Buildings matter
The recycling of Liverpool’s Whitechapel and the Casbah
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39559Keywords:
music and built environment, music city histories, Liverpool music historyAbstract
This article discusses the reshaping of Liverpool's built environment, reminding us that buildingstake on new uses and meanings as they progress through time, with entertainment spacesemerging and declining as part of the meta-narrative of post-industrial capital. The expansionand repurposing of spaces such as theatres and cinemas are discussed, with 'new' spaces suchas record shops also regarded as assisting in re-establishing empty buildings at crucial times inLiverpool's history. The article consequently aims to encourage the reader to consider how buildingdevelopment directly relates to the emergence of popular music history, particularly in thelate 1950s when a number of key venues in Liverpool emerged. A cogent theme is that specificplaces in cities remind communities of not only where they live, but also who they are and were.
References
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Best, Roag, Pete Best and Rory Best. 2003. The Beatles: The True Beginnings. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Brocken, Michael. 2015. The Twenty-First Century Legacy of the Beatles: Liverpool and Popular Music Heritage Tourism. Farnham: Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315551869
—2018. ‘Phillips’ Sound Recording Services—the Studio that Tourism Forgot’. In Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, ed. Sarah Baker, Lauren Istvandity, Catherine Strong and Zelmarie Cantillon, 388–97. London: Routledge.
Brocken, Mike, and Jeff Daniels. 2018. Gordon Stretton, Black British Transoceanic Jazz Pioneer. London: Lexington.
Cohen, Sara, and Robert Kronenburg. 2018. Liverpool’s Musical Landscapes. London: Historic England.
Connell, John, and Chris Gibson. 2003. Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203448397
Cooper, John, and David Power. 1982. A History of West Derby. Ormskirk: BPMS/Causway Books.
Frampton, Kenneth. 1993. ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’. In Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty, 268–80. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Jenkins, Tricia. 1994. Let’s Go Dancing: Dance Band Memories of 1930s Liverpool. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.
Leigh, Spencer. 2002. Sweeping the Blues Away: A Celebration of the Merseysippi Jazz Band. Liverpool: Institute of Popular Music.
Mackintosh, Iain, ed. 2008. James Winston, the Theatric Tourist: A Facsimile of the First and Only Edition of 1805 Preceded by a Facsimile of the Original Prospectus. London: Society for Theatre Research and The British Library.
Maw, Helen. 2018. ‘The Casbah and Mona Best: Searching for the “Other”’. Unpublished MA thesis, Liverpool Hope University.
Montgomery, John. 2003. ‘Cultural Quarters as Mechanisms for Urban Regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualising Cultural Quarters’. Planning, Practice & Research 18/4: 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/1561426042000215614
Munro, Malcolm. (n.d.) ‘Dancing Mad: An Autobiographical Dancing Diary’. Liverpool: unpublished manuscript, c. mid-1960s.
O’Brien, Ray. 2005. There are Places I Remember: The Beatles Early Venues in and around Merseyside and North Wales. Liverpool: The Bluecoat Press.
Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thompson, Phil. 1994. The Best of Cellars: The Story of the World Famous CAVERN Club. Liverpool: The Bluecoat Press.
Troughton, Thomas. 1806. The Liverpool Dramatic Censor; or, Theatrical Recorder; Containing Strictures on Actors and Actresses, and a Critical Analysis of Every Popular Dramatic Composition Represented at the Theatre Royal [...] during the Season; with Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Dramatists. Liverpool: James Smith.
Unaccredited editor. 2002. Memories of Liverpool. Halifax: True North Books.
West Derby Reporter. 1959. ‘Kasbah Has a New Meaning for Local Teenagers’. West Derby Reporter 211, 18 September: 1.
Wong, Nicholas. 2018. ‘The Rushworths of Liverpool’. Liverpool History Society Newsletter 52, summer.
Published
2020-01-24
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Brocken, M. (2020). Buildings matter: The recycling of Liverpool’s Whitechapel and the Casbah. Popular Music History, 12(1), 75-93. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39559
