ABSTRACT
Recorded sound became a site in which different, rather than past, genres of music some considered acutely authentic, others less so were exposed to debate and tension. The appearance of the London American label in the UK introduced to British youth a great font of cover versions. Throughout the 1950s the differences in Liverpool between secondary modern schools, technical high schools and grammar schools were distinct. Lennon appears to have engaged with the working-class authenticity into which he was actually born, but he did so via a rather bourgeois angry young man-style of 'reverse social authenticity'. In truth, the Cavern management never embraced R&B from a cultural perspective and although they did see money in it, the Cavern was never an 'R&B club', as such. The gramophone allowed people to analyse what they were hearing and this helped some to reconsider music as 'just' music.
