You are invited to the next IASPM Benelux POP TALK 20: Underground Music Cultures and Music-Making in L.A.: Imaginary Cities (Book launch) by Sébastien Darchen and John Willsteed.
Date: June 24th, 5.00-6.30 p.m. CEST
Location: online, on Zoom
Registration via link: https://uva-live.zoom.us/meeting/register/5yY1UaJjSS6GehAIfahGcQ.
About the event:
The talk and the book bring together an interdisciplinary collection of essays and interviews that explore the diverse and shifting landscapes of Los Angeles’ underground music scenes. Challenging dominant narratives of L.A. as a centre of commercial entertainment, the volume foregrounds lesser-known networks of music-making that have long shaped the city’s cultural identity from its margins.
This book focuses on the relationships between underground urban music cultures in Los Angeles and specific urban imaginaries related to music practices, far away and sometimes in stark opposition to the commodified image of the city crafted by urban planners and associated urban stakeholders. Rather than this commodified city, and the ‘imaginary city’ of the mind, it examines the accidental, tangential life of a mirage. The city that appears in the distance is one that is formed by songs and music-making. The book shows how counter urban imaginaries emerge and are performed through diverse underground music making practices, giving rise to alternative ways of seeing the city.
The contributors examine genres including punk, post-punk, goth, and metal, tracing how these scenes emerge through complex interactions between space, community, and cultural production. The book positions underground music cultures as vital sites of innovation, social connection, and cultural memory.
Blending scholarly analysis with practitioner perspectives, the collection also features original interviews with key figures from L.A.’s music histories, including Patricia Morrison (The Bags, The Gun Club), Terry Graham (The Gun Club), Hudley Flipside (Flipside Magazine), music writer Chris Morris, and Jenn Bats (Release the Bats goth club). These first-hand accounts provide insight into processes of scene formation, DIY practices, and the politics of visibility and survival. Together, they illuminate how musicians, event organisers, and writers collaboratively construct “imaginary cities” within and against the dominant urban fabric.
About the speakers:
Dr. Sébastien Darchen is a scholar and urban researcher specialising in the intersections of culture and city-making. He is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on cultural policy, urban development, and the social dynamics shaping creative practices in metropolitan environments, with a particular interest in how alternative and underground scenes contribute to the identity and transformation of cities.
Darchen is also an essayist and the author of a 2024 French-language biography of the Los Angeles band The Gun Club, published by Camion Blanc: The Gun Club: l’épopée musicale de Jeffrey Lee Pierce. In his work on underground music culture in Los Angeles, he examines the spatial, social, and political conditions that sustain independent music networks, highlighting the critical role of grassroots creativity in shaping these scenes. Drawing on urban studies, cultural geography, and music sociology, he offers a nuanced analysis of how informal cultural practices both resist and redefine mainstream cultural production.
He has published four books and more than forty academic articles in leading urban studies journals. His work contributes to international debates on creative cities, cultural economies, and the value of subcultural expression in rapidly evolving urban contexts. He is Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Queensland in Australia. Details of publications here Dr Sebastien Darchen | UQ Experts
Dr. John Willsteed is an award-winning Australian musician, educator, and music historian whose career bridges independent music practice and academic research. He is best known as a former bassist for the influential Brisbane band The Go-Betweens, contributing to their later recordings and tours, and for his longstanding involvement in Australia’s independent music scene. He is also a guitarist with the alternative country band Halfway.
Alongside his performance career, Willsteed has developed a strong academic profile in popular music studies. He is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, where his research explores music cultures, creative practice, and the histories of independent and underground scenes with a focus on Brisbane. His scholarship is informed by his experience as a practitioner, offering an insider perspective on the dynamics of music production and cultural networks.
As co-editor of Underground Music Cultures in Los Angeles, Willsteed brings together critical and practice-led insights into the social, spatial, and cultural dimensions of underground music. For this volume, he conducted interviews with key figures from Los Angeles’ underground scenes, including goth icon Patricia Morrison, Hudley Flipside of Flipside Magazine, and music writer Chris Morris.
