The 1980s! A much maligned decade but one that brought deep and profound changes not just in Western polities and societies but in how popular culture looked and sounded. In the field of popular music, the results of these transformations, which we now commonly attribute to processes of digitalisation, comprise every facet: from how and where music is made to its organisational channels and the way it travels and is consumed. The inaugural will sight these changes through the very specific and provincial lens of my own biography. I will explore how my work over the last 20 years has been an attempt to navigate the practices, personnel, styles and devices of popular music within digital formations. It’s a journey that takes me from an unassuming suburban bedroom to the sense-assaulting streets of Tokyo. Throughout I acknowledge that a professorship is the apex of “playing seriously” and, as such, requires regular doses of grounding humour and humility (if not humiliation). Expect embarrassing clips.

Slide 14 - https://openverse.org/

Slide 17 - https://openverse.org/

Slide 19 -  https://openverse.org/

Slide 21 - https://openverse.org/
Slide 23 - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hatsune_Miku.png CC BY-NC-3.0