Heaven 17: Inside Outsiders Playing To Win

Over the past couple of nights BBC2 have screened a couple of retrospectives on the originators of 1980s British electro-pop: Heaven 17. When I was aged about seventeen, I started collecting their singles on vinyl. I felt their music had a sound and a concept like nobody else. In the heyday of New Romanticism here were three twentysomething lads from Sheffield dressed like young business executives forging a strangely alienated dance sound. The cover of the 'Penthouse and Pavement' album looked like they'd just sealed a property deal in Milton Keynes. I’d not frequented a club or seen many concerts back then. Indeed the idea of seeing Heaven 17 play live was unthinkable. Yet I was drawn to the cryptic edge they bought to pop - there was just that elusive and undefinable "something" about them.Twenty...

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Post-popular music, mnemic communities, and intermediary fandoms: Challenging general approaches to fan culture?

In Fan Cultures (2002), I attempted to produce what amounted to a general theory of media fandom, tackling issues of fan identity and community. But this approach (see also Sandvoss 2005) potentially neglects the specificity of types of fan object/experience. With this self-critique in mind, I will consider three illustrative ways in which popular music fandom cannot readily be aligned with 'fan studies' more generally, given that this has typically been dominated by screen media debates. Firstly, film and TV texts cease to be produced if they fall below thresholds of industry success and 'popularity'; popular music is less prone to this sort of cut-off point. As a result, what might be termed post-popular music fandom can be analysed, whereby life-long fandom (Stevenson 2009) is enacted in...

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Highlighting Theory and Research Relevant to the Identity Development of GLBTQ Dusty Springfield Fans

As a doctoral candidate in interdisciplinary studies my focus is the meaning of celebrities and icons in the identity development of GLBTQ fans across the lifespan. My dissertation will examine this phenomenon through collective case studies of Dusty Springfield fans. In preparation for my dissertation, I am preparing a qualifying paper to set forth the theoretical underpinnings I have identified in the areas of fan studies, projective psychologies, and identity development. For The Northwest Popular Music Studies Network symposium I will highlight aspects of these theories and how they relate to my research into the meaning-making of GLBTQ Dusty Springfield fans. For example, object relations theory helps explain the feelings of protectiveness Dusty’s music elicits in her fans, as well...

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‘Anyone who calls Muse a Twilight band will be shot on sight’: Music, Fandom, and Distinction in the Twilight Franchise

This paper examines the routes that fans of popular music might take into their fandom, considering how this might be influenced by their use of other media texts. Theorists such as Matt Hills and Cornel Sandvoss have argued that fan studies needs to move away from viewing fans as people who are only fans of one text at a time. This paper seeks to consider this by exploring how fans of film and television programmes might find that their fandom leads them to discover particular types of bands and music, examining how such textual links are articulated. This will be undertaken through analysis of Twilight fans and the resultant fandom of artists who feature on the movie soundtracks such as Paramore, Thom Yorke, or Muse. In examining how online fan sites are used to discuss the soundtracks,...

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Politicizing Fandom: Music Listeners as Imagined Subjectivities in the 1970s Italian Music Press

My proposal aims to explore the historical formation of a certain discourse on music fandom in Italy. In particular, I will focus my analysis on the way in which two 1970s magazines, Gong and Muzak, constructed the image of the pop music listener through a certain kind of “decisionist narrative” (Matt Hills: 2002), which framed fans according to an opposition between rational and 'affective' forms of music fruition. However, providing an overview of magazines' historical and cultural context, I will show that rather than condemning (or denying) the affectivity of fandom, they employed contradictory strategies to legitimize it through politics and 'high theory'. In this way, press' narratives reflect the wider crisis of the dichotomy between...

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‘Myspace-Bands’ and ‘Tag-Wars’: The Case of Online Social Media and the Deathcore Scene

In my talk I aim to interpret the transformations that took place in the relations of the extreme music scene known as ‘deathcore’ due to online community practices in recent years. All this interests me in respect to the questions concerning genre communities: how do web 2.0 applications affect communities organized around certain genres? How do certain genre-definitions and communities form each other as well as the relation to the transformation process itself, and what kind of conflicts does this engender? First, I look at — through the career of the band Job For a Cowboy on Myspace — how the online success of the band led to the devaluation of the ‘deathcore’ genre label and to the decreased reputation of Myspace as a medium among the people conceiving of themselves as the authentic members...

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Constructing Northern Soul Fandom in the Absence of an Artist: Issues of Identity, Originality, Ownership and Locality

Northern Soul is a British music culture primarily located in the Midlands and north of England. The scene originated in the late 1960s, reaching its heyday in the 1970s and continuing to the present day. The music of choice was, and still is, 1960s black American soul. The 45rpm vinyl records that are fanatically collected and passionately dance to are predominantly rare, non-chart hits from often unknown artists and minor record labels. Via the direct acquisition of these vinyl records from the USA, northern English fans have created a scene unique to them and beyond the original USA intentions for that music. With a notably absent artist (Smith, 2009) the Northern Soul scene sits in awe of DJs and dancers who act as tastemakers, performers and connoisseurs. Dance is used by participants...

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'I Love You, Paul!' Adolescent Sexuality and Finnish Female Fandom at the Turn of the 1950s and 1960s

In Finland, popular music fandom developed into a large-scale youth cultural phenomenon at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. From the start, the most eye-catching feature of Finnish fandom was its femininity: the fan communities of the most popular teen idols like Elvis Presley, Paul Anka and Finnish singer Lasse Liemola consisted almost without exception of adolescent females. This has naturally raised many questions and surmises about the role of sexuality in the fan cultures of the era. In my paper I discuss this theme by studying the different ways in which sexuality was expressed by fans in fan letters, concerts and the popular media of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Furthermore, I will discuss the multiple and varying meanings of adolescent female sexuality as a part of fandom. In this...

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Metalheadz, Punks, Ravers: Genre, Fandom and the Non-musical Expression of Belonging

When discussing fandom, we refer to the relationship between the fan and his or her liking of a specific object or person. In popular music studies, fans and fandom have been described and analysed in relation to a specific artist, band or performer. When this is the case, certain observations can be made that link the fan to his or her musical star: logos, photographs, items of clothing, accessories, or hair styles. There are genres of popular music whose units of musical production and performance are represented by bands or solo artists. In the case of electronic dance music, fandom has experienced a shift. Due to the public prominence of DJs and their subsequent treatment as stars, the image of a star has appeared from and disappeared into the underground. In this paper, I examine the...

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When the Researcher is a Fan: Methodological Points on Carrying Out Research into Your Favourite Artist

In many cases, fandom feelings are an important reason why popular music researchers carry out projects into their favourite artists. While doing it, they get into situations where the fan needs to face his or her own feelings in order to have a desirable critical view on the subject and express impartiality. Dialoguing with existent literature, studying historical moments, finding primary sources and having contacts with the artist himself or herself may generate confrontation between the musicologist and the fan… Based on the personal experience of working on the works of Brazilian songwriter and musician Marcos Valle; the researcher being a longtime fan of his, this paper discusses some issues based on fandom in the pop music scene and on...

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Beatlemania: In the Beginning there was the Scream

“The images persist: four guys in suits or smart raincoats being chased by hundreds of fans, girls frenzied at their merest glimpse, sloping bobbies-arms linked, teeth gritted, straining to hold back the throng.”Mark Lewisohn’s evocative description of one of the key images of the 1960s helps to focus attention on the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. While hysterical scenes had surrounded male stars before The Beatles (Valentino in the 1920s, Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, Elvis and Johnny Ray in the 1950s) and has subsequently (Rollermania and T.Rexstasy in the 1970s, boyband frenzies in the 1990s), Beatlemania remains, this paper will argue, the yardstick: an alliance between fans, the media and a cultural phenomenon unlike any other in UK pop history. The paper will argue that it is through...

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Hidden Fans? Fandom and Domestic Musical Activity

Despite Joli Jenson’s (1992) contention that fandom should be conceptualised as being part of everyday concerns, there are still few studies that examine the extent to which fandom intersects with domestic activities. Utilising case studies from ethnographic research on the roles of music in the domestic lives of a group of people with learning difficulties, this paper will explore how everyday musical activities can become integral to communication and identity-formulation for people who are often precluded from engaging in the creative practices usually associated with music fandom. Such an exploration will highlight issues regarding access and opportunity to engage in ‘fan-related’ activity and raise questions about the limits of the concept of fandom.Dr Nedim Hassan, University of Liv...

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Critiquing the Lyrics, Critiquing the Music: Inverting the Critical Work of Fanvids

In ‘Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding,’ Francesca Coppa defines vidding as “a form of grassroots filmmaking in which clips from television shows and movies are set to music…to comment on or analyze a set of preexisting visuals.” This statement is consistent with the scholarly and popular assumption that a vid’s moving-image source is primary while its audio is lesser, used for framing its critique. It is my contention, however, that the inverse is also true. Vidders are often also fans of the music they appropriate and it is possible to see a critical reading of the audio taking place as well as the visual. To show this I will mount two close readings. The first highlights the critique of lyrics by examining how...

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David Bowie: A Case Study of the Established Artist as Fan

“At another Bowie-organised party in Paris Kraftwerk had put in an appearance, receiving a five-minute standing ovation as they enteredblank-faced and got up in full- blown 1930s retro style, like the musicalequivalents of Gilbert and George. Bowie was enthralled: “Look how they are, they are fantastic!” he kept repeating…”In his book on David Bowie’s Low, Hugo Wilcken recounts an oft-cited non-meeting of musical minds. What is illuminating here is the shallowness, the dumb enthusiasm of Bowie’s reaction, like a kid unable to contain his enthusiasm before a favourite sports hero. Or indeed pop star. This is because Bowie was, and remains, fundamentally a fan. This paper will use the example of David Bowie in attempting to understand the phenomenon of the established artist as fan, and the...

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From Fandom to Stardom in Punk: The Female Experience

Perhaps more than any genre of popular music, early punk rock sought to blur the boundaries that separated performers from their fans and to lay claim to an inclusiveness that encouraged fans to make the transition from audience to stage. Early British spectators like Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious were emboldened to take this step because of punk’s “do-it-yourself” ethos, which challenged conventional notions of musicianship and performance. In the early days of the movement, these challenges seemed to extend to existing gender barriers, and many female fans appeared to make an easy transition to the stage (for example, the Slits, the Au Pairs, the Raincoats, and Sioux). However, as punk was absorbed into mainstream popular culture in the...

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Fan Words: Towards a New Vocabulary of Fan Theory

In 1976 Raymond Williams cemented his position as a central theorist of cultural studies with Keywords, a book that used the format of the glossary as an intellectual device to start rethinking social analysis. Word-by-word musing offered Williams a platform to both summarize the terrain of cultural theory and to extend it. His writing was based on the profound truth that academic thinking primarily takes place through language. While the academic process of ‘keywording’ has continued for pedagogic reasons in subject glossaries and text books, there seems to be precious little space to explore keywords as tools to advance theory. In this paper I will use a small handful of keywords to begin rethinking how we might study popular music fandom. The emphasis will be both on deconstructing existing...

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With(in) the Band: The Queering of the Female Fan Experience

Everyone knows what a groupie is: she’s That Girl, the fan hanging around after the gig, waiting for the nod, the chance to sleep with her chosen guy in the band. Or maybe she’s more than that: she might be his girlfriend, his wife, a woman working in the music industry. Defined narrowly or broadly, she’s there, a marker of an extreme expression of the heteronormative organization of society. The general critical debate concerns itself with the scope of the definition, not the paradigm itself. But there is another possibility, a community-centric approach to sexual desire for their favourite musicians: narrative slash fiction on the internet. Slash, same-sex relationship stories written primarily by and for women, is created to make explicit the interpersonal relationships of these celebrities....

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Triskaidekaphobics: R.E.M. Fans in Pursuit of the Ultimate First Listen

In this paper I discuss how the Triskaidekaphobics (Trobes), a social sub-group within Murmurs.com, an online community for fans of rock band R.E.M., assume a non-normative status, due to their temporary spoiler evading activities concerning the then forthcoming R.E.M. album. Driven by a nostalgic aim to recapture the experience of buying a new album without prior knowledge of its contents during the first listen other than officially released information, these fans endeavor to resist the new technology and instead aim to restore the pre-Internet experience of listening to and purchasing a new album as a singular event. I demonstrate how this pursuit of pleasure (pursuing the “first listen”) worked to disrupt the exchange of knowledge with...

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FAQs - Popular Music Fandom: A One Day Symposium

Which airport should I use in the UK?If you intend to fly straight into the region, use Manchester or Liverpool airport.Where do I find accomodation?I'm sure you are concerned to book accomodation as soon as possible as Chester is not a huge place and I don't think there is anything available on campus. Looking for bed and breakfast rather than a hotel might increase your options. Try here or here for a range of accomodation.If you can't find anything in Chester, you might try looking for accomodation elsewhere in the region. I'll be commuting in by train from Manchester that morning, which takes about an hour, so it is possible if you are willing to face a really early start! It might also be possible to commute in from Liverpool, or a station even nearer to Chester. You would simply have...

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