Transatlantic Drift

Sociologist Katie Milestone and music journalism lecturer Simon A. Morrison divide between them the period from the birth of rock’n’roll in the late 1950s to the modern day. Their scope is ambitious: where people danced, how they danced and the music that made them move. It’s a golden era that takes in the rise of the mod, the birth of Northern Soul, the disco boom and rave culture . . . There is an evanescent quality to the world the book inhabits. Underground scenes form, enter the mainstream, fade away. * Financial Times *
Through its carefully considered form, authorial team and consciously drifting contents, Transatlantic Drift is dedicated to transatlantic musical interchange and, indeed, to the exchange of scholarly and critical ideas concerning not only music but the ways in which we remember and make meaningful. This excellent book unravels the oftentimes knotty and contested musical happenings, people and places through an approach that embraces an open understanding of music histories in the plural. And in sidestepping common pitfalls in popular music scholarship – by attesting to regions as well as capital cities, for example – Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison have created an essential resource for all those interested in transatlantic popular music and subcultural histories. * Sarah Raine, Research Fellow, School of Music, UCD, and author of Authenticity and Belonging in the Northern Soul Scene *