Music, Style, and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully?

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments T his book has been some ten years in the making. During that time I have become a parent, lived and worked on three different continents, met many new and inspiring people, and grieved the passing of several people who were very dear to me. In today’s academic world, ten years is undoubtedly a long period of time for the production of a monograph. All I can say in response to that is that this book is very much a product of particular circumstances; it has taken as long as it has taken to write, and in the ten years I have been working, the ideas informing the book have certainly moved around and changed (a bit like its author). The idea for this book was hatched one night in September 2002 at a small music venue in East Kent where I had been invited to watch a local ska punk band. During the course of the evening, I happened to meet and have a drink with three aging punks. I no longer remember their names, but I will remain forever grateful to them for the delightful conversation we had and the formative ideas it generated for this book. I’ve met a great number of aging music fans since then and learned a lot about the ways in which music taste and age become tantalizingly intertwined. My thanks to all of those people in the United Kingdom, France, and Australia who agreed to be ­ interviewed for this x \ Acknowledgments book—from Canterbury, to Lille, to Adelaide (and other places besides ), the research for this project has been a real journey of discovery. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my academic colleagues at the University of Surrey, Brock University, and Griffith University , the three institutions I have worked at while writing this book. I am indebted to a number of people in this respect but would like to say an especially big thank you to Paul Hodkinson, Geoff Cooper, Nicola Green, Sherill Dodds, Scott Henderson, Hans and Kathy SkottMyhre , Ian Woodward, Margaret Gibson, Sarah Baker, and Christine Feldman. In addition to being fantastic people to work with, you have all shown a great deal of warmth and generosity of spirit. Over the past ten years I have also had the privilege of working with some extremely gifted postdoctoral and postgraduate colleagues —Norman Urquia, Pete Webb, Mary Fogarty, Jodie Taylor, Alison Huber, Ian Rogers, Brady Robards, Raphael Nowak, Gavin Carfoot, Chris Driver, Lauren Istvandity, Eurico Viana Netto, William Lesitaokana, and Silvia Tarassi. Several of these people are now beginning to forge highly promising academic careers in their own right. Thanks to all of you for your support and for the invaluable insights you have given me into areas of contemporary cultural life that I previously had little familiarity with. A number of ideas resulting from our conversations over the years have found their way into this book. While writing the book I have benefited from wonderful opportunities to travel and collect data interstate and overseas through generous visiting fellowships offered by the University of South Australia, the University of Lille, Curtin University, the University of Salford, and the University of Tallinn. Gerry Bloustien, Hervé Glevarec, Jon Stratton, George McKay, and Airi Alina Allaste have all been wonderfully supportive colleagues and great hosts during these visits. Several of these people have also taken time out of their busy careers to visit and contribute to the academic life of the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research. Additional visitors to the Centre who have also helped me forge ideas for this book include Les Back, Helen Thomas, Francois Matarasso, and Motti Regev. Thanks to all of you. A very big note of thanks is reserved for my friend, colleague, and mentor Richard “Pete” Peterson, who, sadly, passed away in February Acknowledgments / xi 2010. As I have written elsewhere, Pete possessed a very special combination of qualities—gentle wit, warmth, and generosity, together with a high level of professionalism and academic rigor. All of this was topped with an intellectual curiosity and boundless energy for new ideas. I will never forget Pete’s galvanizing call to action as we pulled together plans for our co-authored book Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (2004) back in July 2001 in my garden in Canterbury . Likewise, our afternoon whale-watching tour on Moreton Bay in September 2007 is a treasured memory...