Small Venues: Precarity, Vibrancy and Live Music [Paperback]

Throughout the history of popular music, the careers of many culturally significant artists and groups began on the small stages of local bars clubs, pubs, and discotheques. When the stories of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the New York punk hardcore and post punk scenes are told, iconic venues such as The Cavern, The Marquee and CBGB's serve as the settings of their early chapters Small live music venues such as these are pivotal in the narratives and history of popular music. However, very few of them survive.

This book focusses on the role of small live music venues as incubators for emerging talent and social hubs for music scene participants. Such venues are grassroots spaces of cultural labor and production that often struggle with issues of financial precarity yet are fundamental to the live music ecology of a city, acting both as platforms for emergent performers and spaces of sociality for local music scenes.

Whiting's book is a long overdue and critical addition to research on the spaces and places of live music performance and consumption. Small venues are often referred to in passing but rarely a sustained focus in academic scholarship; and yet, as this book masterfully illustrates, they are the lifeblood of local and trans-local music scenes. Crucial reading for anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper knowledge of the social, economic and emotional value of small venues, the challenges they face and the unequivocal part they have played in keeping music live for successive generations of music fans around the world. Andy Bennett, Professor Cultural Sociology, Griffith University, Australia

Small venues are the lifeblood of any music scene: a heady mix of sights, smells and sounds; spaces full of creativity and pleasure, ambition and rivalry; sites where the artistic expression, profit motives and government regulations come il³!