Dan Laughey's book is a very welcome addition to the sociological literature on music and culture. The central aim of the text is to explore young people's practices of music consumption, and the ways in which music is situated within everyday interactions. Within this aim, Laughey explores both interaction in music consumption sights (such as venues of music listening) as well as personal consumption practices, and the ways in which both of these aspects are played out in relation to a connection between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ and the idea of intergenerational discourse and practices. The book's eight chapters comprise a review of literature on music and youth culture; an empirical investigation of historical and contemporary youth music practices; and a theorisation of practice through the use of concepts that bring these historical and contemporary practices together.

The book explores a broad literature from cultural studies, and does an interesting job of examining, from an interactionist stance, some of the limitations of their arguments and theories. For example, Laughey shows that the concept of subcultures has often been used in a way that separates social groups off from each other, without examining the ways in which group ‘members’ interact across these boundaries. Similarly, he illustrates, as others have before him (e.g. Martin, 1995) that the approach to conceptualising meaning in cultural studies of youth music has often involved supposing that meaning can somehow be ‘read-off’ from the practices of a given group. Drawing on classic interactionist works, such as Becker's (1982) study of artistic practice, Laughey highlights the importance of conceptualising social practices as enacted and negotiated features of social groups, with meaning dependent on a knowledge of specific local conventions. He shows that such conceptions help to avoid the reductionisms of dualistic analysis that characterise ‘subcultural’ practices as offering opposition to cultural dominance. Through such analysis, Laughey clearly demonstrates that the ethnographic tradition of interactionist research gives a more nuanced understanding of the practices, knowledge(s) and motivations behind cultural positionings.

In his own investigation, Laughey contrasts an historical exploration of music practices in the North West of England with contemporary practices in the same area. Focusing on the early part of the 20th century, Laughey uses historical documents to analyse the dance halls as sites of activity, considering the ways in which changes in broadcast and recording technology related to the consumption practices of the youth. Laughey's examination of contemporary practices looks at music in public venues such as clubs and pubs, and investigates media consumption practices. His characterisation in both cases is tied to a heavy use of theory and concepts: the ‘carnivalesque’ as a means of characterising how music relates to everyday life practices; ‘promenade performances’, as a way of describing the intersection of the local and the global; and the enactment of intergenerational discourse and practice. Laughey uses these conceptual ideas to theorise the ways that the members of his study situated their practices in terms of family contexts, friendship groups, global media distribution and local meanings. The ethnography draws together the intersection of these aspects of youth music life, and using the diverse music practices, tries to show the divergent ways in which they are worked out.

The analysis presented in the book demonstrates that an understanding of musical ‘meaning’ as an aspect of everyday culture must concentrate on specific local practices as well as the global discourses surrounding music and popular culture. Ultimately though, I found the weight of the theoretical concerns did not clarify the intersection of these aspects (which is surely the test of good theory), but rather made them more opaque. It was not clear to me that the concepts of ‘carnivalesque’ or ‘promenade performance’ achieved much by way of working through the relation between global and local practice (except for describing that there is an intersection), or in demonstrating the relevance of a comparative intergenerational analysis of music practices. The keenest insights in this book came from the use of some of the richer data, and the discourse of some of the participants that revealed the ways that music was used in the context of their lives. For example, a conversation between two of Laughey's respondents over what kinds of bands counted as being a part of a particular genre, illustrated vividly the ways that music preferences and categories are interactionally worked out, and are used as resources to negotiate other tangible outcomes, like the implication of ‘group membership’ or ‘knowledgeability’ or ‘outsider’ status.

Ultimately, Laughey's work lacks the clarity of some of the classic interactionist studies as it is too reliant on his own conceptual frame. It may be of course that the limitations of Laughey's data dictated the prominence of the theory: interactional social scientists who are sceptical of the extent to which interview-generated discourse can help us understand practices may nod knowingly, and reflect on what might have been had a closer look been taken at what people actually did rather than what they said they did. This limitation notwithstanding, the interactionist case is an important one to push, and for all its distractions, Laughey's work does, in places, achieve this nicely. This text will deserve serious treatment by scholars working in the area of the sociology of music.