Researching Live Music : Gigs, Tours, Concerts and Festivals

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. 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 US and UK to include examples drawn from Argentina, Australia, France, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Poland. Researching Live Music is the first exhaustive review of the different ways in which live music can be studied, including innovative approaches to the study of historic and contemporary live music events, and thus represents crucial reading for professionals, students and researchers working in all aspects of live music. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgments Live music studies in perspective PART I: Promotion 1. Festivals, free and unfree: Alex Cooley and the American rock festival 2. As long as they go home safe: The voice of the independent music festival promoter 3. Under the cover of darkness: Situating “covers gigs” within live music ecologies 4. Showcase festivals as a gateway to foreign markets 5. Disruption and continuity: Covid-19, live music, and cyclic sociality PART II: Production 6. Live sound matters 7. Mobile spectacle: Es Devlin’s Pandemonium tour design 8. Fulfilling the hospitality rider: Working practices and issues in a tour’s supply chain 9. Vocaloid liveness? Hatsune Miku and the live production of Japanese virtual idol concerts PART III: Consumption 10. Making music public: What would a sociology of live music promotion look like? 11. Dead stars live: Exploring holograms, liveness, and authenticity 12. Live ... as you’ve always heard it before: Classic rock, technology, and the re-positioning of authenticity in live music performance 13. Approaching the live from a distance: The unofficial Led Zeppelin archive PART IV: Policy 14. Music cities, or cities of music? 15. State of play: Tensions and interventions in live music policy 16. Por Más Músicas Mujeres en Vivo!: The Live Music Female Quota law and its implications for Argentine music festivals 17. Beyond live shows: Regulation and innovation in the French live music video economy Index __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.