IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

Every career-spanning boxset boasts at least several previously unreleased recordings: outtakes and demos; yet what really makes us click on the purchase link is the inclusion of recordings from presumably lost albums – arrested during development or shelved concept pieces deemed too ambitious for the music industry to promote. This paper concerns fan reconstructions of such discarded projects as an instance of speculative DIY preservationism. The debate around cultural artifacts in absentia is nourished by this lack of closure, giving rise to discussions on fora, blogs, and circulation of fanmade bootlegs whose status is legitimized by expertise and effort to read every interview and biography, collecting merchendise/memorabilia available on the (black) market. The practice of excavating, assembling, resequencing, even mastering an intended cut of the album reinforces the Romantic idea of artistic vision, hindered by deadlines and conflicts, while empowering inner circles of fan communities, seeing themselves as gatekeepers. This paper looks at Pete Townshend’s post-Who 1980s’ opera, White City as one such project. Branded upon release “White City: A Novel”, the album was seen by its composer as a sampler of a larger concept followed through in the acconpanying TV movie and an unpublished screenplay. Unable to secure financing for a proper feature film, Townshend would include associated recordings on soundtracks and compilations. This prompted fans to create an expanded version that would follow the story about new social housing through. Alongside likeminded projects whose cult status owes its growth to online immaginary communities, like Bowie’s Inside/Contamination or Who’s Lifehouse, this case study lends a new understanding to the tangible/intangible dynamics of mainstream musical heritage, while exploring the lost album mythmaking as a kind of reflexive nostalgia that turns consumers into collaborators.