into a number of other areas including the relationship between commercial and public funding of music; changing musical fashions and tastes; the impact of changing technologies; the changing balance of power within the music industries; the role of the state in regulating and promoting various musical activities within an increasingly globalised music economy; and the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture. Drawing on new archival research, a wide range of academic and non- academic secondary sources, participant observation and a series of interviews with key personnel, the books have the potential to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history. The third volume covers the period from Live Aid to Live Nation (1985– 2015).

From Live Aid to Live Nation

The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume III, 1985-2015

This book, first published in 1987, tells the intriguing and culturally complex story of the art school influence on postwar British popular music. Following Romantic attitudes from life class to recording studio, it focuses on two key moments – the early 1960s, when art students like John Lennon and Eric Clapton begin to play their own versions of American rock and blues and inflected youth music with Bohemian dreams, and the late 1970s, when punk musicians emerged from design courses and fashion departments to disrupt what were, by then, art-rock routines. Sixties rock Bohemians and seventies pop Situationists were, in their different ways, trying to solve the art students’ perennial problem – how to make a living from their art. Art Into Pop shows how this problem has been shaped by the history of British art education, from its nineteenth-century origins to current arguments about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ training. In their simultaneous pursuit of authenticity and artifice, art school musicians exemplify the postmodern condition, the collapse of any distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the confusions of personal and commercial creativity. And so high pop theorists rub shoulders here with low pop practitioners, experimental musicians debate avant-garde ideas with corporate packagers, and artistic integrity becomes a matter of making oneself up.

Simon Frith

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