London Gig Venues

Everything you ever wanted to know about London's rock 'n' roll venues.

In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid 1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths. This is about one man's burning desire for success against the odds, his passion for live music and the excitement of those wilderness years, a far cry from the corporate world that controls the scene today. From rock-star debauchery and mixing it up with Brixton gangsters to putting on the first legal raves in the UK and countless backroom business deals, this is the story of how to succeed in business with no experience and fulfil your teenage fantasies.

Nightclubs and music venues are often the source of a lifetime's music taste, best friends and vivid memories. They can define a town, a city or a generation, and breed scenes and bands that change music history. In Life After DarkDave Haslam reveals and celebrates a definitive history of significant venues and great nights out. Writing with passion and authority, he takes us from vice-ridden Victorian dance halls to acid house and beyond; through the jazz decades of luxurious ballrooms to mods in basement dives and the venues that nurtured the Beatles, the Stones, Northern Soul and the Sex Pistols; from psychedelic light shows to high street discos; from the Roxy to the Hacienda; from the Krays to the Slits; and from reggae sound systems to rave nights in Stoke. In a journey to dozens of towns and cities, taking in hundreds of unforgettable stories on the way, Haslam explores the sleaziness, the changing fashions, the moral panics and the cultural and commercial history of nightlife. He interviews clubbers and venue owners, as well as DJs and musicians; he meets one of the gangsters who nearly destroyed Manchester's nightlife and discusses Goth clubs in Leeds with David Peace.

What 'live music' means for one generation or culture does not necessarily mean 'live' for another. This book examines how changes in economy, culture and technology pertaining to post-digital times affect production, performance and reception of live music. Considering established examples of live music, such as music festivals, alongside practices influenced by developments in technology, including live streaming and holograms, the book examines whether new forms stand the test of 'live authenticity' for their audiences. It also speculates how live music might develop in the future, its relationship to recorded music and mediated performance and how business is conducted in the popular music industry.

Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Barber Shop Chronicles, which was partly inspired by verbatim recordings, is a heart-warming, hilarious and insightful play that leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day. It was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and is here publishedas a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Oladipo Agboluaje.

In the 1960s, as gentrification took hold of New York City, Jane Jacobs predicted that the city would become the true player in the global system. Indeed, in the 21st century more meaningful comparisons can be made between cities than between nations and states. Based on case studies of Melbourne, Austin and Berlin, this book is the first in-depth study to combine academic and industry analysis of the music cities phenomenon. Using four distinctly defined algorithms as benchmarks, it interrogates Richard Florida’s creative cities thesis and applies a much-needed synergy of urban sociology and musicology to the concept, mediated by a journalism lens. Building on seminal work by Robert Park, Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, it argues that journalists are the cultural branders and street theorists whose ethnographic approach offers critical insights into the urban sociability of music activity.