Right time, right place: The British Library’s Punk 1976–78 exhibition
Issue: Vol 13 No. 1-2 (2020) Special Issue: Popular Music and Curation
Journal: Popular Music History
Subject Areas: Popular Music
DOI: 10.1558/pomh.39677
Abstract:
To mark the 40th anniversary of punk rock, the British Library ran a free exhibition and a series of associated live spoken-word events in the summer of 2016. Punk was always both outsider (rhetoric, sound, fashion) and insider (the big names of the first-generation UK bands mostly signed to major labels). Using Simon Frith’s framework of three overlapping discourses in popular music (folk, pop and art) I argue that the contradictory strands of ideology in and around punk made the British Library the perfect site for this show.
Author: J. Mark Percival
References :
References
[Author Ref]
Baker, S., Strong, C., Istvandity, L. and Cantillon, Z. eds. 2018. The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage. London: Routledge.
Baker, S., Istvandity, L. and Nowak, R. 2019. Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Bennett, A. 2018. DIY preservationism and recorded music – saving lost sounds, in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, eds Sarah Baker, Catherine Strong, Lauren Istvandity and Zelmarie Cantillon, 163–171. London: Routledge.
British Library, 2015. Living Knowledge: The British Library 2015–2023. London: British Library.
Downloaded 01 August 2019.
British Library, 2015. Never mind the British Library, here’s Punk. Blog, 25 July 2016.
https://blogs.bl.uk/living-knowledge/2016/07/never-mind-the-british-library-heres-punk.html.
Accessed 03 August 2019.
British Library. 2018. Annual Report and Accounts 2017/18. London: British Library.
Downloaded 01 March 2019.
Cloonan, M., Frith, S., Brennan, M. and Webster, E. 2013. The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950-1967 : From Dance Hall to the 100 Club. Farnham: Ashgate.
Frith, S. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Jerusalem Post, 2018. Bruce Dickinson's 'Maiden' Voyage With Spoken Word. The Jerusalem Post, 15 November 2018.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Bruce-Dickinsons-maiden-voyage-with-spoken-word-572011.
Accessed 03 August 2019.
Leonard, M. 2007. ‘Constructing Histories through Material Culture: Popular Music, Museums and Collecting’, Popular Music History, 2/2: 147–67.
Leonard, M. 2010. ‘Exhibiting Popular Music: Museum Audiences, Inclusion and Social History’. Journal of New Music Research, 39/2: 171–81.
Leonard, M. 2014. ‘Staging the Beatles: Ephemerality, Materiality and the Production of Authenticity in the Museum’. International Journal of Heritage Studies. 20/4: 357–75.
Leonard, M. 2015. ‘The Shaping of Heritage: Collaborations Between Independent Popular Music Heritage Practitioners and the Museum Sector’, in Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, Do-it-together, ed Sarah Baker, 19–30. New York: Routledge.
Leonard, M. 2018. ‘Representing Popular Music Histories and Heritage in Museums’, in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, eds Sarah Baker, Catherine Strong, Lauren Istvandity and Zelmarie Cantillon, 261–70. London: Routledge.
Nowak, R. and Baker, S. (2018), Popular Music Halls of Fame As Institutions of Cultural Heritage, in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, eds Sarah Baker, Catherine Strong, Lauren Istvandity and Zelmarie Cantillon, 283–293. London: Routledge.
Robinson, L. 2018. 'Exhibition Review: Punk’s 40th Anniversary - An Itchy Sort of Heritage.'
Twentieth Century British History, 29/2, June 2018: 309–317.
https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwx047
The Spectator 2016. Nothing sacrilegious about this British Library Punk show, says Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols. The Spectator, May 2016.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/nothing-sacrilegious-about-this-british-library-punk-show-says-paul-cook-of-the-sex-pistols
Accessed 01 August 2019.
Waksman, S. 2018. 'Reconstructing the Past: Popular Music and Historiography', in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, eds Sarah Baker, Catherine Strong, Lauren Istvandity and Zelmarie Cantillon, 55–66. London: Routledge.
Wikipedia 2019. List of Royal Variety Performances, 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Royal_Variety_Performances#1960s
Accessed: 10 August 2019.