Sergio Pisfil (Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

The involvement of WEM (Watkins Electric Music) and band roadies in the late 1960s was fundamental in the development of live sound in Britain. It is only in the early 1970s, however, that a new live sound industry emerged and, I argue, popular music venues played an important role in its development. The “implosion concerts” at the Roundhouse around 1969-1970 were probably the first attempts to have full control of the sonic aspects of rock venues in London but it’s really the opening of the Rainbow Theatre in 1971, on one hand, and the ambitious operation at the Sundown Theatres in 1972, on the other, that established rock venues as production sites. This presentation aims to provide evidence to support these claims. Thinking of music venues as production sites is not only important to reconsider live music history but it’s also essential to reformulate the ways we experience, reflect upon and talk about popular music concerts, as well as their economic and cultural value.

This research benefits from a 4-year research that was part of my PhD on the history of live sound 1967-1973. I managed to interview more than 100 informants, including those that installed sound at the Roundhouse in 1970, the production teams that migrated from the Fillmore East (New York) to The Rainbow Theatre, and members of the sound company that manufactured and installed sound equipment at the Sundown Theatres.

References

Anderson, Paul, Mods, The New Religion: The Style and the Music of the 1960s Mods, London; New York: Omnibus Press, 2013.

Ames, Richard, Live Music Production: Interviews with UK Pioneers, New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.

Bacon, Tony, London Live: From the Yardbirds to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols: The Inside Story of Live Bands in the Capital’s Trail-Blazing Music Clubs, San Francisco: Balafon, 1999.

Creasy, Martin, Legends on Tour: The Pop Package Tours of the 1960s, Glouchestershire, UK: Tempus, 2007.

Frith, Simon, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan and Emma Webster, The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume 1: 1950-1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club. Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate, 2013.

Frith, Simon, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan and Emma Webster, The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume 2: 1968-1984: From Hyde Park to the Hacienda. Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2019.

Glatt, John, Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock’s Greatest Legends, Guilford, Conn & Helena, Montana: Lyons Press, 2015.

Haslam, Dave, Life After Dark: A History of British Nightclubs and Music Venues, London: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Kostelanetz, Richard, The Fillmore East: Recollections of Rock Theater, New York: Schirmer, 1995.

Long Paul and Sarah Raine, “The Meaning of the Music Venue: Historicizing the Click Club”, Popular Music History, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 55-74, 2019.

McGlone, Molly J., Excavating Experimentalism: Investigating Musical Space, the Electric Circus, and Nineteen-sixties New York. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2010.

Thompson, Emily, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2004.

Thornton, Sarah, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge: Polity, 1995.