Chapter 10
- Which performers and movements do you consider the most interesting in British pop since the 1960s, and why?
- Research online to find out about: teds/mods/skinheads/hippies/punks/raves/subcultures and their respective tastes in music and style.
- ‘Rhythm crazed teenagers terrorised a city last night.’ This was an authentic newspaper headline following a rock ’n’ roll concert. Imagine you were in the audience. Write an article describing the experience either for a traditional right-wing newspaper which does not approve, or for a lively music magazine with an enthusiastic young readership.
- Choose a song or album with which you are familiar. Write a review of it for a music magazine read by teenagers.
- Does your town/region have its own musical identity? What kind of music do people listen to? What do people traditionally sing about/write songs about? What are the origins of the music?
- Could music without lyrics ever be considered political?
- How is digital media changing the ways in which music is produced and consumed?
- Take the example of a country outside the UK and answer the following questions about popular music there: Has the popular music been influenced by British and American pop? If so, to what extent? Do you think this influence has been a positive one?
- Taking examples of well-known figures from within the indigenous pop music scene, discuss the reasons for their fame. Think about their appeal to men/women/immigrant audiences as well as those in towns and country. Is their appeal similar to or different from the appeal of British singers to their audiences?
Books
Armstrong, M. (2014) Swinging Britain: Fashion in the 1960s, Oxford: Shire Publications
Barnes, R. (1979) Mods! London: Eel Pie.
Bracewell, M. (2007) Remake/Remodel: Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music, 1953–1972, London: Faber.
Bracewell, M. (2009) England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie, London: Flamingo.
Bramwell, R. (2015) UK Hip-Hop, Grime and the City: the Ethics and Aesthetics of London’s Rap Scenes,London: Routledge.
Burchill, J. (1978) The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock’n’Roll, London: Pluto.
Chambers, I. (1985) Urban Rhythms, London: Macmillan.
Chapman, R. (1991) Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music Radio, London: Routledge.
Clarke, D. (1995) The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Dewe, M. (1998) The Skiffle Craze, London: Planet.
Garratt, S. (1998) Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture, London: Headline.
Harris, J. (2003) The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, London: Fourth Estate.
Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen.
Knight, N. (1982) Skinhead, London: Omnibus.
Kureishi, H. and Savage, J. (1995) The Faber Book of Pop, London: Faber and Faber.
MacRobbie, A. (ed.) (1989) Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses, London: Macmillan
Polhemus, T. (1994) Streetstyle, London: Thames & Hudson.
Savage, J. (1991) England’s Dreaming, London: Faber and Faber
Savage, J. (1996) Time Travel, London: Chatto & Windus.
Sharma, S. (1997) Disorientating Rhythms: Politics of the new Asian Dance Music, London: Zed Books.
Stuart, J. (1987) Rockers! London: Plexus.
Weight, R. (2015) MOD: From Bepop to Britpop, Britain’s Britain’s Biggest Youth Movement, London: Vintage.
Yorke, P. (1980) Style Wars, London: Sidgewick & Jackson.
Journals
The weekly music press, in particular the NME, provide a valuable source of information and commentary on the changing music scene, record reviews, concerts, interviews and so on. Their advertising section also gives interesting details about fashions of the period. Back issues can be consulted in the British Library in London. For more academic studies, see Popular Music and Society and the Journal of Popular Music Studies and Popular Music. All are available online.
Recordings
The Sound Archive of the British Library holds most British musical recordings, and has facilities for their inspection. Online sources such as YouTube contain many fascinating extracts of all kinds of musical performances and interviews with musicians.
Rock ’n’ roll Explodes documentary (2012)
The History of Rock n Roll documentary (2011)
Beatles interview (1966)
Concert in memory of film composer John Barry (2011)
Joy Division (2006) – documentary film about the band Joy Division and Manchester in the mid-1970s
Kings of Glam (2006) – documentary about glam rock and Britain of the early 1970s
Reggae Britannia (2012) – music and social history
Punk Britannia (2014) – documentary music and social history
Two Tone Britain (2004) – documentary on the fusion of black and white music in Thatcher’s Britain
Sound and Vision (2002) – documentary about David Bowie
The Pioneers (2012) – British hip hop documentary
The Liberty of Norton Folgate (Julian Temple, 2009) – a musical celebration in film about the history of a small area of East London by the band Madness
Vivienne Westwood interview (2014)
Youth culture of the 1960s and media representations