Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:57:03.967Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local differences? popular music and the local state

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John Street
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This is the story of a rock venue in an English city. Hardly, it might be supposed, the stuff of great drama; there are, after all, rock venues throughout England. Most towns and cities of any size have at least one. But this venue, the Waterfront in Norwich, is distinctive, if not unique, in at least two respects.It was purpose-built and, more importantly, it was largely financed, not by private enterprise, but by the city's Labour council. Norwich's local politicians risked both financial and political capital so that their city could host performers like Nitzer Ebb, Dumpy's Rusty Nuts, Labi Siffre and Orzic Tentacles (all of whom appeared at the Waterfront in the space of a week in November 1991). The £1 million project opened in late 1990, amid much publicity and intense criticism from the opposition parties and local residents: these complaints continued into the venue's second year, when it received a further subsidy of £30,000 from the council. Why did the council take these risks? What were the political interests and values which led to this novel policy development?

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 43 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ADC (Association of District Councils Working Party on the Arts). 1989. Arts and the Districts, Association of District Councils (London)Google Scholar
Bianchini, F. 1987. ‘GLC R.I.P. Cultural policies in London, 1981–1986’, New Formations, No. 1, Spring, pp. 103–17Google Scholar
CLES (Centre for Local Economic Strategies), 1988. City Centres. City Cultures (Manchester)Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1991. Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making (Oxford)Google Scholar
Dunleavy, P. 1980. Urban Political Analysis (London)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunleavy, P. and Husbands, C. 1985. British Democracy at the Crossroads (London)Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. 1989. The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1989. ‘No going back: the culture of cultural industries’, The Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture (Birmingham)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1992. ‘Popular music and the local state’, in Rock Music: Politics, Policies and Institutions, T. Bennett et al. (London)Google Scholar
Frith, S. (ed.) 1988. Facing the Music (New York)Google Scholar
GLC (Greater London Council). 1985. The State of the Art or the Art of the State? (London)Google Scholar
Grossberg, L. 1984. ‘Another boring day in paradise: rock and roll and the empowerment of everyday life’, Popular Music, 4, pp. 225–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyford, J., Leach, S. and Game, C. 1989. The Changing Politics of Local Government (London)Google Scholar
Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C. J. and Allsopp, J. G. 1988. A Nation Dividing? (London)Google Scholar
Lansley, S., Goss, S. and Wolmar, C. 1989. Councils in Conflict (London)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G. 1975. Mystery Train (New York)Google Scholar
Mulgan, G. and Worpole, K. 1986. Saturday Night or Sunday Morning? (London)Google Scholar
Stanley, M. 1990. ‘Why does the venue pressure group succeed?’, Problems of Politics thesis, University of East AngliaGoogle Scholar
Wallis, R. and Malm, K. 1984. Big Sounds from Small Peoples (London)Google Scholar
Waters, C. 1990. British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884–1914 (Manchester)Google Scholar
Young, S. 1991. ‘Local service delivery’, Contemporary Record, Vol. 4, No. 3, 02, pp. 15–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar