Musician in the Museum: Display and Power in Neoliberal Popular Culture

Description

In recent years, popular music museums have been established in high profile locations in many of the presumed “musical capitals” of the world, such as Los Angeles, Liverpool, Seattle, Memphis, and Nashville. Most of these are defined by expansive experiential infrastructures centered around spectacular, high-tech displays of varying sizes and types. Through over-the-top acts of display, these museums influence and reflect the values and priorities in the public life of popular music. This book examines the phenomenon of the popular music museum outside the typical and familiar frames of heritage and tourism. Instead, it looks at these institutions as markers of the broader entertainment industry in the era of its rise to global dominance. It highlights the multiple manifestations of power as read across a range of institutions and material forms and discusses how this contributes to shaping the experience of popular culture. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The place we’ve ended up Chapter 1: The democratic [sic] vistas of popular culture Chapter 2: Neoliberalism’s firmaments of fame Chapter 3: Caught between the spectacular and the vernacular Part II: Ideal musical objects Chapter 4: Popular music museums and the experience economy Chapter 5: Preferred itineraries of sight, sound and feeling Chapter 6: Fetish, effigy and the resonant object Ideal musical subjects Chapter 7: The emergence and evolution of the rock imaginary Chapter 8: Portraiture and the currency of musical repute Chapter 9: Displaying ‘the popular’ Conclusion Bibliography Index