British homes were changing dramatically in the 1950s and 60s. New modes of interior design, consumerism and technology helped transform experiences of the everyday – and, in ever-more powerful hi-fi and ever-more popular audio equipment, rendered that experience more sonically rich than before. This talk explores the ways that audio in the home shaped and was shaped by changing gender roles; it looks at the ways that new materials in the home and audio equipment design – machine-tooled wood, metals, plastics – created an environment newly tactile as well as sonic; it examines the ways that changing music styles, particularly during the Beatles-led record industry boom, helped develop changing markets for audio equipment.

Tom Perchard is Senior Lecturer, Director of Research, and co-director of the Popular Music Research Unit in the Department of Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. Tom’s teaching and research centres on the history and historiography of jazz and popular music.