Musician in the Museum

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.

Charles Fairchild is Associate Professor of Popular Music at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Sound, Screens, Speakers (Bloomsbury, 2019), Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (Bloomsbury, 2014), Music, Radio and the Public Sphere (Palgrave, 2012) and Pop Idols and Pirates (Ashgate, 2008).

Introduction Part 1: The Place We've Ended Up 1. The Democratic [sic] Vistas of Popular Culture 2. Neoliberalism's Firmaments of Fame 3. Caught Between the Spectacular and the Vernacular Part 2: Ideal Musical Objects 4. Popular Music Museums and the Experience Economy 5. Preferred Itineraries of Sight, Sound, and Feeling 6. Fetish, Effigy, and the Resonant Object Part 3: Ideal Musical Subjects 7. The Emergence and Evolution of the Rock Imaginary 8. Portraiture and the Currency of Musical Repute 9. Displaying 'The Popular' Conclusion Bibliography