Continuum Journal of Media & Cultural Studies ISSN: 1030-4312 (Print) 1469-3666 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20 ‘We love the bands and we want to keep them on the walls’: gig posters as heritage-as-praxis in music venues Catherine Strong & Samuel Whiting To cite this article: Catherine Strong & Samuel Whiting (2017): ‘We love the bands and we want to keep them on the walls’: gig posters as heritage-as-praxis in music venues, Continuum, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2017.1370538 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1370538 Published online: 24 Aug 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 33 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ccon20 Download by: [RMIT University Library] Date: 05 September 2017, At: 22:56 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1370538 ‘We love the bands and we want to keep them on the walls’: gig posters as heritage-as-praxis in music venues Catherine Strong and Samuel Whiting Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia ABSTRACT Gig posters and lyers have remained a reliable means of promoting musical performances well into the digital age. Although the primary function of posters is publicity for both musical acts and venues alike, they are often retained as memorabilia of a performance long after the last note has rung out. They are, however, an under-examined aspect of popular music’s culture and heritage. While posters have been included as part of the material items that make up popular music heritage when studies of this have been undertaken, the particular roles that they can play in this area have not yet been examined. However, when taken as an aspect of music heritage posters are signiicant as representations of an ephemeral ‘moment’ within local music history for both audiences and performers. Furthermore, as venue décor they align performance sites with a range of musical and aesthetic identiiers that act as visual representations of heritage. We argue that the posters are a form of heritage-as-praxis that helps to create a sense of identity and community in the venue, giving punters a clear idea of what the venue provides musically, and signifying the space as representative of a certain subsection of the city’s broader music scene. Introduction Gig posters and lyers have remained a reliable means of promoting musical performances well into the digital age. Although the primary function of posters is publicity for both musical acts and venues alike, they are often retained as memorabilia of a performance long after the last note has rung out. They are, however, an under-examined aspect of popular music’s culture and heritage. While posters have been included as part of the material items that make up popular music heritage when studies of this have been undertaken, the particular roles that they can play in this area have not yet been examined. The most in-depth studies of popular music posters have been of their function in domestic settings as part of feminized fandom and ‘bedroom culture’ (e.g. see Anderson 2012). However, when taken as an aspect of music heritage posters are signiicant as representations of an ephemeral ‘moment’ within local music history for both audiences and performers. Furthermore, as venue décor they align performance sites with a range of musical and aesthetic identiiers that act as aural and visual representations of heritage. This study looks at four small to medium-sized Melbourne live music venues that retained old gig posters on their walls as a signiicant aspect of their visual aesthetic. These venues were The Tote, The Corner, the John Curtin and the Old Bar. These venues represent a signiicant subsection of the CONTACT Catherine Strong Catherine.strong@rmit.edu.au Quote from interview with Rhys, John Curtin Hotel manager. * © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 2 C. STRONG AND S. WHITING Melbourne live music scene, and regularly host a diverse number of local, national and international acts between them. They are entry-level 200 capacity spaces synonymous with local up-and-coming acts (such as The Old Bar and the John Curtin) through to medium-sized 800 capacity venues (The Corner Hotel, which is known for hosting well-established national and international touring bands). Short interviews were conducted with staf at the venues who were responsible for making decisions about poster displays (owners, managers, band bookers etc.). In addition to this, photographs were taken of posters at each venue across a ive month period, to make a record of the changes that took place to the displays, and to allow analysis of the visual aesthetics of the venues and the role of the posters in creating this. All the venues included in this study had areas for the display of posters for gigs that were still upcoming, and other areas where posters for gigs that had already taken place continued to be displayed (see Figure 1). Some older posters were replaced over time, whereas others remained unchanged for many years, and in some cases decades. We argue that the post-gig posters retained on the walls of these venues shape notions of musical place and space, and the scenes they are part of, while also creating a sense of the venues’ embeddedness in the collective memory and history of the musical past. We will analyse the use of posters in these venues as an example of heritage-as-praxis (Roberts and Cohen 2014), and this paper aims to present a detailed case study of this type of heritage and the way it is embedded in everyday practices in music venues. Roberts and Cohen (2015; see also Cohen and Roberts 2014), drawing on the work of Smith (2006), deine three types of heritage in relation to popular music; authorized, self-authorized, and unauthorized (which incorporates everyday praxis as well as anti-heritage, cultural bricolage and individual and collective memory). In doing so, they aim to move away from a rigid characterization of heritage as either top-down or bottom-up, towards a more nuanced discussion of popular music heritage that does not assess its perceived authenticity or status but conceptualises it as a social and cultural process and considers how it is practised or ‘performed’ in speciic situations and contexts, often for diferent ends. (2014, 3) An understanding of all three of these types of heritage is needed to properly conceptualize how heritage-as-praxis is understood in this paper. Popular music has increasingly been caught up in heritage discourses that are focused on formalized and oicial processes, or authorized heritage. This includes the incorporation of popular music into Figure 1. A wall at The Tote with posters dating back to the 1990s. Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 3 institutions such as museums, or the creation of dedicated spaces such as the Experience Music Project in Seattle or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Detroit that display artefacts associated with the history of popular music (Burgoyne 2003; Bruce 2006). Popular music has also been ‘heritagised’ through the use of plaques marking sites of signiicance to music fans (Roberts and Cohen 2015), the dedication of statues or artworks, or the naming of public places such as streets after musicians (Strong 2015; Strong, Cannizzo, and Rogers 2017). These types of authorized heritage activities are supplemented by self-authorized activities undertaken in the media and by fans when claims are made about what is important in popular music’s past, and volunteer archivists, who work informally but often using methods drawn from mainstream curation, documentation and preservation strategies to conserve aspects of popular music’s past (Baker 2015). These self-authorized and DIY activities often focus on areas of popular music that are less well-serviced by the oicial processes, which are more likely to centre on canonized works ‘inextricably bound up with a white, middle class baby boomer understanding of musical authenticity’ (Bennett 2015, 20). Despite the diference in focus of oicial and self-authorized heritage activities such as DIY archives, these areas are all explicitly marked as heritage-making and the line between them can easily blur. As Roberts and Cohen (2015, 230) note, ‘they are part of an ongoing process of negotiation and dialogue in which the value and legitimacy attached to the act of authorization informs their role as part of a wider cultural politics of memory, place and identity’. These two types of heritage are characterized by Roberts and Cohen (2015, 234) as ‘Big-H Heritage’ or heritage-as-object, in that it freezes the heritage object and removes it from the lows of everyday life. Heritage-as-praxis, or ‘little-h heritage’, ‘is a form of memory work encompassing everyday social, cultural and pedagogic practices, and a process of tracing inluences, connections, and “inheritance tracks”’ (Roberts and Cohen 2015, 235) within and across music cultures. This type of heritage can sometimes exist only in its performance, and it is much more embedded in everyday activities than other types of heritage. Roberts and Cohen themselves raise questions about the appropriateness of using the term ‘heritage’ at all in relation to the sort of activities encompassed under the idea of ‘heritage-as-praxis’; it is possible that these types of practices may stand too much in opposition to the more reiied and often commercialized practices usually associated with the term heritage for it to be useful here. Indeed, it may be just as appropriate to describe the posters being examined in this paper as being imbued with collective memory as to say they are heritage items. However, given the imprecision with which terms such as heritage, memory and culture are used, and the extent to which they overlap, we consider it useful to consider how the use of these posters sits at the extreme of what might be considered heritage activity in order to better understand how such activity works to create and maintain music scenes. There are still ongoing debates about how popular music – a form of culture that incorporates and in some cases relies on noise, messiness and subcultural rebelliousness – can be efectively represented in the sanitized manner associated with oicial heritage (see Leonard 2010). This case study shows how heritage-as-praxis allows for heritage to be fully and seamlessly embedded in the everyday activities of music scenes. As systems of interpersonal connection and sociality that revolve around popular music’s performance, live music scenes are predominantly place-based and have a strong sense of localness about them. The social and communal attributes of Melbourne’s live music scene have played a major part within the city’s growing reputation as the Live Music Capital of Australia. Melbourne’s large population of approximately 4.4 million people, with its cosmopolitan inner-suburbs and abundant network of venues, has fostered a highly competitive venue market, creating demand between venues for high-proile bands and larger audiences. This proliferation of venues has resulted in a variety of performance spaces for live music. The small live music venues of Melbourne’s inner suburbs are particularly noteworthy as hubs of social activity and exchange. Venues such as the Tote (in Collingwood), the Old Bar (in Fitzroy), the John Curtin (in Carlton) and the Corner Hotel (in Richmond) are popular sites of interaction for music scene participants. Melbourne is often referred to as the Live Music Capital of Australia. This label, albeit self-appointed, relects a self-conscious preoccupation with framing culture as representative of the city and vice versa. Live music, along with other cultural products, has become key within city branding strategies around Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 4 C. STRONG AND S. WHITING the world, most notably in Austin and Liverpool (Cohen 1991; Shank 1994). Policy-makers and live music advocates have also begun to align Melbourne within this narrative (Homan 2010) as a defence against rising noise complaints in urban areas and subsequent venues closures (Shaw 2009, 2013). Following the early 2000s popularity of ‘creative city’-driven economic growth models (Bianchini 1995; Florida 2002; Montgomery 2004; Landry 2008) and the culture-led urban regeneration strategies that they spawned, many ‘authorised’ arts bodies in Melbourne have subscribed whole-heartedly to the city’s assumed title of Australia’s ‘cultural capital’. However, what many of these strategies take for granted is the everyday practices of music scene participants. Music scenes encompass the everyday social practices that make up engagement with music within a deined space and/or place. In this context, space relates to music venues, performance spaces and other sites (i.e. recording and rehearsal studios) that are inherently related to musical practices. Place is broader, and emphasizes geographic locations such as cities – Melbourne being the case study here – or distinct urban areas (e.g. Melbourne’s inner-northern suburbs, where most of the city’s live music venues are located). However, space and place are also conceptualized in more distinct terms. As prominent geographer Doreen Massey stated in her inluential monograph For Space (2005, 130): If space is rather a simultaneity of stories-so-far, then places are collections of those stories, articulations within the wider power-geometrics of space. Their character will be a product of these intersections within that wider setting, and of what is made of them. And, too, of the non-meetings-up, the disconnections and the relations not established, the exclusions. All this contributes to the speciicity of place … Places not as points or areas on maps, but as integrations of space and time; as spatio-temporal events. Popular music scholarship has a well-established relationship with place, with key works by Cohen (1991), Finnegan (1989), Bennett (2002) and Gibson and Homan (2004) detailing the nuanced role that popular music plays in place and, likewise, place in popular music, both around the world and across diverse musical eras focusing on geographically local case studies as examples. However, space is largely underrepresented within the literature on popular music and its practices, participants and scenes. Ben Gallan’s research on now defunct Wollongong venue The Oxford Tavern unpacks the theoretical diferentiation between space and place. Across a number of publications (Gallan 2012; Gallan and Gibson 2013), Gallan details the role that The Oxford Tavern – a musical space strongly associated with Wollongong’s alternative and punk scene – played within the city’s nightlife. Gallan argues that space was central to the Oxford’s cultural standing, stating that ‘Key to how the Oxford facilitated belonging, continuity, and musical diversity was the peculiarity of its physical space. Participants remembered people, bands, and drinking – but also the space itself’ (Gallan and Gibson 2013, 185). The signiicance of the Oxford as a musical space is contrasted against Wollongong’s broader night-time economy, a place historically dominated by working-class masculinist discourses and the monopolization of licensed premises by corporate hospitality groups, resulting in a largely homogenized nightscape (Gallan and Gibson 2013, 179). Against this backdrop, The Oxford is described by one participant as being ‘like a haven in town, almost a separate community in itself’ (Gallan and Gibson 2013, 180). The Oxford as a haven for distinct musical practices is emphasized again and again in Gallan’s research, which relies on vernacular cultural memory as a means of framing participant discourse. The role of space and place is integral to this understanding of the venue. We argue here that posters play a role in coding musical spaces and live music venues such as the Oxford, imbuing them with types of meaning that are directly linked to notions of heritage and collective memory. The role of the ‘everyday’ within the construction of music scenes and the rituals through which such socialization is enacted is relected within Andy Bennett’s research on hobbyist musicians performing in the northern English ‘pub rock’ circuit (1997). According to practitioners within these communities, the positive characteristics of such an environment include a host of familiar faces and venues, a rapport between the musicians and their audience, and the opportunity to drink and socialize with members of the audience (Bennett 1997, 98–99). However, the role of the ‘lived’ physical environment of the venue space is often overlooked within studies of music scenes and cultural memory, particularly in regards to the space beyond the stage. As signiiers of particular local music events, past and future, CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 5 venue posters stand-in for the popular music event, re-perpetuating the discourse surrounding these events in the space in which the event occurred or will occur. The cycle of collective cultural memory bends back on itself, becoming more potent and entrenched as the vernacular history of these spaces grows. This cycle tends to favour the mundane over the spectacular, as the ‘everyday’ takes precedence over the extraordinary. As Will Straw states: Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 Scenes regularize these activities within the rituals of drinking or dining, or subject them to the frequency of accidental encounters. The fragmentation of local musical or literary activity across a range of sites – at one level, the sign of a scene’s health and growth-will extend the itineraries necessary for full participation in these scenes. In this process, the spectacular loses visibility, dispersed within multiple sites of encounter or consumption. (2001, 255) Taking pride of place here are the ‘everyday’ practices of local participants. As Peterson and Bennett state, ‘Music becomes part of a creative process whereby members of particular local scenes construct shared narratives of everyday life’ (2004, 7). Such ‘shared narratives’ are added to and enriched by cultural ephemera such as venue posters, which imbue spaces with meaning. We will now turn to an examination of how this occurs. Poster deployment in venues Why are posters displayed? In all four venues the same key criteria were mentioned when staf were asked what would make them decide to keep or continue to display a particular poster after a gig. In all venues, posters were mainly retained or displayed because of what that gig or band represented about the history and/or identity of the venue. On a very fundamental level, as Joel from the Old Bar notes, the posters ‘show it’s a band venue’, acting as a short-hand to let new visitors know what the space is and what types of bands they are likely to see there. More importantly however, posters are used to deepen a sense of community in a venue through reminding punters of shared experiences and reminding bands of the support the venue provides: Rhys (John Curtin): I mean, generally speaking it’s because we love the bands, and we want to keep them on the walls and remember them, remember that they played here. Show people that they’ve been a part of the John Curtin. Joel (Old Bar): To reward local bands that we like, to show that we’re behind them, that they’ve played here and we hope that they play here again. (…) It’s good to just look back and just see, oh fuck I was at that gig. And it’s good for bands – I know when I go to other pubs and see my band’s posters up in the toilet from a gig I played a year or two ago, it makes you feel good. It warms your cockles while you’re holding your cockle. These comments relect the signiicance of Peterson and Bennett’s ‘shared narratives of everyday life’ (2004, 7) as they are constructed in and around music scenes. The Old Bar in particular maintains and promotes a close relationship with the bands they see as representative of the venue’s cultural narrative, through the deployment of speciic posters throughout the venue space. Posters for bands such as Cash Savage and the Last Drinks, Graveyard Train and Twin Beasts (formerly The Toot Toot Toots) – all celebrated members of the Fitzroy alt-country scene – decorate the walls of the Old Bar’s front bar and band room. These bands are popular in Melbourne’s inner-north, and are considered by both the bands members and the venue’s staf and owners as representative of the Old Bar as a venue space. This is demonstrated in the way that framed portraits of these bands (such as the Toot Toot Toots) are hung behind the bar, enshrining them in a more self-authorized way than the fading and torn gig posters that cover the band room’s walls. However, such ‘everyday’ commonplace approaches to memorabilia are often more efective in invoking community and a sense of shared vernacular culture amongst musicians and patrons. Article co-author Sam Whiting can empathize. A poster for his former band’s irst show at the Tote was unearthed while conducting ieldwork interviews there, eliciting an excited reaction and reinforcing a sense of belonging. For many local musicians, the experience of seeing your band’s poster on a wall long after the performance date is part of ongoing 6 C. STRONG AND S. WHITING Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 everyday practices of remembering and heritage-making which have their basis in the local scene. This goes some way towards legitimizing the performance as something worth holding on to in the context of that community. The two functions outlined above – reminding attendees of past gigs and reminding bands of support – often overlap in these small venues where audience members are also in bands that play at the venue or others like it. This deepens the sense of community and makes punters feel as though they are part of the life of the venue and are important to the ongoing viability of the space. Venue staf also discussed how posters that were kept demonstrated how the venue is embedded in the broader history of popular music. Georgie, manager of the Corner Hotel commented on how posters work with punters’ existing knowledge of popular music to create a sense of the venue’s signiicance in terms of the role it plays in facilitating the success of certain musicians: Georgie: Maybe some of the really big acts that have come through, like the Lordes and the Sias that have gone on to be such huge, huge successes overseas … having those on our archive feature walls is signiicant for us, to say they played here, then they went on to do Coachella and the whole thing. Sam Whiting: So the posters sort of represent where you are in the stepping stone system of … Georgie: yeah, exactly, the nurturing and the starting point for a lot of people, the jumping of point. Or, there are a lot of local and Australian bands who will play here for years on end, and keep coming back. The Spiderbaits, and Something for Kates and Living Ends. […] So it’s signiicant for us to have those posters around as well to show that history and that position we have in Melbourne. The posters at The Corner, then, are retained on the walls partly to show the role that the venue plays in the careers of artists and, hence, the role that the venue plays in the music industry in ofering a space that up-and-coming artists – such as Lorde and Sia – can emerge from. Additionally, established touring bands such as Spiderbait or Something for Kate, while no longer on an upward career trajectory, can maintain their presence in the music scene in venues like The Corner. In reminding punters and staf of these functions, the posters connect The Corner to the wider history of popular music. This idea that posters could help to represent the identity of the venue to punters was not always expressed in a straightforward manner within our ieldwork interviews, and posters could also represent conlicting or changing ideas about a venue. This was particularly obvious at the Tote. The Tote became prominent as a point of contention in the Melbourne music scene in 2010, when it was briely closed as a result of new regulations brought in by the state government. These were ostensibly about reducing crime in the inner city at night, but had a disproportionately negative efect on small venues, which were unlikely to be the source of the type of crime being targeted (Homan 2011; Walker 2012). The Tote became the focus of the Save Live Australian Music campaign, which was ultimately successful in seeing parts of the new laws that were most damaging for live venues removed and led to a renewed celebration of live music in Melbourne. The Tote changed hands during this process, and deciding what to do with old versus new posters is one aspect of the current managements’ struggle to ind a balance between celebrating the history of the venue and moving the venue forward. The current staf described how in the transfer from the previous owners many old posters were also handed over, and the new staf had to decide what to do with them: Snoop: So we kinda put them up, kinda in around the place, nowhere near as many out in the bandroom. Still quite a few here in the front bar. And just as we’ve kinda gone along, we’ve kinda just reduced it so it hasn’t just become a tribute to itself. The Tote still has to evolve. […] I don’t think we need to kind of look to the past too much with what’s on the walls. I think there’s enough good shows kind of constantly happening that we’d rather devote wall space and prime viewing to what’s coming up, to try and get people to come to those. At other points in the interview, the Tote staf stated that they want to avoid making the venue ‘a museum’, or continuing to focus on the closure and campaign of the past. So while there were large sections of the walls displaying historical posters, they were conscious of the need to ensure these did not dominate the upcoming events or give the impression that the venue was too focussed on the past. In considering how the identity of the venues was expressed through the posters, it was also clear that the musical and visual aesthetics of the venues were represented in what was put up, regardless of what approach each venue took to the archiving of the posters. All venue staf interviewed related CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 7 that some posters were kept purely because they were judged to be particularly good aesthetically, regardless of the gig or band they were promoting. However, when looking in particular at what posters have been kept the longest it is clear that the tastes of individual staf members are in keeping with or heavily inluenced by the general aesthetics of the venue. However, this question of poster aesthetics is not one that can be considered at length in this paper. Why are posters kept? Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 While there were strong similarities in the reasons venue staf gave for certain posters being displayed, the practices in the venues that led to the posters actually being kept difered greatly. These ranged from practices that closely resemble the self-authorized DIY heritage practices of volunteer archivists described by Baker (2015) through to much more ad hoc, unstructured practices. At the more organized extreme, the manager of The Corner described how: Georgie: We have always [kept copies of posters], for as long as I know, so probably the last 20 or so years. We try and keep two of every hard copy poster that is delivered to us, just as an archive of the venue. Sam Whiting: Two of every one? Georgie: Two of every one, in case one gets damaged or if we want to use one to install another feature wall, so we’ve still got one in archive. (…) So if we wanted to use one to put back into the venue, or mount, or use as artwork then we’ve still got one archived. It paints a good history of the venue. (…) there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of them … in a storage unit in Richmond, at the moment. And yeah as they come in we just take a couple of the ream and keep them. The Corner’s practice of keeping all gig posters puts them in a space that sits between heritage-as-praxis and self-authorized heritage-making, in that there is a systematic process taking place that is about retaining a historical record of the venue. The posters are not, however, catalogued, meaning some detail about them can be lost (e.g. through the way many gig posters display a date but not a year). At the Old Bar, on the other hand, while staf also displayed an awareness of the historical value of posters, the processes through which they were kept or discarded were much more haphazard. The staf described how postering happened on an ad hoc basis, when staf had time: Joel: Sometimes it’s just about the space that we have to keep things, a lot of it’s not really that much of a conscious decision. There are certainly ones where it’s like, oh this is a ripper of a poster, let’s keep it. Ideally I’d love to be able to keep one of each and just keep an archive, that would be fucking amazing, but you’d have to hire a whole new venue just to keep all the posters. That would be incredible. It’s really … as much as I said all that stuf about why we keep the posters a lot of it is just down to dumb luck and chance and what the staf decide to keep and what people decide to keep and throw away. Like Nick, one of our bar managers, loves really shit posters, and so he keeps all the really shit ones. The Old Bar lacks the resources available to the Corner in terms of the space needed to keep everything, and so decisions are made by individual staf members and are inluenced by their tastes (which, as described earlier, are themselves inluenced by the venue’s aesthetic). In all venues but the Corner, many if not most posters were ultimately discarded. This leads us to another way in which these posters perform a very diferent type of heritage-making, in the way that – in three out of four of these venues – they remain always on the cusp of becoming ‘rubbish’ (see Baker and Huber 2013), of falling out of a more protected category related to heritage and some notion of permanency back into the realm of the ephemeral and disposable that gig posters are more often a part of. The posters are in an environment that is not marked as heritage-related, and so a contemplative attitude or respectful distance is not encouraged in relation to them. They are often in close proximity to attendees at the venues, and the posters can be regarded by gig attendees as being something they are as entitled to as the venue. The Tote interviewees explain that: … and you know, as soon as the band inishes you see them [audience members] come out and start kind of grabbing the posters of the wall. And that’s ine. I’d rather them go there, than the recycling bin. Because if we end up with 10 or 15 posters which we hope to get from each band, we’re not going to do anything with all of those, so I’d rather they’d go and end up on someone’s wall, than just up here. 8 C. STRONG AND S. WHITING The diference, however, between posters that can be taken and those that the venue wants to keep might not always be obvious, or respected. The Tote also gives the following example: Sam Whiting: So someone tried to rip of a poster? Snoop: Yeah, there was a Hard-Ons one, a Hard-Ons Spiderman one, and it had just kind of peeled a little bit in the corner and this guy kind of, grabbed it, somebody kind of saw him, and by the time we got round there he kind of had it, and folded it into quarters. Sam Whiting: Was he trying to take it with him? Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 Snoop: Yeah, yeah. So we got it back, but the poster was fucked. It had just sorta been glued on for so long, that when he folded it it just cracked, ripped it in half. The actions of this punter saw this poster change from heritage item to worthless rubbish in a matter of seconds, but in a way that the position of the posters in the venues makes a constant possibility. Similarly, the interview with Rhys from the John Curtin Hotel was for a large part focussed on the loss of some key posters: Rhys: Well, we had a show in here for Melbourne Jazz Week, where they redecorated the place themselves and took down all the posters. We put them away, went to put them back up and a number were missing, which could have been for any reason whatsoever. I mean they could have been lost, they could have been ripped when they’ve been taken down, maybe someone took them, who knows. But it’s a shame, because we’ve lost so many fucking amazing, historical gigs that we’ve had here. Yeah, so it is a shame. But I mean, these things do happen as well, I mean with having posters on the wall, you constantly have to stop people from stealing them, or people just get away with stealing them as well. So there’s not an ininite supply. You do lose them, by whatever means, never to be reclaimed. (…) So I mean it’s a piece of the history of the bar, as a venue, that’s been taken. It is worth considering how, despite the feeling described by Rhys above that part of the venue’s history is lost with the loss of posters, for the most part they still are kept in places where this type of loss is possible. This is not always the case: all the venues examined had some posters that were framed and/or kept in places less accessible to patrons, such as behind the bar. Where posters are more formally enshrined in the venue space in these types of ways they take on an authority more closely aligned with self-authorized heritage, wherein the venue is the authorizing body. This demarcates them as something beyond praxis, as they have been oicially preserved and are no longer contemporaneous with the space. For posters to perform the functions they fulil as heritage-as-praxis a certain amount of fragility seems to be necessary. They need to be able to change and evolve, through attrition and replacement, in order to continue to accurately represent the community that inhabits the space, and to mark the venue as a ‘living’ place where things happen. Furthermore, in some cases the posters are placed in areas (such as toilets; see Figure 2) where staf know they will be likely to be defaced or destroyed over time. So while there can sometimes be a sense of loss experienced when posters are destroyed or taken, the failure of venue owners to go further in protecting them or making them inaccessible to punters suggests that the posters are less valuable in and of themselves than for the atmosphere and sense of community that is created by keeping them within reach of the audience. At times what the audience does with them – even when destructive – can add to this sense of shared identity. In conclusion, gig posters are mundane, everyday, ephemeral objects that (ideally) blend in with their environment. When kept beyond their ‘use by’ date, they can work to embed the past in the present in a way that suggests continuity rather than a clear separation between the two. Much like the musical performances that occur within the venue spaces themselves, posters are tangible reminders of a space’s vernacular culture and are signiiers for the community that articulates itself around live music venues: the live music scene. What sets them apart from oicial or self-authorized heritage is their mundanity and fragility as pieces of cultural ephemera that can be as temporary as the performances they represent, especially when kept in the venues. Poster collections in venues are places where popular music’s history is recorded within the spaces where it is also performed, by the people who create/curate it. Posters are retained partly out of a sense that mementos of the past are worth preserving (particularly, as is shown above, in one venue where all gig posters were archived), but, we 9 Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES Figure 2. Defaced and damaged posters in the men’s toilets at The Old Bar. argue, more because of the functions that they fulil for the venue in the present and moving into the future. Old posters create a sense of identity and community in the venue, giving punters a clear idea of what the venue provides musically, and signifying the space as representative of a certain subsection of the city’s broader music scene. 10 C. STRONG AND S. WHITING Disclosure statement No potential conlict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP160100537]. Notes on contributors Downloaded by [RMIT University Library] at 22:56 05 September 2017 Catherine Strong is a senior lecturer in the Music Industry programme at RMIT University. Her research focuses on popular music history and heritage, and gender inequality in the music industry. She is author of Grunge: Music and Memory (Ashgate, 2011) and co-editor of Death and the Rock Star (Routledge, 2015) and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage. She is the chair of IASPM-ANZ and review editor for Perfect Beat journal. Samuel Whiting is a musician, researcher, PhD candidate and sessional tutor at RMIT University, Melbourne, and is currently working on an Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project that seeks to determine what makes Melbourne a ‘music city’. His doctoral research focuses on the venue cultures and social scenes inherent in Melbourne’s small live music venues and he is a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. 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