Special Issue of Rock Music Studies: The Rolling Stones

Guest-edited by Neil Nehring, University of Texas at Austin

Rock Music Studies is a new popular music journal launched by Taylor & Francis in 2014, under the co-editorship of Gary Burns and Thomas Kitts. Contributions are invited to a special issue of the journal on the venerable Rolling Stones, to be published in February 2016.

With the Stones recently celebrating the 50^th anniversary of their first appearance as recording artists, the possible topics are nearly endless, of course. After 50 years all sorts of historical phases stand out: “The Golden Era” (or “Mick Taylor Years”) from 1969 to 1974, including the legendary tours of the United States in 1969 and 1972; the wild Clockwork Orange phase circa 1964, instigated by manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and/or the centrality of the Stones in Swinging London through 1966; the “lost” European tour of 1970, on which the Stones were arguably at the peak of their powers and dubious reputation among the New Left as political radicals; and the response to punk represented by the Some Girls album and tour in 1978.  Subsequent periods are fine, too; personally I agree with the music critic Bill Wyman that the Stones might well have bitten the dust long ago if not for the lingering cachet of the 1981 hit “Start Me Up” (written several years before) over the hiatus in the mid-’80s as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards feuded, and after, culminating in its use in the rollout of Windows 95 in 1995.

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Music and shared imaginaries: nationalisms, communities, and choral singing

October 30^th-November 1^st, 2014

Hosted and organized by the University of Aveiro and INET-MD (Portugal), and co-organized by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) , Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (Italy), and the University of Rioja (SPAIN).

Keynote speakers:

Ruth Finnegan – The Open University, UK; Mário Vieira de Carvalho – Universidade Nova de Lisboa; Salwa Castelo-Branco – Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Call for papers

Philip Bohlman’s writings about music, nationalism and the construction of the “new” Europe proposed a “multitude of angles” that comprehended the plurality of actors and musical practices that weave and fray national identities. In relation to the study of music and nationalisms, this is not merely a question of genres and repertoires, and top-down narratives, but also how musicians negotiate their own nationalities in performance.

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One Century of Record Labels – Mapping places, stories and communities of sound

International Centre for Music Studies, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
November 6^th – 7^th 2014
Keynote: Dr Pete Dale (Slampt Records, Manchester Metropolitan University)

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will expose, question and celebrate the enduring role of independent and commercial record labels in the construction of musical patrimony, from the early days of the record industry to the present. Record labels have traditionally functioned as organs of representation (replicating for instance racial stereotypes), codification (setting genres and trends), as well as emancipation (allowing for marginal trends, voices and groups of artists to emerge). They exist at the intersection of the public and the personal, capturing the collective imagination as well as the private fascination of the collector. They occupy different spaces and scales, from internationally influential, legendary record labels (Stax, Motown, or Columbia) to more obscure, bedroom-run, non-commercial labels (Sarah Records, Musical Traditions Records). The aim of the conference is to gather a variety of perspectives on the past and present legacy of record labels, and to examine their changing status and relevance in an age of increasing dematerialisation.

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