Full Description
The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes, and music genres has long been mediated through academic and popular press publications such as magazines, films, and television documentaries. Media Narratives in Popular Music examines these various publications and questions how and why they are constructed. It considers the typically linear narratives that are based on simplifications, exaggerations, and omissions and the histories they construct - an approach that leads to totalizing "official" histories that reduce otherwise messy narratives to one-dimensional interpretations of a heroic and celebratory nature. This book questions the basis on which these mediated histories are constructed, highlights other, hidden, histories that have otherwise been neglected, and explores a range of topics including consumerism, the production pressure behind documentaries, punk fanzines, Rolling Stones covers, and more.
Contents
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Chris Anderton and Martin James (Solent University, UK)
SECTION 1 - Narratives of Identity
1. Hidden in Plain Sight: Stories of Gender, Generation and Political Economy on the Northern Soul Scene
Tim Wall (Birmingham City University, UK) and Sarah Raine (Edinburgh Napier University, UK)
2. Paid My Dues: Key Debates in the 1970s Feminist Music Press
Ann-Marie Hanlon (Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland)
3. "They're Not In It Like The Man Dem": How Gendered Narratives Contradict Patriarchal Discourse in Electronic Dance Music
Julia Toppin (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
4. "Who Controls the Present Controls the Past. Who Controls the Past Controls the Future": Washing Islam from the Media Narratives of Hip-Hop
Martin James (Solent University, UK)
SECTION 2 - Narratives of Genre
5. "Exiles in Madison Square Garden": Critical Reception and Journalistic Narratives of Progressive Rock in Melody Maker Magazine, 1971-1976
Chris Anderton (Solent University, UK)
6. Alternative Before Alternative: The Pre-Punk History of a '90s Genre
Theo Cateforis (Syracuse University, USA)
7. Never Mind the B..., Here's Three Minutes of Prog: Rethinking Punk's Impact on Progressive Rock in Britain During the Late 1970s
Andy Bennett (Griffith University, Australia)
8. "There's a Crack in the Union Jack." Questioning National Identity in the 1990s: the Britpop Counter-narrative
Johnny Hopkins (Solent University, UK)
SECTION 3 - Narratives Constructed
9. Compromised Histories: The Impact of Production Pressures on the Construction of Historical Narratives in Popular Music Documentaries
Lauren Istvandity (University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia), Sarah Baker (Griffith University, Australia), Zelmarie Cantillon (Western Sydney University, Australia) and Shane Homan (Monash University, Australia)
10. When a History of Gender Representation Meets the Nostalgic Storytelling of Hot Press Magazine
Yvonne Kiely (Independent Scholar, Ireland)
11. Punk Fanzines, Subcultural Consecration, and Hidden Female Histories in Early British Punk
Karen Fournier (University of Michigan, USA)
12. Tales from the Turntables: "Narrating" and "Narrativizing" the "First Club DJ"
Maren Hancock (York University, Canada)
Acknowledgments
Index
