Site-ing the Sounds

Moments of music consumption always emerge from specific sites and contexts of cultural production, and yet listeners are not necessarily aware of them. As music and media scholars, the two of us have devoted effort to examining and explaining these contexts, especially through cultural intermediaries’ scholarship and cultural industries’ research writ large. ¹ In addition, we have our own memories of discovering the music of Australia and New Zealand as fans. In what follows, we consider our own roles in a much larger cultural circuit, as bit players in the US reception of Australia and New Zealand’s popular music. Although our roles were small, the experiences were lasting and meaningful. This conversation also stands as recognition that many of our interests and concerns as scholars began through our roles as intermediaries: music fans, record store clerks, and rock musicians.