In an earlier post, Alison wrote about the importance of television documentaries as a 'medium that circulates stories about popular music to a wide audience'. One such documentary is the series Classic Albums and Andy and Sarah have a chapter on this documentary series in a book edited by Ian Inglis which is being published this month, called Popular Music and Television in Britain (Ashgate, 2010). Their chapter, titled 'Classic Albums: the re-presentation of the rock album on British television', considers how the documentary series presents a version of rock history that is consistent with the 'rock canon' (as produced in magazines like Rolling Stone, for example), but which emphasizes emotional dimensions of record production as contributing to the albums' canonic status.
Ian Inglis writes in his introductory chapter to the book: "Andy Bennett and Sarah Baker consider the contribution made by BBC's Classic Albums series to the concept of 'heritage' (and the growth of a heritage industry) that underpins a considerable part of television's approach to popular music. They argue that, in the context of the series, the appellation 'classic' has emotional and cultural repercussions that go far beyond the mere evaluation of a collection of songs; it invites an investment in, and identification with, musical artefacts that may become as important for the producers and consumers of given albums as it is for he critical discourse that surrounds the historical development of rock." (Inglis 2010: 3)
The book can be purchased from Amazon.
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