"Every Home Is Wired": 1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

"Every Home Is Wired":
1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

The fans' identification with the practices of their subculture is of great importance. In musical subcultures, one such practice also is increased consumption and consumerism directed specifically towards subcultural products: getting new releases soon after they become available and hunting for rare and out-of-print albums and singles frequently is a matter of prestige, of showing one's commitment. Immediately connected to this is the high value and importance of (trivia) knowledge in subcultures (one has to know about new and rare music, after all): "rock'n'roll was from the start ... constituted not simply as music but also as knowledge. To be a rock fan is not just to like something but also to know something, to share a secret with one's fellow fans, to take for granted the ignorance of nonfans" (Frith, Introduction 4-5). It is easy to see that the Internet as a network designed for information exchange can be very useful for the exchange of such subcultural 'secrets'.	Bit 58
For all their need for distinction, however, subcultures are not simply, primitively oppositional to their surroundings. True, "sub-cultures must exhibit a distinctive enough shape and structure to make them identifiably different from their 'parent' culture. They must be focussed around certain activities, values, certain uses ... which significantly differentiate them from the wider culture. But, since they are sub-sets, there must also be significant things which bind and articulate them with the 'parent' culture" (J. Clarke et al. 13-4). Hebdige elaborates that "there is no reason to suppose that subcultures spontaneously affirm only those blocked 'readings' excluded from the airwaves and the newspapers ... . They also articulate, to a greater or lesser extent, some of the preferred meanings and interpretations, those favoured by and transmitted through the authorised channels of mass communication" (86). In this, subcultural groups "take as their own, select and creatively develop particular artefacts to express their own meanings" (Willis 166); how they do this determines the differences between individual subcultures: as "each group makes something of its starting conditions -- and through this 'making', through this practice, culture is reproduced and transmitted" (J. Clarke et al. 11) --, what subcultures take on board from the parent culture, what they make of it, gives them their distinctive identity.	Bit 59

The fans' identification with the practices of their subculture is of great importance. In musical subcultures, one such practice also is increased consumption and consumerism directed specifically towards subcultural products: getting new releases soon after they become available and hunting for rare and out-of-print albums and singles frequently is a matter of prestige, of showing one's commitment. Immediately connected to this is the high value and importance of (trivia) knowledge in subcultures (one has to know about new and rare music, after all): "rock'n'roll was from the start ... constituted not simply as music but also as knowledge. To be a rock fan is not just to like something but also to know something, to share a secret with one's fellow fans, to take for granted the ignorance of nonfans" (Frith, Introduction 4-5). It is easy to see that the Internet as a network designed for information exchange can be very useful for the exchange of such subcultural 'secrets'.

Bit 58

For all their need for distinction, however, subcultures are not simply, primitively oppositional to their surroundings. True, "sub-cultures must exhibit a distinctive enough shape and structure to make them identifiably different from their 'parent' culture. They must be focussed around certain activities, values, certain uses ... which significantly differentiate them from the wider culture. But, since they are sub-sets, there must also be significant things which bind and articulate them with the 'parent' culture" (J. Clarke et al. 13-4). Hebdige elaborates that "there is no reason to suppose that subcultures spontaneously affirm only those blocked 'readings' excluded from the airwaves and the newspapers ... . They also articulate, to a greater or lesser extent, some of the preferred meanings and interpretations, those favoured by and transmitted through the authorised channels of mass communication" (86). In this, subcultural groups "take as their own, select and creatively develop particular artefacts to express their own meanings" (Willis 166); how they do this determines the differences between individual subcultures: as "each group makes something of its starting conditions -- and through this 'making', through this practice, culture is reproduced and transmitted" (J. Clarke et al. 11) --, what subcultures take on board from the parent culture, what they make of it, gives them their distinctive identity.

Bit 59

Section 1 -- Go on to Bite:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35