Book excerpt: This volume explores aspects of popular music and culture from the twentieth century to the present day. It brings together contributions challenging or reassessing assumptions about how individual, subjective experience comes to terms with modernity. While the emphasis is on Australian case studies, the essays here raise larger questions, ranging from our disempowerment as consumers demanding instant gratification to our ambiguous status as observers of and participants in historical change. They examine the complex relationship between sound and visual media in the formation of various communities, and how this relates to daily lived experience.