Everyone Loves Live Music

Every year, millions of music fans come from far and wide to swarm parks and arenas to hear their favorite bands at festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury. How did these and countless other festivals across the globe evolve into glamorous pop culture events and create powerful ideas about music and public culture? In Everyone Loves Live Music, Fabian Holt looks beyond the slick marketing images to show how festivals and other institutions of musical performance have evolved in recent decades, as part of broader changes in society.

Adopting a critical approach, Holt upends commonly-held ideas of live music and introduces a pioneering theory of performance institutions. He explores the fascinating history of the club and the festival in San Francisco and New York, as well as a number of European cities. These two central institutions of popular music—the club and the festival—are further analyzed within the broader history of music and cultural life in modernity, shedding new light on organized cultural life in capitalism, urban media cultures, and the role of festive events in society. An engaging read for musicians, fans, and scholars alike, Everyone Loves Live Music argues that while live music provides exciting experiences for many people, it also promotes a new ideology of music in neoliberal capitalism.