Popular Music Heritage, Grass-Roots Activism and Web 2.0: The Case of the ‘Save the Palace’ Campaign

Abstract

Although the study of popular music heritage is rapidly becoming an established aspect of academic research, little attention has been focused on attempts made by groups of music fans to preserve aspects of their local popular music heritage when these are seen to come under threat. This article examines the ‘Save the Palace’ campaign in Melbourne, Australia, and argues that it provides an important illustration of the tenacity of local music fans when faced with the closure of an important venue, and their capacity to organise themselves into a cohesive campaign through social media technology. Through its examination of the online interactions that characterised the Save the Palace campaign, the article also facilitates an extension of the concept of the virtual scene beyond its more conventionally understood definition as a platform for fan discussion dedicated to a specific artist, genre or place. In the case of Save the Palace, a different manifestation of a scene is observed whereby fans of a broad range of artists and genres temporarily join forces online to protest against the threat to a specific aspect of their shared local music heritage. In this sense, Save the Palace also sheds significant light on how social media assist in giving a voice to competing discourses of cultural value. Thus, even as the Palace and countless other local music landmarks like it across the world are demolished to make way for new developments, their significance as important markers of local generational identity and belonging, and of emotionally inscribed urban identity, remains. Through their online sharing of personalised memories of the Palace as an iconic music venue, supporters of the Save the Palace campaign serve as a further example of how the internet has worked to broaden our understanding of the definition, nature and function of popular music heritage.