Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Inside the culture of an artistically influential music community

Britain is widely considered the cradle of independent music culture. Bands like Radiohead and Belle and Sebastian, which epitomize indie music's sounds and attitudes, have spawned worldwide fanbases. This in-depth study of the British independent music scene explores how the behavior of fans, artists, and music industry professionals produce a community with a specific aesthetic based on moral values. Author Wendy Fonarow, a scholar with years of experience in the various sectors of the indie music scene, examines the indie music "gig" as a ritual in which all participants are actively involved. This ritual allows participants to play with cultural norms regarding appropriate behavior, especially in the domains of sex and creativity. Her investigation uncovers the motivations of audience members when they first enter the community and how their positions change over time so that the gig functions for most members as a rite of passage. Empire of Dirt sheds new light on music, gender roles, emotion, subjectivity, embodiment, and authenticity.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. viii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Beginnings (p. 1)
• Theoretical Frame: From Observation to Communication (p. 3)
• Active Bodies (p. 4)
• The Audience and Subjectivity (p. 6)
• Music as Activity (p. 8)
• Subjectivity in Action (p. 10)
• Turn On the Bright Lights6 (p. 11)
• Methodology (p. 14)
• From Plus One to A&R (p. 16)
• Your Itinerary (p. 19)
• Conclusion (p. 22)
• 1 What Is "Indie"? (p. 25)
• Indie... What's at Stake? (p. 27)
• Indie as a Mode of Distribution: An Industrial Definition (p. 30)
• Indie as a Genre (p. 39)
• Indie as an Ethos (p. 51)
• Indie as Pathetic (p. 53)
• Indie as a Mode of Aesthetic Judgement (p. 57)
• The Mainstream Is a Centralized Hierarchy (p. 62)
• Dance Is Not the Way the Future Is Meant to Feel (p. 69)
• Indie: What Is It? (p. 77)
• 2 The Zones of Participation (p. 79)
• The Event (p. 81)
• Zone One (p. 82)
• The Pit (p. 86)
• The Front (p. 92)
• Zone One Spectatorship: The Initiates (p. 95)
• The Psychosomatics of Zone One (p. 98)
• Zone Two (p. 105)
• The Mode of Comportment of Zone Two (p. 106)
• Comportment Features That Vary over Space (p. 107)
• Gigs as Social Life (p. 109)
• The Process of Change from Zone One to Zone Two (p. 110)
• The Heterogeneous Audience (p. 114)
• A Move toward the Exit (p. 116)
• Conclusion (p. 120)
• 3 Zone Three and the Music Industry (p. 122)
• The Activities of Zone Three (p. 123)
• The Liggers (p. 125)
• The Guest List (p. 128)
• Routine 1 Example of Professional Strategy (p. 132)
• Routine 2 Example of Personable Strategy (p. 133)
• Routine 3 Code Switch from Professional to Personable (p. 135)
• Passes (p. 138)
• Privileged Spectatorship (p. 151)
• Conclusion (p. 152)
• 4 The Participant Structure and the Metaphysics of Spectatorship (p. 154)
• Proximity, Affiliation, and Consensus Building (p. 155)
• Verticality and Asymmetry (p. 160)
• Contesting Spectorial Positions: Closeness and Distance (p. 161)
• Age (p. 163)
• The Metaphysics of Participation (p. 166)
• African Expression in a Protestant World (p. 175)
• The Nature of the Moral Threat (p. 179)
• A Ritual of Transformation (p. 182)
• Conclusion (p. 184)
• 5 Performance, Authenticity, and Emotion (p. 187)
• Indie's Version of Authenticity (p. 188)
• Indie's Conventions of Being in Performance (p. 192)
• Emotion and the Decay of Emotion (p. 196)
• 6 Sex and the Ritual Practitioners (p. 203)
• Gendered Spectatorship (p. 204)
• The Groupie as Sexual Predator (p. 207)
• Indie Versus Mainstream: Groupie Troublesomeness (p. 212)
• Offstage Behavior Mirrors Onstage Spectacle (p. 216)
• Come Together (p. 221)
• Sing for the Moment (p. 225)
• The Tricksters (p. 228)
• Indie Coyotes and Foxes (p. 240)
• Afterword: My Music Is Your Dirt (p. 242)
• Appendix 1 NME's Top 100 Albums of All Time (p. 251)
• Appendix 2 NME's Top 50 Albums of the 1980s (p. 255)
• Appendix 3 Select Magazine Survey, 1994 (p. 257)
• Notes (p. 261)
• References (p. 289)
• Index (p. 309)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Fans may find it sad, but the fact is that Indie rock is fair game to academic cultural anthropologists like Fonarow, a former record company employee and now a lecturer at UCLA. Her study began at an L.A. show in 1991 by the Glasgow band Teenage Fanclub, when she wondered why members of the local rock scene, even though they weren't performing, felt perfectly comfortable crossing the stage. The result is this "ethnography of audience members' behavior" at shows by British bands, specifically, "a study of multiple subjectivities and the spectacle of music performance in the independent music community." Specifically, Fonarow seeks to codify the unwritten rules that normally govern audience responses-"I treat musical performance as a ritual." After uneasily defining the term "indie" from multiple angles, Fonarow identifies three main audience "zones of participation" at a concert, and (with b&w photos and illustrations) carefully delineates what normally happens within them. She then zeroes in on "Zone Three and the Music Industry," picking apart the ways commerce and status are established at the back of the hall. By the time one reaches chapter six, "Sex and the Ritual Practitioners" (i.e., how band and crew get laid), one cannot help but start thinking back on past shows as elaborate ceremonies. Fonarow's book may not have the excitement of a My Bloody Valentine show, but it convincingly describes many of its cultural components. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.