Tag Archives: pophistory
Jeff Hayton: Culture from the Slums. Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Review)
Jeff Hayton’s monograph on punk culture in the Federal Republic and GDR could have become the standard historiographical work were it not for the many small and serious shortcomings and scholarly carelessness that undermine almost every positive aspect of the work. In fact, there is a lack of historical studies on German punk culture: since the early 2000s, only journalistic, cultural and social science works on punk in the Federal Republic have appeared, including publications in English. The steadily growing series of books on punk in the GDR have also lacked historical expertise. The only exception is Florian Lipp’s historical in-depth study on punk and New Wave in the last decade of the GDR, published in 2021, which, as Hayton himself writes, appeared too late to be included in his work. Consequently, the chapters on punk in the GDR do not offer much new information. Continue reading
Popgeschichte auf dem AboutPop-Festival (Stuttgart, 23. Juli 2022)
Auf dem AboutPop-Festival, das nun schon zum vierten Mal im Stuttgarter Wizemann tagt, wird es neben Konzerten, Performances, Praxis-Workshops und Talks im Konferenzprogramm auch mehrere Panels zur Popgeschichte geben.
Conference: “Pop Cultures and Ecstatic States of the Body, 1950s-80s”, Copenhagen, 30.9.-2.10.2021

Moshpit, photo: R0uge 2006. wetwebwork from london, U.K, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
During the 1950s, pop cultures became a phenomenon on a global scale. From the beginning, ecstatic states of the body – caused by the use of substances, by experimenting with different sorts of sexuality, by immersing into music and dancing, by reaching out to religion and spirituality – played an important part in pop cultures. Pop cultures and ecstatic bodies often depended on and referred to each other. States of ecstasy and trance, on the one hand, constituted driving forces in the shaping and the development of pop cultures. On the other hand, pop cultures created and spread new types of ecstasies and new practices of getting ecstatic. Continue reading