Retromania: Pop culture's Addiction to its Own Past. (New Simon Reynolds book).

http://www.faber.co.uk/site-media/onix-images/thumbs/14740_jpg_280x450_q85.jpg
Can't wait for this. Although 18 quid's a bit steep for a paperback.
http://www.faber.co.uk/work/retromania/9780571232086/

hoo boy rose tinted glasses

http://www.beatcontrol.co.uk/images/P/surgecymbal_16ride_lg-01.jpg

I wonder what his assessment is based on. It seems most people around me are only interested in recent material. It is hard to tell from the review what ground he is covering.

That catalog blurb ends with the most obvious easy to answer question in the world: "Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?"

Um. Answer: no. But I bet it's a good read.

i really hate that cover.

started a kinda dumb thread about all this 9 years ago as 2002-2005 was when i felt most concerned with the idea, but i became less worried about an objective sense of newness after that, thankfully. the sense of being able to look into the past and see...not everything but certainly more than enough, became more comfortable.

tom ewing's latest pitchfork sums things up really well.

latest pitchfork column, that is
http://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7956-poptimist-38/

This helped me crystallize a thing I've been aware of for a while but never quite pinned down. Music has a past, yes. But my individual perception of that past falls into two sections: a "long past," the time before I really became aware of music as an ongoing, evolving thing, and a "short past," the time ever since. Roughly speaking the inflection point, for me, is the end of 1988, and so the short past stands at 23 years and counting.

great point.

My 'short past' is a lot longer than the 'long past' of post- Elvis pop, but still, to doctor Tom's analogy - T. Rex are part of my present (which began in '72) whereas the Beatles are History (despite the latter being much more 'present' now than the former)

Yeah, that short/long past distinction really grabbed me well.

My own personal experience of things past or present nowadays is less this kind of distinction, more quick engagement -- it is often the case I'm usually hearing things only once these days, because there's so much else to hear and that I want to hear, regardless of whether it is something just released or something from decades ago. I still have my phases and all but they're generally limited. On the one hand this can be seen as the 'wrong' way to listen but on the other hand, it's a pretty honest reaction from where I sit. Yesterday I snagged twenty cheap CDs from Amoeba (and even then I had store credit so I didn't pay a cent); that'll mean a lot of new listening on top of everything else. Is it bad? Or is it a way to ensure that you are listening to a lot of different things instead of the same overall set?

i think people have been addicted to the past since, um, forever. its only natural. why do podst-modern writers read jane austen? simon's thing at the emp conference was concerned with this and i was totally gonna steal his etsy owl fetish line if i could somewhere. and i've been thinking about the hippie to punk connection for awhile now. and reading that book on crass this week just makes me think about it more.

"post"

This is my two pennies worth from the blurb; it's pointless comparing the nostalgia for the "past" (the last few decades) with renaissance nostalgia for Greek antiquity, as in the long-term scheme of things, culture from the past few decades could be considered the early part of "now". I doubt that yo bros in the renaissance were easily dismissing quality culture that appeared from thirty years ago (and if they were, that's fair enough - did you ever listen to da Vinci's New Romantic gear?).

This is my two pennies worth from the blurb; it's pointless comparing the nostalgia for the "past" (the last few decades) with renaissance nostalgia for Greek antiquity, as in the long-term scheme of things, culture from the past few decades could be considered the early part of "now". I doubt that yo bros in the renaissance were early dismissing quality culture that appeared from thirty years ago (and if they were, that's fair enough - did you ever listen to da Vinci's New Romantic gear?).

simon's thing at the emp conference was concerned with this and i was totally gonna steal his etsy owl fetish line if i could somewhere.

A very well-observed moment, that. Tracer started a thread on here about that whole style/approach and how he hates it.

speaking of nostalgia, simon introduced me to the dude who wrote those awesome books on disco/arthur russell. love that dude! those are my kind of history books. that's really the time i'm most interested in. now anyway.

I don't think your way is "wrong," Ned (and haha very funny at your asking that, as if you even consider it a real question), but it seems like awfully quantitative way of listening. One thing that has impressed me in the last few years is that I get at least as much enjoyment out of listening to the same things many times as I do trying to keep up with (areas of) the new, or trying to semi-systematically dig through the past. But that's me. And there will be phases, so sometimes I might go through lots of material really quickly; but I have to say I've been finding that unsatisfying lately.

(But as far as the theme of the Reynolds book, I just can't get all hand-wringy about it.)

Wow that is a shit cover.

think that's the UK cover and this is the US one:

http://i.imgur.com/jKk0T.jpg

it seems like awfully quantitative way of listening

I think I would see it that way if I actually set myself to listen to x amount of songs or albums a day -- which I don't. (Some days I might listen to a slew of albums, other days not even a song or two.) I think for me it's more of a 'well what else is out there?' impulse that kicks in as it does.

US cover is much worse than the UK one.

Maybe, but at least the US cover looks like someone spent more than 5 seconds on it (not much more than 5 seconds, mind).

I love Simon Reynolds but this is kind of a silly question, technology encourages people to re-connect with their past. We have a habit of thinking of pop culture as disposable or even embarrassing, but something that is "tacky" becomes an antique twenty or thirty years later!

Going back to the '80s, the mod and garage revival happening then (and this is 25-30 years ago already) always felt very contemporary to me and I can think of a few reasons why. Naturally, there were lots of stylistic derivations where influences that were not a part of the original style were incorporated, sometimes to great effect. But then I think of a band like the Tell-Tale Hearts, who were probably one of the most stylistically strict groups, and I still see them as being an '80s group. That's because, for one thing, no one would have thought to be so strict about style in that way in the '60s, but also because being strict like they were was a bit of a punk thing, which was very of its time.

Humans evolve and generations are always very different!

I wonder what the point is going to be, ultimately - that there will be a point where people will stop being influenced by everything that has happened before them and leave everything that we know as music behind? No more of the song structures that have been used until now, no more currently known instruments, no more predetermined key? But then the second artist who does something like that will have been influenced by the first, so er... ?

Going back to the '80s, the mod and garage revival happening then (and this is 25-30 years ago already) always felt very contemporary to me and I can think of a few reasons why. Naturally, there were lots of stylistic derivations where influences that were not a part of the original style were incorporated, sometimes to great effect.

My favorite memories are riding in my grandpa's car listening to easy listening radio. He had the power windows and velour seats before everyone else, his stereo sounded great.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/LordBlak/Slingshot.jpg

Whoops, wrong thread.

I bet Michael Henderson *is* addicted to his own past.

Just finished reading it. It's a fucking fine read. Probably the best book he's written in some respects. ILX gets bogged up in it.

really? does he make fun of my thud-rock thread?

Bigged up. Sorry. Goddamn iPhone spell check.

He complains that Deej doesn't post enough hip hop youtubes set in wheel trim shops.

whenever i go on my facebook simon is posting pub rock videos. ah youth.

i will read this. this is my kinda thing. i actually have opinions about this sorta thing.

I don't think I will read this - he's had interesting things to say in the past but I can't really connect with how he sees things. This whole idea of retromania or permanent retro I don't really get at all. I think maybe it makes sense if you have that thing of the endless turnover of subgenres which he likes, but I can't connect with that idea. Like for something to be retro requires leaving and returning, I just see things as all part of a whole. But then i have problems with the idea of 'progress' or 'future' in electronic (or any) music anyway

I think this idea of music turning back in on itself or whatever only really makes sense if you priviledge notions of progress (whatever that means) in the first place

"Evolution" would be more of a neutral term than "progress."

I'm interested in the book and will probably read it, but from my POV I'm confused by its premise. I'm with Eliot, who wrote "Time present and time past/are both perhaps present in time future." Lately I've been obsessed with the Association, Dwight Yoakam, and the new tune-YARDS. I don't think of Old Music vs New Music; part of being a listener is to open oneself to a continual seduction by historical forces.

Music has to be from the past, though, to be part of our cultural lore. It doesn't enter into that realm until we recognize that it's gone.

i blame sha na na. come to think of it, growing up in the 70's, i couldn't really get away from the 50's. the 50's were everywhere. and to be fair, there has been an 80's revival going on since 1990. even people in the 60's eventually got over their fetish for the 20's. but do you know what i REALLY hate? movies from the 30's and 40's set in the gay 90's.

it would be kinda of nice though if things DID go away for awhile. nothing goes away anymore.

TS Eliot OTM

and the first thing I thought of reading this was the 50s nostalgia craze in the mid 70s - people thought that was the death knell of pop culture too

who said "the past is forever present"? someone said that i think.

things used to be more disposable. in a sense. years ago. people got rid of their kid stuff. not anymore. every lame goddamn thing you ever half remember is right there for you to look at whenever you feel like it. that has to change something in the air.

and i just figure almost every moment of recorded history - tape, vinyl, wax cylinder, film, etc - is up for grabs now and forever. people didn't have that kind of access in the boring old days. all i had were robert klein albums where he would go on and on about playing stickball as a kid. now i can actually buy vintage stickballs and histories of stickball and it goes on and on and i can devote my life to writing songs about arcane street games of the 19th and 20th century if i wanted to. the past is alluring. especially if you look out the window. you ever see what's out there? i mean, can you blame people?

and as far as the blurb for the book goes, no, there is no end to the past. there really isn't. you could never use it all up. ask writers. they'll tell you. writing is all about reading the past. why wouldn't music be?

there has been an 80's revival going on since 1990

I first became aware of it with this album, which came out in '96, by which time the early '80s signifiers were distinctly retro, were distinctly of the past.

I've always thought of eighties revivalism as ramping up around 1997 - early nu-electro (e.g. IF), indie synth pop revivalism (e.g. The Pulsars), "Your Woman" at the top of the charts.

The only early 90s eighties revivalism I can think of is The Magnetic Fields. What else?

US cover is much worse than the UK one.

I was about to disagree, but then I saw the apostrophes in the years.

The alt-rock radio station I listened to in the early '90s had (ca. 1993-94) an '80s hour every day at noon, in which they played mostly college-rock/new-wave stuff like the Violent Femmes or the B-52s or Wall of Voodoo.

"The only early 90s eighties revivalism I can think of is The Magnetic Fields. What else?"

well there was a carry over from the 80's to the 90's, but new people making goth and industrial and ebm and other 80's strains ran with the 80's sounds. not strictly retro but similar enough and most of their inspiration was 80's-derived.

kinda like how younger people (or non-western people from japan or south america who came to the party late) started making '68 psych in '72.

well there was a carry over from the 80's to the 90's, but new people making goth and industrial and ebm and other 80's strains ran with the 80's sounds. not strictly retro but similar enough and most of their inspiration was 80's-derived.

Not really revivalism though, right? Like, it's more the equivalent of post-Nickleback bands always still sounding like 1997, yeah?

okay i'm bored and being critical but thats okay cuz critics can be critical right? but this from the blurb just keeps sticking out:

"and that although earlier eras had their own obsessions with antiquity - the Renaissance with its admiration for Roman and Greek classicism, the Gothic movement's invocations of medievalism"

soooooooooooo, correct me if i'm wrong, but both the renaisssance and old school goth were periods of, like, 300+ years? can you really even judge the modern pop era yet? there was a whole lot of friggin' derivative lute music going around for a loooooooooooong time way back when.

Haha -- the eighties revival on my college radio station started in '93! A year after the first Living in Oblivion comp. A Flock of Seagulls, Adam Ant, Romeo Void, Spandau Ballet, etc were already taxonomized as "eighties."

"Not really revivalism though, right?"

right, but music identified with an earlier time. using the sounds and techniques of that time. like dixieland bands in the 40s and 50s. there were people who played it at the time of its origin and there were younger people in dixieland revival bands. just as there were younger industrial and goth people in the 90's and beyond who aren't strictly speaking nostalgia acts but whose music will always be identified with an earlier time.

I mean contemporary artists signifying "eighties" in an explicitly revivalist sense.

soooooooooooo, correct me if i'm wrong, but both the renaisssance and old school goth were periods of, like, 300+ years? can you really even judge the modern pop era yet? there was a whole lot of friggin' derivative lute music going around for a loooooooooooong time way back when.

Without knowing enough about these eras to comment, I think it's probably fair to postulate that:

(a) the past becomes "the past" culturally much faster now than ever before;
(b) the cycles of revivalism have also sped up over the last 40 years or so, and now double over each other; but
(c) such revivals are still "revivals" (at least initially) and so can be distinguished from, say, periods of slow development of largely derivative music; and certainly
(d) having regard to the above, creates a dynamic rather distinct from previous historical obsessions with the past, such that the answer "but revivalism has always and will always be with us" does not dissolve the point of difference the writer is trying to capture.

The past becomes "the past" much faster as we age, and we're all at or approaching Simon's age.

yeah, i mean the evolution of sound and music in the 20th century was so blindingly fast, like a mad race, and its kinda crazy to think that it would keep that speed up. people's brains need time to grow more and also internalize all the stuff that happened in the last 100 years. a lot happened!

right, but music identified with an earlier time. using the sounds and techniques of that time. like dixieland bands in the 40s and 50s. there were people who played it at the time of its origin and there were younger people in dixieland revival bands. just as there were younger industrial and goth people in the 90's and beyond who aren't strictly speaking nostalgia acts but whose music will always be identified with an earlier time.

Again, though, isn't that distinct from the notion of "retro" in terms of travelling back in time to bring something back to the present?

Like, Phil Collins doing "You Can't Hurry Love" in the 80s was "retro", Marillion crafting odes to Selling England By The Pound was not.

The key difference being an essentially unbroken line of continuity in the second case, with the implied underlying statement "this sound has not changed (substantially) and ought not to change."

Whereas retro always carries with it the implicit acknowledgment of jumping back over all sorts of contrary developments in between.

hmmm, i'll have to think about that. phil's cover always seemed very much of its time to me!

The past becomes "the past" much faster as we age, and we're all at or approaching Simon's age.

I meant in the past 100 years.

I'd say actually the opposite of the above possibly - in line with Tom's piece on the long past and the short past.

but i get you. 50's rock DID stop. in the early 60's. and by the mid 60's it was "oldies" music. and has been ever since. but people still don't call 1976-style punk bands "revival" acts because there is a continuous line. it never stopped completely.

did it really? I always thought that Sha Na Na, Bryan Ferr's These Foolish Things, Bowie's Pin Ups and a host of cover albums by the Band and Nilsson from the same period showed how by the early seventies rock had formed a canon.

*Ferry's

Yeah I think implicit in a revival is the idea that something has gone out of fashion. Once it's revived it never really falls out of fashion again I think.

80s revivalism stopped signifying 80s revivalism once the (full-fledged) revival era had become as long as the era it was reviving. It is now substantially longer.

but people still don't call 1976-style punk bands "revival" acts because there is a continuous line.

The closest thing to a revival would be the 2001 "new rock revolution" (with the caveat that it was by no means all 1976) - because what was not continuous was this music dominating the critical (and to a lesser extent commercial) sphere, even though bands of a similar nature had been floating around during the entire intervening period.

i'd like to read the book cuz i want to know how much simon goes into how people USE the past now. if they use it differently now that they have a seemingly infinite amount of past sources to plunder. people can pinpoint one year in one music scene's life in one place in the world and study it comprehensively and never leave their couch. what does that do to music and how people deal with that information. or does it make any difference. it makes it easier to be knowledgeable about the past obviously. don't know if it makes for better music.

i think it does make for shorter attention spans. it takes time for a "movement" to grow.

how people USE the past now. if they use it differently now

I don't know. Did Sha Na Na use the past in a distinctly different way than Xeno and Oaklander?

um, maybe?

One of the reasons I'm interested in the specificity of the idea of "retro" is that I don't feel like pop culture is very explicitly retro. Like, when Lil Wayne samples Haddaway I don't think he's doing it because he expects it to remind people of Haddaway; rather, it's more that the source material chimes in with the current sound so as to make it a logical hook to plunder. It doesn't signify "the past" that strongly to me.

Was it always like this? Is this what you mean about Phil, Scott? That his Supremes cover didn't actually call to mind the 60s at the time?

In dance music definitely there has been a shift: 10 years ago you could talk sensibly about various strains of classicism and traditionalism and revivalism, but these have all have been done so much now that it all codes as this kind of hazy contemporaneity, music doesn't code so clear as present-focused or past-focused any more.

yeah, i don't think phil was going for straight-up nostalgia. like sha na na were. it was a very modern cover of an old song. obviously people would be reminded of the old song, but i think he just liked the song! i dunno. i don't things now are all that retro now either actually. especially in the undie/indie world. people are using old sources, but they aren't using motown, they are refrerencing pretty obscure stuff that a lot of people have never heard in the first place. this is true of rap and other beat-derived music too. and modern r&b too.

To be fair the clip rather hit you over the head with the revivalism angle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYC5E4perb8

strict retro re-creates almost totally. like The Faint did with 80's stuff. people who steal a synth line from a Goblin track aren't retro. they just know a cool sound when they hear it. and as we all know theft is timeless.

In dance music definitely there has been a shift: 10 years ago you could talk sensibly about various strains of classicism and traditionalism and revivalism, but these have all have been done so much now that it all codes as this kind of hazy contemporaneity, music doesn't code so clear as present-focused or past-focused any more.

yeah - after ten years of instant digital availability the history of pop music feels more like a continuum than discrete eras

yeah, totally. about phil. but it sounded perfectly normal next to huey lewis and john cougar and john fogerty or whoever on 80's pop radio. it was totally in keeping with the 80's thing. it really was a modern cover.

Collins also, unwittingly, sold a song from his past back to fans. It worked as a gesture to the fans his age who remembered the Supremes and were already getting teary-eyed about their lost youth, and to young'uns like me and Scott just discovering the Supremes.

but it sounded perfectly normal next to huey lewis and john cougar and john fogerty or whoever on 80's pop radio. it was totally in keeping with the 80's thing. it really was a modern cover.

Yeah I can see how a revival of early motown was just like a logical extension of all sorts of tendencies in 80s pop (thesis: eurythmics as singlehandedly summarising the 80s' drift from future to past).

Today's equivalent (though not as good as Phil) would be "The Time (Dirty Bit)" - which sounds very 2010/2011 if only because so much contemporary music is informed by the 80s with greater or lesser degrees of consciousness and intentionality.

(thesis: eurythmics as singlehandedly summarising the 80s' drift from future to past).

Reynolds and Marcello Carlin would say that the success of Eurythmics signaled the ossification of New Pop or something -- the duo's obsession with The Canon, ec.

*etc

what about those godawful Motown covers by James Taylor and Linda Rondstart in the 70s. more like clumsy appropriations I suppose - or hijackings.

and the retro-soul trend in 80s black pop. Nelson George coined the term "retro nuevo" in a Village Voice review of Regina Belle

it's the post-modern thing, no? probably starting with rap, i guess. collage. pastiche. use anything and everything for effect. pop art. whatever. everything is fair game. its simpler in a lot of ways, but its also confusing to sort out. and post punk/indie-rock its also in many ways the only choice a lot of creative people in the underground have because most of them can't read music or play actual instruments and that has changed the game in many ways. people don't sit in rooms practicing scales ten hours a day like they used to unless they are metal/classical/jazz musicians. in many ways, people are incapable of aping the past because they can't play the past. and the people who DO ape the past faithfully are fully-fledged revival artists playing old blues, old rock, old folk, etc. older forms that are more folk art now than anything and not really critically or (pop)culturally relevant to a lot of people.

christ that was some sort of x-post but hell if i can remember to what. i went away for a smoke...

and yeah the reissue phenomena is amazing and all that, but just because people are obsessed with collecting every afro-pop and afro-psych and cumbia-psych comp that comes out doesn't translate into people everywhere MAKING that music again. cuz, like i said, lots of people wouldn't know how. it does make for cooler record collections though, and i'm all for that. and a wider awareness of past coolness. maybe some of that will rub off. we can only hope.

My problem with current (Top 40) music is that it's too stagnant and everyone are using the same handful of producers or not borrowing songs from other writers once in a while as an effort to "keep it real" so the artists end up burning out faster.

what about those godawful Motown covers by James Taylor and Linda Rondstart in the 70s. more like clumsy appropriations I suppose - or hijackings.

Along with Motown, how about the endless hijacking of Great American Songbook?

My problem with current (Top 40) music is that it's too stagnant and everyone are using the same handful of producers or not borrowing songs from other writers once in a while as an effort to "keep it real" so the artists end up burning out faster.

waht

modern pop and r&b totally cyborgian 22nd century stuff more often then not. even when it steals from, like, 90's trance tracks.

If there's a phenomenon that distinguishes this period from others is the degree to which "Top 40" is a discrete entity with which no listener has to engage unless the exposure is impossible to escape.

the future is now as far as that stuff goes. but maybe even futurism is old hat.

Alfred, to get back to one of your earlier points, when I hear the Association, it's not just me interacting with some text in 2001. There's also this awareness that I am NOT interacting with the text in 1967, when it was created, and that the song, in a way, belongs to that time.

pretty much everything is a discrete entity now.

I mean -- it's easier for, say, an avid Pitchforker to avoid "Top 40" than it was in 1989. The success of "Paper Planes" only seems weird when I remember that a half dozen "Just Like Heaven"s and "So Alive"s and other weirdo college radio one-offs infiltrated the Top 40 regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

i learn something new from the past every day. i'm inspired by the past every day. but i don't live there. i live here. i think that's true of a lot of people.

Alfred, to get back to one of your earlier points, when I hear the Association, it's not just me interacting with some text in 2001. There's also this awareness that I am NOT interacting with the text in 1967, when it was created, and that the song, in a way, belongs to that time.

Yeah, I get that. If you meant to say "yet" in that last clause I THINK I get you.

but i haven't read this book! i don't even really know where it goes. just going by one publisher blurb.

i blame antiques roadshow.

i do think people are definitely hungry for the past. in bad ways (tea party) and good ways (more cumbia fans). and people have access to stuff that they never had access to before. its great!

ILM posting w/you guys on a Sunday night feels retro - very 2006ish

yeah really. where's jess and aja?

(a) the past becomes "the past" culturally much faster now than ever before;

Just want to mention here that Nuggets came out in '72.

Scott - I wrote a cover feature about this, more or less, for the LAWeekly in 2003. http://www.laweekly.com/2003-09-25/news/the-kids-aren-t-alright-they-re-amazing/

I think that Phil Collins cover of the Supremes scanned as "80s" because a lot of music that decade felt "60s". You mention "huey lewis and john cougar and john fogerty" and they were in their mid-30s (40s in case of Fogerty) and inspired by the music of their teenage years, which was the 60s. Point carried over from my "senior year of high school" thread, where a number of no. 1 hits were covers of songs from the 60s and early 70s.

i do think people are definitely hungry for the past. in bad ways (tea party) and good ways (more cumbia fans). and people have access to stuff that they never had access to before. its great!

Haha for a second I was like "I'm not a The Tea Party fan but I wonder why Scott is singling them out."

"Scott - I wrote a cover feature about this"

dude, totally! see, everyone's just reviving old jay b. articles now. and everything i've said on this thread is basically a rehash of that thing. i'm totally retro.

If there's a phenomenon that distinguishes this period from others is the degree to which "Top 40" is a discrete entity with which no listener has to engage unless the exposure is impossible to escape.

Like I've been telling people! Pop is just the biggest subculture of them all, one of an infinite number.

that Phil Collins cover of the Supremes scanned as "80s" because a lot of music that decade felt "60s".

There were also many, many, many other covers of '60s (and probably to some extent '50s and '70s) pop songs on the charts all through the '80s, so Phil was hardly alone. Its kind of what a lot of '80s pop just plain was. (Not sure whether anybody's pointed that out on this thread, or not -- have only skimmed.) Also, at least in the States, lots of actual oldies by the original artists re-entered the chart (from movie soundtracks mainly, I think) around the same time. So no, video styling or not, Phil's cover definitely never struck me as especially retro either (at least not in the way, say, the Stray Cats reviving rockabilly or the Cult reviving Led Zep riffs seemed retro in the '80s). Just seemed like a cover version, period.

As for "retro" now, I think I'm basically of the opinion that the '90s pretty much never ended. I'm still waiting, but not holding my breath.

(Could probably say a lot more -- this seems like a pretty interesting thread, what I've read of it -- but I can't afford, time and effort-wise, to get sucked in.)

the past becomes "the past" culturally much faster now than ever before

Also, sorry, assuming I'm understanding it, this just seems so wrong to me. When American Graffiti came out in 1973, the pop era it covered -- it was set in 1962, but concentrated on music of the late '50s -- seemed like it could have been centuries ago, almost. In contrast, I honestly don't get how pop music has fundamentally changed anywhere near that much since 2001, or the late '90s. It's not even close. But maybe that's a function of me following music much closer now than I did between 1962 and 1973. Or maybe it's just a function of age, who knows. What I'm fairly sure about is that kids growing up now do not find music of the '90s (or even '70s!) anywhere near as quaint or antique as say, kids of the '70s would have found music of the '50s.

http://www.joaap.org/6/another/rodriguez.html

xp

That is an interesting point, and I think that is specifically up to the rupture of the late 60s. An example I like to use is the live recording of VU's "Sister Ray" from the 1967 Gymnasium bootleg; that was 10 years after "Jailhouse Rock", or the same length of time from 2001 until now. And I honesty think very few people alive in 1957 could have even imagined that music existing in 10 years. It's hard to think of anything going on now that was unimaginable 10 years ago (pretty sure there is a thread that speculates on just this somewhere).

xhuxk, Tim was responding to talk of much earlier, pre- mass media periods of time. I think the "now" Tim was talking about would include the whole era of mass media (or at least some point after it got rolling).

(I agree with your perception that the 50s seeming a lot more distant in the 70s than the 70s did in the 90s, or now even.)

I guess I'm interested in aspects of this thread after all. Maybe I should read the book.

Yes, I was trying to get at why centuries of people playing the same folk tunes does not mean that "retromania" has always existed in the way it exists now. The "culture becomes the past faster now" refers to the 20th century onwards in general, not the immediate recent past of pop culture.

It's harder to say whether cultural progression has started to slow down (say, in the last ten years) because those immediate judgments are much more tied up in one's own relationship to culture, aging etc.

Yes, I was trying to get at why centuries of people playing the same folk tunes does not mean that "retromania" has always existed in the way it exists now. The "culture becomes the past faster now" refers to the 20th century onwards in general, not the immediate recent past of pop culture

I can see why this is a seductive argument but I'm not overly convinced by this. Surely this could only really be compared another 100-200 years down the line. 1940-2040 might look at lot more homogeneous in 2190 than it does today.

It's less about homogeneity or lack thereof and more about the way in which people relate to their immediate past. From the limited amount I know, the 19th century strikes me as being as much a time of flux as the 20th, but I'm not aware of people in the 19th century reviving trends mere decades old for the specific purpose of recalling/resurrecting the trends of that prior decade.

and that's basically cuzza technology. why people do it now and didn't do it then. though i'm sure there were always mini-movements of people resurrecting or re-appreciating composers and songwriters of the recent past back then too.

yes, absolutely.

i think the Victorians probably had a much stronger ethos of "progress" than we do in the post-everything 21st century too, but if my brain was less fuddled i'm sure i could come up with good examples of 19th century micro-nostalgia

i'm also guessing that in the 19th century (and earlier) a piece of music that was 20 or 30 years old could be considered pretty current! i mean, unless you had access to the sheet music or were lucky enough to hear a performance of something new, it might be years before you came into contact with some stuff.

I think what Scott argues about Collins 'You Can't Hurry Love' being a modern cover is interesting and i guess it's a situation where personal prejudices are brought out. my first thought was to compare its modernity to other big hit covers from around the same time e.g. Siouxsie & The Banshees 'Dear Prudence'. The latter was more unusual but not necessarily more contemporary-sounding despite the band's position (but tbh I don't know the reasons why they covered and released that song at that time).

one example in the united states of some sort of retro-mania was the huge popularity of stephen foster in the years after his death. (i mean he died penniless on the bowery in the 1860's, and by the turn of the century those songs were literally everywhere and he was a national treasure. not that his songs weren't known when he was alive, but his posthumous fame reflects the desire for that down home/minstrel/old south nostalgia that was really strong well into the 20th century)

i love siouxie's cover. and i love her covers album. that whole thing is a great updating of old songs. might have been the first time i ever heard "this wheel's on fire"!

that was the acid talking though, right? her and bob smith tripping and making acid rock. i know i had a couple of summers of love listening to The Top and Hyaena.

burning from the inside by bauhaus was one of my favorite albums to listen to when i was on acid back then. and tones on tail too.

so many 60's vibes in the 80's! and for me it all started with that doors rennaisance in the early 80's. Doors-mania!

i used to make mix tapes for me and my friends back then for when we were high and it would be like: husker du/jefferson airplane/love & rockets/the grateful dead/the cure/hot tuna/etc. good times.

I think in every era artists had an attitude that work produced in the past, even in the not so distant past, was better, or more serious, or more original, than the stuff currently being produced by their peers. (See centuries of worship of Ancient Greek writing, for instance.) Now it does seem more accelerated, probably due to us having all of this exact evidence of what the prior era looked like and sounded like at our fingertips.

But revivals all say something about what people think the time they live in lacks. The 50s revival in the 70s was about yearning for a more placid time, before Vietnam and cultural change. The 60s revival in the 80s was about people feeling a lack of depth or meaning in the culture. 70s revival in the 90s was kind of a search for an unironic goofiness that had been lost to knowingness. And I guess the 80s revival is a search for flash and verve and shininess.

(Kind of funny that we keep talking about Phil Collins, but no mention of the massively huge Billy Joel album that was meant as a 50s tribute but totally reeks of the 80s now.)

i'm also guessing that in the 19th century (and earlier) a piece of music that was 20 or 30 years old could be considered pretty current!

In many ways i think this is the case today also (though in other contexts it isn't)

Where does Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? figure in to this conversation?

ha idk why i didn't think of that before 'dear prudence'

i want candy probably in my top 5 of 80s 60s covers. there were lots of good ones. (still kinda prefer colourbox's motown over kim wilde's motown, but i got lotsa love for kim!)

i'm also guessing that in the 19th century (and earlier) a piece of music that was 20 or 30 years old could be considered pretty current! i mean, unless you had access to the sheet music or were lucky enough to hear a performance of something new, it might be years before you came into contact with some stuff.

Not sure.

The world exposed to commercially reproduced music was much smaller in the 19thc than now, but it moved fast enough: Late Beethoven-> Wagner = 30 years: worlds apart.

And if you look closely enough at folk musics under the impact of industrialisation and speedier communications -and movement of peoples - there are also huge transformations. Mass production of new instruments as well..... look at how the accordion became a 'folk' instrument in less time than it took the drum machine.

The 50s revival in the 70s was about yearning for a more placid time, before Vietnam and cultural change. The 60s revival in the 80s was about people feeling a lack of depth or meaning in the culture. 70s revival in the 90s was kind of a search for an unironic goofiness that had been lost to knowingness. And I guess the 80s revival is a search for flash and verve and shininess.

Doesn't this all basically boil down to cultural producers' nostalgia for their childhood/adolescence?

Sure. And brings with it a child's misreading of what that era was really like.

Actually, I think that the Sixties Revival was people being nostalgic for their older sibling's/parent's youth.

well the boomer nostalgia onslaught was in full swing by the 80's. joan baez at live aid: "this is your woodstock!" fuck you, joanie!

Yeah, 60s nostalgia was kind of forced on 80s kids by condescending boomers with their Rolling Stone magazines and their Wonder Years.

Which doesn't apply to the garage rock revivalists, the psych revivalists, and the like.

Yeah, 60s nostalgia was kind of forced on 80s kids by condescending boomers with their Rolling Stone magazines and their Wonder Years.

http://asset-server.libsyn.com/item/1527739/assets/gunpoint.jpg

when I clerked in a record store in the late 70s - several years before Jim "He's Sexy & Still Dead" Morrison graced the cover of Rolling Stone - teenagers were snapping up Doors albums. couldn't keep em in the store. FWIW

The fifties revival in the seventies did kind of suck, it was like some people's fifties. Sixties revival...well there were a number of them, some of them annoying distortions of the era and some just punk or new wave kids wanting more music.

i got a cd in the mail last week that was total big beat/fatboy slim/90's thing and i cringed a little that this might be a trend of some sort. not ready yet...

well, i was a happy days and laverne & shirley fan (or maybe i was just a gary marshall fan), and i don't know what my sister would have done without Grease in her life.

not ready yet...

Not ready ever.

(a) the past becomes "the past" culturally much faster now than ever before

weird cuz i was listening to Quadrophenia by the Who the other day and it struck me how weird it was, there's even little snippets of old Who songs in the segues, like they are basically mythologizing their own past in rock opera making mod sound like a long lost world

then i thought to look it up...Quadrophrenia came out in 1973. Their first single "I Can't Explain" came out in 1965...8 years!

that's the same amount of time that elapsed between Radiohead's Hail to the Thief and King of Limbs!

A lot of stuff happened between 1965 and 1973 though.

yes i guess i was refuting the point that i had before my post in italics

You're right, maybe the past becomes past a little less fast now--especially since a lot of the artists who were big in 2001 (Radiohead, Jay-Z, Timbaland, Strokes) are still talked about fairly regularly ten years later.

Compare that to, say, 1957 through 1967. Very few of the big artists stayed on top. Maybe just Elvis, and even he had to stage a comeback in 68.

or say, like compare 1970 to 1980

i hate to give it to the boomers on this one, but the period '55-'75 might just be different somehow.

that's fine! i mean, '35-'55 was pretty wild and unique too, but instead of music it was nazis.

i dunno. but even 1980 to 1990 seems more different than like 2000-2010...1990-2000 is a little more change but less so, like maybe things are slowing down?

and I'd say things felt as different from 75-85 as they did from 65-75

xp The first compilation in Original Sound's Oldies But Goodies series hit the album chart (got to #12) in 1959; track listing has Five Satins' "In the Still Of night" (1956), Teen Queens' "Eddie My Love" (1956), Sonny Knight's "Confidential" (1956), Cadets' "Stranded In The Jungle" (1956), Mello Kings' "Tonite Tonite" (1957)!, etc. So that's nostalgia more than twice as fast as Quadrophenia! The "oldies radio weekend" that Wolfman Jack hosted in American Graffiti was an only slightly longer time span (nostalgia for late '50s hits in 1962), and apparently there was a "doo-wop revival" around the same time (lots of it from Italian-American groups trying to do what black groups had hit with just a few years before.) By the sixth and last charting Oldies But Goodies LP, in 1965, it looks like there was already nostalgia for the early '60s (e.g,. Dion & the Belmonts' "Runaround Sue," from 1961.)

agree that changes from the 50s - 90s were fast + sweeping, and seem less so now

there's 12 years between the first black sabbath album and the first sonic youth album, and 30 years between the first sonic youth album and now

but I can still go to a warehouse in providence and watch ppl torture instruments for fun followed by stoner blues doom stuff

maybe revivalism is stratified now and the movement is vertical instead of horizontal

The White Album, Beggars Banquet, and John Wesley Harding (along with Elvis's TV special) were perceived at the time as spearheading a "back-to-basics" move that may or may not have been rooted in nostalgia. I mean, Dylan doesn't strike me as the most nostalgic person in the world, but there was a turn away from the Sgt. Pepper landscape to something closer to earlier rock and roll.

Stupid social trends question: There's a stereotype of less cultural interaction as people age out of their teens/early 20s or a weight on youth culture that still exists, but I feel like it was heavier in the 50s/60s. Is this a real phenomenon, or just something I've dreamed up?

It feels like a lot of the fast-moving music culture has kind of changed and that the audience doesn't necessarily drift on to the next thing now.

xp You also had the Band around then. And Creedence. And a pretty big "blues revival" in England. And a few years later, Led Zeppelin saying it's been a long time since I rock and rolled, it's been a long time since we did the stroll. (Nobody's mentioned the "folk revival" of the late '50s here yet either, I don't think -- wonder if Simon does.)

Don't forget that Dylan, Baez etc. in the early 60s were part of the Folk Revival.

missed xhuxk's post

I don't know the exact timeline, but I think White Album/Beggars Banquet/Band/Creedence/etc. led to Lennon's Live Peace Show in Toronto (w/Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, and Bo Diddley) and Richard Nader's revival shows, which in turn led to Sha Na Na/Flash Cadillac/Cat Mother & the All-Night Newsboys, which then led naturally into American Graffiti and Happy Days. I'm sure it wasn't quite that cut-and-dried, but I think there was more or less a direct line there.

eh, black sabbath's first album is lousy with blues riffing but it's hard to imagine it as revivalism

which begs the question would we recognize the revolutionary even if it were in our midst

bangs take on the first sabbath album was "this is bad cream" iirc

xpost: I think the 2,000+ posts on the Rebecca Black thread prove that we're just totally on top of that.

amateurism is the future of music, discuss

FWIW: It's pretty amusing that everything on this thread so far is discussed in the book.

Well, everything bar Rebecca Black, Xeno & Oaklander and The Eurythmics. [XP]

He mentions Oldies But Goodies and the early '60s Italo-American doo-wop revival?? Wow, maybe I should get the book.

I get the feeling new generations will carbon date pop culture w/game systems and other technology rather than music. Stylistic changes in pop music have felt really minimal for the last 15 years imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31-BycUUq0M

Graphic design is the most likely and rewarding form of pop culture carbon dating imo. It's also a form which is forever borrowing from the past, but somehow the actual era is never in doubt.

Like both of this book's covers are very now, in their different ways.

Graphic design is the most likely and rewarding form of pop culture carbon dating imo. It's also a form which is forever borrowing from the past, but somehow the actual era is never in doubt.

So what happens when both music and books no longer appear in material form? How will something show its age as an MP3/ pdf/ or whatever replaces them?

your book has a cover lol dated

I'm always obsessed with this stuff (ie, Weezer's "Buddy Holly" being 90s worship of 70s TV show that worshipped 50s culture), but every time I write about it, it seems really clinical and unfun and kind of tedious (cf, many of the first 100 posts in this thread, no offense). I'm kind of interested to see if Reynolds can make this readable, dig?

Graphic design is the most likely and rewarding form of pop culture carbon dating imo. It's also a form which is forever borrowing from the past, but somehow the actual era is never in doubt.

I like this statement but you could swap out music or film or fashion and still be otm

How could anyone possibly take offense at being called unfun and kind of tedious?

hey i am truly sorry if i helped steer the conversation away from "lol, that cover sucks." i don't apologize for being tedious though. i want to cultivate a more tedious approach in my old age.

How will something show its age as an MP3/ pdf/ or whatever replaces them?

⌘I, it's under "date created"

xhuxk, I'm not sure that Oldies But Goodies was nostalgia, really, at least not for something lost. I think it was just that Art Laboe started playing some songs from a few years before on his radio show and it was popular and then they did the albums.

Yeah, I suppose it's conceivable that the definition of the word "oldies" (which has implied nostalgia ever since I've been conscious of it anyway) changed somewhere along the line, and oldies station now (or even in the '70s) might not be comparable to ones in the late '50s or early '60s. But (and AG expert clemenza should pipe in on this maybe), when I watch American Graffiti I definitely get the idea that the "oldies weekend" songs from just a few years before are making the characters wistful for years gone by, as they see the last minutes of their last high school summer drifting away etc.

I was under the impression that the word "oldies" was used for late Forties and Fifties adult pop before then.

The key line is probably Milner's "Rock 'n' roll's been going downhill since Buddy Holly died" (he also makes it clear that he hates that "surfin' shit"). The thing is, I'm not sure if that's Milner speaking, or George Lucas. Seeing as Lucas is a product of California surf-and-car culture, it's probably Milner. Conclusion: I haven't got a clue who's nostalgic for what, or what it might mean.

Btw, in closely related '70s-nostalgia-for-'50s news, I actually Netflixed The Lords Of Flatbush (from 1974, with Henry Winkler and Sly Stallone) last week, and it was a lot worse than I'd hoped and remembered. (Hadn't seen it in decades.) Also really hated the fake '50s music that didn't sound remotely '50s (a concept that Grease pulled off a whole lot better, and more lucratively, a few years later.)

watch the wanderers instead. love that movie. although that takes place in 1963, i think.

Yeah, I love that one too, Scott.

or watch the hollywood knights! but that takes place in 1965. watch american hot wax instead.

A staple of my first few years of listening to the radio were CHUM's "Solid Gold Weekends" in the early '70s. That's where I first heard everything from the Everlys to "White Room" to the Cowsills. I think their definition of Solid Gold was very fluid chronology-wise--anything that wasn't current but had once been a hit, stetching from last year back to Bill Haley. I was too young to understand the concept of nostalgia, though, and have no idea how much of a role that might have played.

The black version, pretty good from what I remember: Cooley High (similarly mid-'60s).

is there a point in american pop before which we can say that pop was not constantly enmeshed in the process of mythologizing its own past?

i ask because i've always (in a fairly dull-witted way) wanted to peg the transition point to the late 50s and early 60s, like that's the last moment during which american pop wasn't so obviously engaged with reflexively critiquing and pillaging its own history. those years are maybe not coincidentally the arguable apotheosis of twentieth century american pop, both the apex of postwar american optimism, arrogance and creativity, and also the point at which pop culture became a thing of real and lasting value in the american mind, beginning the eradication of any meaningful high/low distinction in the arts.

i've satisfied myself with this rough, mental demarcation point for many years without thinking too deeply about it. during the years in question, we get the emergence of backwards-looking, authenticity-enshrining folk & blues movements that attached themselves to an early 20th century golden age, arguably early harbingers of subsequent pop retro. that mid-century hinge-point also seems like ground zero for hobbyist/collector cults dedicated to the elevation and preservation of period toys, comics, music, commercial design, etc. plus warhol and lichtenstein pushing things from one direction, and from the other (a few years later), r. crumb and other underground comix types fetishizing early 20th century design & iconography. maybe it's related to the death, in our culture, of childhood, or rather to our collective decision to perpetuate and mythologize childhood as a lifetime pursuit. unlike jackie paper, we're no longer expected to shed childish things. in fact, as pop peoples, we're expected to serve as curators of our own endless childhood until we die.

or so it seems, sometimes. any good examples of dominant reflexive retro in american pop prior to the 50s?

i ask because i've always (in a fairly dull-witted way) wanted to peg the transition point to the late 50s and early 60s, like that's the last moment during which american pop wasn't so obviously engaged with reflexively critiquing and pillaging its own history. those years are maybe not coincidentally the arguable apotheosis of twentieth century american pop, both the apex of postwar american optimism, arrogance and creativity, and also the point at which pop culture became a thing of real and lasting value in the american mind, beginning the eradication of any meaningful high/low distinction in the arts.

fyi this is kinda bullshit imaginary history -- imo u should read elijah wald's 'the beatles destroyed rock n roll' despite its challopy title

there were dixieland revivalists in the 40s, ragtime would get revived over & over, there was near-constant references to antebellum south, etc

ground zero for hobbyist/collector cults dedicated to the elevation and preservation of period toys, comics, music, commercial design, etc.

this has more to do with post-war mass-manufacturing and mass-marketing of commodities than anything else.

deej OTM

man, i almost started a thread just for the QUOTE from that beatles book that deej posted on that music book thread. maybe i was feeling cranky. here we go, found it:

"(The Beatles) had led their audience off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots, and while the gains may have balanced the losses in both economic and artistic terms, that change split American popular music in two. When similar splits had happened in the past, the demands of satisfying live audiences had always forced the streams back together, but by the end of the 1960s live performances had lost their defining role on the pop music scene. So the Beatles and the movement they led marked the end not only of rock ’n’ roll as it had existed up to that time but also of the whole process explored over the course of this book, in which white and black musicians had evolved by adopting and adapting one another’s styles, shaping a series of genres—ragtime, jazz, swing, rock ’n’ roll—that at their peaks could not be easily categorized by race." 246

i don't know if i agree with any of this. especially the live performance thing. unless you don't think consistently filling football stadiums with 100,000+ people all throughout the 70's wasn't some sort of social pop phenomena. it was the decade of live concert "events".

and as far as the genre thing goes, there was plenty of music not easily categorized by race in the 70's. fusion, free jazz, disco, soft rock, singer songwriter pop, lite pop soul, etc.

and people dance to beatles music all the time. the beatles were very much in touch with their rhythmic roots. i can play you 4 zillion 70's r&b beatles covers that were played in black clubs filled with black audiences as evidence if needed.

oh i could go on...

― scott seward, Monday, April 4, 2011 12:50 PM (3 weeks ago)

and then of course i went on:

i mean the some of the biggest pop acts in the u.s. in the early 70's were pop/jazz/r&b/rock hybrids like chicago, blood,sweat&tears, and three dog night. and they packed in the fancy dancers everywhere they played. so what did the beatles kill again?

― scott seward, Monday, April 4, 2011 1:08 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah the book falls off at that point because he doesnt get contemporary music, but thats not really the point of the book & only takes up its last chapter or 2 iirc.

(The Beatles) had led their audience off the dance floor

I'm curious about what dance floor this might be referring to. High school sock hops? Because high school dances, of course, kept happening into the '60s and beyond and are still happening. And even when the Beatles weren't making music that was as consistently danceable as their earlier music, others were.

i mean, he claims its the point of the book, but its not really the meat of it & imo serves as a 'lets try to sell some books' hook for ppl

there is something interesting at the core of his thesis though, and some truth to how audiences were suddenly divided along racial lines in some more pronounced ways, but its more complicated & much messier than he makes it sound, plus he doesnt adjust for the importance of DJs, international music & audiences, lots of other things

I'm curious about what dance floor this might be referring to. High school sock hops? Because high school dances, of course, kept happening into the '60s and beyond and are still happening. And even when the Beatles weren't making music that was as consistently danceable as their earlier music, others were.

― timellison, Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:22 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rock and roll became 'listening music' at this time, separating 'those who like to dance' from those who took music 'seriously'

in the 50s, 'listening music' was adult pop & stuff that was primarily designed for ppl with nice stereo systems (argues the book) while rock music was noisy kids dance stuff

I think '50s rock and roll was 'listening music', too, and maybe just as profoundly as it was dance music.

I just think again, where was this dancing taking place? At diners to jukeboxes? I think kids' experience with the music was in their bedrooms more.

Not to make it sound like a totally solitary thing. It was social, too, but even in the diner, how much of it was dancing and how much just having music on? Or hanging out with friends, car radios, that's listening music. And at Alan Freed rock and roll concerts, I think the kids sat and watched the acts.

agree to some extent, but there's no clear line. kids danced at sock hops, as they said, school dances (still a thing), clubs and bars, dance halls, all over the place. also second-hand, via things like american bandstand, but that gets us into gray areas.

my big problem with that quote is that the 70's was arguably the most racially diverse (band/group-member-wise) decade in american history and it was filled with music created by people who quite happily mixed jazz/r&b/funk with beatles-esque headphone rock! the beatles - and other art-rockers of the 60's - were a great catalyst for some of the most exciting genre-bending and stylistic exercises this country has ever produced. as far as i'm concerned, anyway. but, yeah, it is only one quote.

I could be totally wrong, but whenever I read first-generation rock critics like Marcus, Ed Ward, etc. writing about '50s rock and roll, I always feel like it was mostly experienced alone, off the radio, late at night. Maybe I'm projecting, or maybe that's a rock-critic thing; maybe the 99.9% of '50s teenagers not destined to be rock critics danced.

why do critics get pissed that music isn't all one thing?

It would be interesting to look at Top 40 lists from, say, 1967 through the mid-'70s and see how many rock records were up there that were danceable and would have been stuff played at high school dances.

there were dixieland revivalists in the 40s, ragtime would get revived over & over, there was near-constant references to antebellum south, etc

― geeks, dweebs, nerds & lames (D-40), Monday, April 25, 2011 4:54 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, that's a fair objection. easy example in contemporary pop: the riffing on "old-timey" culture & music in the coen brothers' o brother, where art thou?. american country & western music has always long in the nostalgia business, no argument there. and i'm not trying to claim that retro was invented in the 50s/early 60s. i do think that "retro pop" as a distinct thing (yet inseparable from pop itself) did emerge during that era - to be more precise, that era somehow allowed it to be subsequently born.

and in saying that, i realize that contemporary pop as i understand it was in some sense born during the same era, so maybe what i'm thinking/saying has more to do with mod pop as a whole than with any retro reflexivity buried within it.

though i want to cast the backward-looking, childhood-besotted retro pop that really took off in the american 70s as a uniquely modern symptom, i'm a bit at a loss as to how i might make the case. it's not as though i've done a great deal of research on the subject. maybe i'd try to argue that prior to my midcentury hinge point, retro referentiality and pop-as-mythology were not universal aspects of shared culture, but were instead tied to genres and subcultures in which they made a kind of formal sense. like how country and other "old-timey" music has of course always been backwards-looking and thus somewhat self-referential, because the past is its explicit text.

The focus on "freakbeat" in retrospect made it clear how danceable '67-'68 era English rock was, too.

It would be interesting to look at Top 40 lists from, say, 1967 through the mid-'70s and see how many rock records were up there that were danceable

That might be hard to determine. I've got a special dance I do to Yes's "Roundabout," but it never really caught on nationally.

there are some more interesting theories in the book that we're discussing that might cause you to look at things differently -- the basic one being the shift from the sheet music being seen as the thing people were purchasing, while the recording was just a novelty, to the recording & specific performance becoming the point of the purchase

I think '50s rock and roll was 'listening music', too, and maybe just as profoundly as it was dance music.

― timellison, Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:27 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we're talking about how people treated it at the time. is soulja boy considered 'listening music'

i know some kids who just listen to it -- they post on this board as 'j0rdan sargent'

like, either all music is 'listening music,' or you're looking at this thru v distorted blinders imho

this has more to do with post-war mass-manufacturing and mass-marketing of commodities than anything else.

― The Everybody Buys 1000 Aerosmith Albums A Month Club (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, April 25, 2011 4:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

agree with this too, though it was offered as a rebuttal to my argument. i don't separate these things. pop retro's metastasis in american culture following the 50s and early 60s was probably in large part due to mass-manufacturing and mass-marketing (read: television).

I'm not sure that "clubs" and "dancehalls" for kids existed in the U.S. in the '50s. From what I know, kids' social experience with rock and roll would mostly have been jukeboxes, and probably not so much in places that had dance floors.

And the old archetypal thing of listening to Alan Freed before you turned out the light was rock and roll as 'listening music' - definitely!

Two experiences with "Roundabout" lately. One was that I watched a home movie of a famous radio DJ from my hometown in the '70s on Youtube just the other night and he was working at an AM station and one of the records he was playing in the clips was "Roundabout" on a 45. And then I saw a clip of a recent Yes tour on TV a month or so ago and they had a bunch of people up on stage dancing when they played that song.

I'd imagine "Roundabout" was played at some high school dances.

plus, a lot of people only got the big city stations that played the cool music at night if they held their radios a certain way.

i think you're misunderstanding the idea of 'listening music' here, or we're simply using the same term to describe entirely different things. of course i dont think rock fans exclusively danced to rock music

'listening music' = high art, high sound quality, sold in album format, meant to 'stand the test of time,' etc etc etc

rock n roll in the 50s: ephemeral, kids stuff, sold on 45s almost exclusively

man how do you dance to roundabout

"Roundabout": I'm sure that it would have been. One obvious example of how difficult either/or is would be "Stairway to Heaven": on one hand, the ultimate in stoned-and-headphones music, but also mandatory at any middle-school dance circa 1974 (like my own graduation dance).

We need someone on this board 60 or older to litigate (which would make them nine in 1959).

(My dance: you kind of hover in and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky, you stand there, then you go nuts.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVWhVSPngBw

Those bastards! Where's my cheque?

i still think every sentence of that quote from that book is wrong. its a wrong sandwich!

Your original post said the distinction was "separating 'those who like to dance' from those who took music 'seriously'" and I don't think kids took Sgt. Pepper more seriously than they took Elvis.

i think very different people in culture took both in different ways at the time

he talks about how elvis was seen as 'kids music' at the time, which sgt pepper's wasnt ... it was treated as a 'maturation' of the genre.

Right, but the thought someone might have had about Sgt. Pepper being a maturation was abstract. I don't think it would have affected the basic listening experience to the extent that there was some notable distinction between what that experience was then and what it was before.

well, i fundamentally disagree, and think that this idea of the genre maturing was very much a part of the fabric of its reception top to bottmo

bottom

little kids love dancing to the beatles SO much. its all about walruses and submarines to them.

The only difference I can think of would be that maybe more people listened to Sgt. Pepper closer? But again, the old example of listening to Alan Freed at night definitely implied intimacy.

yeah, it's okay, tim, i'm pretty sure people have always listened to music. in many different ways.

tim, im arguing that the diff between them is, like, the difference between the reception of soulja boy & kanye west. im sure people listen to both on the radio by themselves late at night

not really the point, you know?

There was so much sweetness in '50s rock and roll, though. The raw stuff wasn't really the most commonplace, I don't think.

So, "the point" of, say, the Platters would be that listening experience.

On the early Oldies But Goodies records, half the album was always "the dreamy side."

I'm sure people slow danced/made out to Roy Orbison, but he is also the ultimate bedroom under the sheets listening music.

One thing we might be missing is that from the early days on Rock'n'Roll on the artists/labels were attempting to find cross over appeal to that older audience that preferred "listening" music like Nat "King" Cole and Sinatra. So you had the Everly Brothers doing faster stuff like "Wake Up Susie" alongside slower songs like "All I Have to Do is Dream."

I'd imagine "Roundabout" was played at some high school dances.

yes! every hs mixer I attended 1972-76 featured cover bands playing songs like "Smoke On The Water" and the inevitable slow dance "Stairway to Heaven." I remember getting bummed out at the senior prom by (among other things like my powder-blue tux) multiple renditions of "Lady" by Styx. These songs were not easy to dance to and that's why disco hit so hard a couple years later. punk too, in the pre-moshpit era. it was liberating to dance to something w/a steady beat.

Wow, great thread. With some great links to articles written by ilxors. Somebody upthread (in the very recent past) was possibly looking for this thread, which touches on some of the same things people are talkin about here -

The pace of fashion and style

I think I got made fun of for using Capadonna as a reference point. Or non-reference point.

I do recall the first dances I went to (7th-8th grade, late '70s) had DJs playing all sorts of music that would today be considered undanceable. I remember the Who's "Who Are You" being blared on a dance floor. Pretty much anything that was a hit single was game. A distinct culture of dance music didn't seem to catch on until the '80s unless you were in a major city with real nightclubs. Or maybe it had already happened but hadn't reached the middle-school dance circuit yet so I was unaware it was happening.

Almost every dance I went to when I was 13 featured the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack as its mainstay, until it was displaced by Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall".

related matters:
http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/everything-popular-is-wrong-making-it-in-electronic-music-despite-democratization/

blueski - That's a GREAT piece there. Thanks!

Pretty much anything that was a hit single was game.

I'd say that sums it up very well. People dance to hits, whatever they are. I'm not a wedding DJ--I've got friends who do that--but I'm pretty sure that if you played two songs back-to-back, the first one the most perfect dance song ever written that wasn't a hit and that nobody knew, followed by a big hit that was not what you'd normally think of as dance music ("Roundabout" in 1972, something else today), it's the second one that fills up the floor. That seems obvious to me.

See, I think "Roundabout" is really danceable. "Who Are You," too.

I love "Roundabout," so I agree with you...but obviously it's not what you'd call conventional dance music, and most people would find the idea of dancing to "Roundabout" funny. I think what I'm saying is that between rhythm-in-the-abstract and emotional-attachment-to-a-song as things that might motivate someone to dance, I believe the second factor is more powerful.

The book is not a lament for a loss of quality music – it's not like the well-springs of talent have dried up or anything – but it registers alarm about the disappearance of a certain quality in music: the "never heard this before" sensation of ecstatic disorientation caused by music that seems to come out of nowhere and point to a bright, or at least strange, future.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/02/total-recall-retromania-all-rage

will we hear anything that defines the epoch? Or will we just find a clutter of reproduction antique sounds and heritage styles?

well the obvious answer is duh, lady gaga. and a whole load of other shite that no one will think is good but WILL define this era quite neatly from the current pop charts. so yes, like it or not, we do still have music that defines this era. its pop retooling 90s dance cheese.

lady gaga isn't going to define this era for me. plus you could argue that she's simply this era's answer to madonna or grace jones.

sure. you could argue that. shes a composite. but her records are very much of this era, in terms of the sonics and production etc.

Uh, Madonna's kind of on a different planet to Grace Jones, in cultural significance terms

Yeah because Madonna and Grace Jones didn't define their era at all.

will we hear anything that defines the epoch? Or will we just find a clutter of reproduction antique sounds and heritage styles?

Autotune durr.

To be "this era's answer to Madonna" is to be quite something, whether you approve or not

Autotune is to this era as slap-bass and sax solos were to the mid '80s, tis true.

Autotune far more prevalent though, I think

I feel like pop has kind of already made his thesis redundant. Give or take an Adele here or there, 2011 (and 2010) pop is nothing if not self-consciously modern, regardless of where its composite pieces come from.

Like, he started thinking about it three or four years ago and while he was writing the book everything changed.

Isn't "defining an epoch" through pop music - as a manageable and even inevitable cultural/critical exercise - as much a relic of the 60s/70s glory years as anything else, and thus the continued desire on the part of S Reynolds (and many others) to continually return to this mode of non-niche, Ed Sullivan, Top of the Pops imagined community itself a hopelessly retro way of thinking about the world?

yeah in some ways i think hes otm

in terms of underground/hipster music

kinda

but a look at the pop charts and while yeah you do have the duffys and adeles (though adele doesnt really sound retro per se, she just symbolises old fashioned music values) the bulk of it is horrendously ultra modern, same as the 80s

for all the retro soul groups, you also had a lot of ultra modern artists dominating, and technology was ruling over all

gagas records, like them or not, could not have been made in any other era, same for the black eyed peas, some of that is just that the modern sheen and post-mp3 production prferences renders them modern whether the actual content of the music is or not, but usher, ne yo, guetta, all this stuff can be traced back to the 90s in some ways, but the end result is definitely, very very of the time. people like retro music but the masses will almost always buy music that sounds of its time more than anything else imo.

xposts
To be "this era's answer to Madonna" is to be quite something, whether you approve or not

― Tom D has taken many months to run this thread to ground (Tom D.), Thursday, 2 June 2011 12:49 (35 seconds ago) Bookmark

Sure, but the question is - is it new and original enough to evade the "retro" tag? I'm not sure about this really. First, Gaga doesn't really sound like Madonna/Jones, but she does fill the requisite pocket or category left behind by those artists.

I don't know if Reynolds touches on this, but music can work a lot like Darwinian evolutionary categories - there are pockets that will always need to be filled.

A few years ago I remember a bloke in his early thirties bemoaning emo culture, "what is this music? why are they all so depressed?" etc. I pointed out that every generation of disillusioned middle-class teens needs an angsty rock act or scene to align itself. "It was the Smiths when I was at school", he said. And grunge for me.

the masses will almost always buy music that sounds of its time more than anything else imo.

The ol' masses are more complex than that I think

I feel like pop has kind of already made his thesis redundant. Give or take an Adele here or there, 2011 (and 2010) pop is nothing if not self-consciously modern, regardless of where its composite pieces come from.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 2 June 2011 12:51 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Like, he started thinking about it three or four years ago and while he was writing the book everything changed.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 2 June 2011 12:52 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yep - definitely feeling that pop has taken a laxative lately and managed to move on significantly from revisionism in this decade.

Thesedays, the sixties is "history", the seventies are "retro", the eighties "old", and from the nineties up to now, you only get a sense that it's not today from the technology involved.

So, imagine that 90% of things from the last 20 years can avoid looking dated, it's not that we're looking at the past, it's more that the 'past' still looks like the present.

compare that to 1975, say, where stuff from the sixties was still around but old-fashioned, and the 50s looked like another era.

It's all subjective of course. I'm sure a twenty year old would view Blur/Oasis in the same way as I might Echo & the Bunnymen or XTC or someone.

Yeah, but how the view for someone that liked The Faces, looking at The Ink Spots?

(ref: 1975 looking back at 1951, as opposed to 2011 lba 1990 or 2000 lba 1981)

(actually, strike the Ink Spots, I'm way off: Make that Les Paul & Mary Ford instead)

old hip hop looks ancient now compared to modern stuff (not talking about indie stuff obv)

britpop era doesnt look as diff if you listen to that vs current arctic monkeys or kaisers etc

the prob with rock is that you have artists dipping into all its eras all the time and simultaneously so its harder for it to be moving forward and sound diff how the 70s bands sounded so diff to the 50s artists

heard him on Radio 4 this morning

he sounds like a bit of a divot

Everybody grows up listening to something, and doesn't really become capable of making much music of their own until they're 16 at least, so a certain degree of retro is obviously inescapable. And Reynolds' own sacred cows of acid house and drum and bass were in many ways rehashes of disco and dancehall themselves. But, not having read the book, I'd assume the thesis is more nuanced than that....

But the process of revivalism, like any communication, is imperfect and filled with noise. You hear something old, and then go looking for more and depending on what comes up in the record store, on youtube, or from your friend that you ask for recommendations, you build up an impression of an aesthetic that isn't necessarily at all related to what was happening at the time - as someone on here once said "your record colleciton is the map, not the territory".

Thus 00s revivalism could perhaps only be held to be different from any other era in that archival technology was better and people had more access to the sounds and scenes of the past, as they really were, than Dylan had to appalachian folk music or whatnot. But this doesn't really hold water either, as most of the prominent 00s revivals didn't really sound that similar to the thing they were reviving - The-Dream doesn't sound very much like trance music; Nu-rave sounds very little like rave and you wouldn't even have struggled to pull an Interpol record out of an early 80s line-up.

I wonder if it's less about what musicians were doing and more about the weirdly narrowed focus of the top 40, since record sales ceased to mean much. The reason the beatles are the second best selling albums artist of the 00s is nothing to do with their relative poplularity compared to Eminem and everything to do with who actually buys albums...

"acid house and drum and bass were in many ways rehashes of disco and dancehall themselves."

not nearly. just a basic listen to these genres will tell you that.

So you've not noticed any dancehall samples in early d&b or any similarities between the basslines and 80s digi-dub? And you wouldn't recognise that Ron Hardy would have played First Choice records next to DJ Pierre? That's an interesting take...

My point is that all "future music" inevitably starts somewhere and then evolves and it's the evolution that's the interesting bit.

of course i have but if i was at a dancehall club and some jungle came on a lot of people may hate it (and vice versa), because of the great (and clear) difference in the genres. but anyway, back to retromania.

I thought nabisco's point about how electroclash seemed retro at the time but now sounds very very of it's own time was a good one and probably applies here

Its own - apostrophe use is the fault of phone

sign of the times

Wow, SR evens gets his own front-page BBC panel (it's #2 on the domestic homepage; sorry international users) -

http://www.bbc.co.uk

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9501000/9501996.stm

the power of faber PR

kudos to grimey though

"The quality fiction bestsellers of the 60s – zeitgeisty novels by JD Salinger, Philip Roth et al – remain a presence in our culture but did not trouble any noughties bestseller charts. Equally, there are no modern directors copping licks from Dr's Strangelove and Zhivago, nor authors styling novels after Portnoy's Complaint. But there are still bands ripping off the Beatles."

Lololol so rong.

when is this out btw? I checked online and it seemed to say it was already out, but when I preordered on Amazon, they wouldn't even give me an ETA.

Anyway, novels don't get remasters, deluxe editions etc. It's not really a fair comparison

Music used to be exciting because so much was fresh and new. No more. There are no great new riffs - just forgettable ones - no exciting new sounds. No original new melodies. No exciting new identities. just rehashes of old ones. The X Factor eneration has taken over. Frightening thought - has everything that can be done, now been done?

Alan Merricks, Oxted England

The X Factor enervation.

The difference is that music is an unavoidable thing. It's harder to achieve mass-nostalgia among book readers because music is something we're exposed to from a young age, whereas book reading is subjective and will only be relevant to those who've read a book. Comparing Dr Zhivago to, say, disco, just doesn't make sense.

Disco Zhivago

Disco Zhivago is now the name of my band. Thank you!

np

A bit Gogol Bordello tho, unfortunately

nooh, it's not.

Anyway, novels don't get remasters, deluxe editions

They get the equivalent though. By the 1980s the multiple forwards, notes and appendices of The Naked Lunch took up more space than the text itself. Also see the number of different translations of Proust you can get, not to mention the publication of the original manuscripts of things like The Wasteland. And that's before hardcover, collectible reprints, books being made into graphic novels etc etc. Literature is just as bad for raking over the coals of its canon as rock music.

Anyway, novels don't get remasters, deluxe editions etc. It's not really a fair comparison

Agreed the analogy doesn't work (possibly because literature more comfortable with its own past, not so attached to a ideal of permanent novelty as pop/rock, & hence less riven by contradictions when drawing on its past), but I'd say new editions, new translations (Zhivago last year), luxury editions, fresh covers (especially by name artists/designers) occupy the same space - & the closest analogy probably that funny period when HarperCollins added talking points, essays & author interviews to paperbacks of their book-group friendly fiction titles. (do they still do this?)

xp but i'm posting it anyway

I understand what you're saying but there's such a big market for stuff that plays hard and fast with what you're saying.

The current trend for books like Pride, Prejudice and Zombies for example.

that funny period when HarperCollins added talking points, essays & author interviews to paperbacks of their book-group friendly fiction titles. (do they still do this?)

This was so lame. Haven't seen one in a while though

Is "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies" retro though? I'm not sure it could be classified as such. Also, republishing of old books isn't really retro either, or at least it doesn't have the collective nostalgic impact that say the Beatles Anthology box sets had in the mid-90s.

for example, this 'revised critical edition with a new translation' is the same as a remaster no?
http://www.amazon.com/Diary-Anne-Frank-Revised-Critical/dp/0385508476
i mean.. there's no difference surely?

I guess... feels like there is one though

From the BBC piece:

"Astral Weeks is one of the masterpieces of rock. Lots of people would almost see it as a sacred work. But he did it again in perfect sequence. So there's this terrible version called Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, which is just really tawdry."

And this "whole album" phenomenon is a huge trend, with many older bands reforming and re-recording.

"Having said that, I now live in LA, and if he had done it while I was there I might very well have gone, because it's Van Morrison."

I wonder what Simon has to say about all the post-punk bands playing early classics in their entirety. He was too young himself to see that material live the first time around. I personally am glad I got to see Mission of Burma play Vs., for example.

I love the first comment:

Yeah, and our local orchestra plays Beethoven every year, can you figure it? Maybe some stuff is worth hearing again.
Joe, Birmingham, UK

I say it's about fucking time some music of my own generation is considered significant enough to revisit. I don't know if I'll agree with Retromania, but I look forward to it, and am sure it'll be a good read. It's not out until July 19, at least in the U.S.

Reynolds in the Guardian: "What is different about the contemporary retromania is the aspect of total recall, instant recall, and exact recall that the internet makes possible."

Yes. Wait. I wrote a lengthy cover feature on this subject in the LAWeekly on this in 2003. Shit, Simon's catching up!

And my bit was really just an expansion on something Julian Cope had written, which I found totally compelling as a defense of lifting from the past:

"In those bad old days, it used to be that certain of the more eclectic pop groups had such a wide range of styles that once in a while a song might be released that the public definitely needed more of. But the originators were just so totally on one that it surely weren’t gonna be them who provided it... Take the Zombies’ 1964 epic 'She’s Not There,' which the band themselves never even came close to revisiting but whose bass parts, drum parts, keyboard stylings and minor-key melodrama was lifted with extraordinary vision and percipient thoroughness by the Doors for a magnificent (and genuinely exploratory) six-album career of sub-Nietzschean post-Jungian pub-banter."

Simon is one of my closest friends, and I spent a year of my life working on 'Rip it Up and Start Again' as his assistant in 2002-2003, so maybe I'm slightly biased here. But it's strange to me that so many people (on this thread, and elsewhere) have formed strong opinions on 'Retromania' without reading it. It's not even out in the US yet.

how was working in Rip It Up Geeta?! hugely, HUGELY influential book in my neck of the woods (Manchester UK). can't be overestimated how influential in fact; i musta had fifty conversations about it with different kids. i mailed SR in '06 to tell him of all the flyers and posters for clubs here that were using the jacket's yellow and pink colours in their designs. still one of my fave books of all time.

it looks.. thick this Retromania book. a photo of it in MOJO makes it look easily twice the size of a regular book.

have no opinions regarding retromania, the book. i'm responding here only to the reynolds' guardian promo/article, with its general tone of alarm at, "mounting evidence to indicate an unhealthy fixation on the bygone."

i'm bothered by the tone, the overstated insistence that this is QUITE NEW and QUITE BAD. i'm bothered by the way the case is built, simple things like reynolds' failure to make the connection between the beatles' love and beatlemania, or his avoidance of the fundamental differences in the way we use/consume pop music in our daily lives when compared, say, to films and books. few people will watch a movie or read a novel more than a handful of times, but many (most?) of us listen to our favorite songs over and over again for years on end, hundreds if not thousands of times during the courses of our lives. and it's absurd to suggest that contemporary writers and directors are categorically less influenced by the past than contemporary musicians. we still see westerns onscreen, still read spy novels that might as well be set in the cold war. the shadow of past greatness looms large in every art form.

There is something peculiar, even eerie, about pop's vulnerability to its own history, the way the past accumulates behind it and hampers it, both as an actual sonic presence (on oldies radio, as reissues, through nostalgia tours and now via YouTube) and as an overpowering influence.

i don't think of this as peculiar, and it's certainly not eerie. artistic modes are a kind of technology, and while technology always pushes forward, it generally retains its best, most useful features. it does not surprise me that certain pop modes prove durable over time. people had hits singing sweet and low long past crooning's heyday. we've been playing simple variations on early rock, blues, funk, soul, gospel, disco and country since these forms were invented. it's sort of like how people continue to live in houses and wear shoes: these are technologies with proven utility and lasting appeal.

and god, that paragraph on vintage fads. people have been accessorizing their lives with manual typewriters since the era of manual typewriters. people have been fond of kitchy vintage tinting in photographs since the advent of color. when i was a kid, my family paid 20 bucks or so to dress as "olde west" types and have a sepia tinted photo taken with an ancient box camera. my dad shot lots of 60s and 70s era family photos in "stylish" black & white. it's hard to separate the distinctive, contemporary manifestations of these impulses from those that have been around forever, but i just don't see any effort put forth in that direction here.

this is the kicker:

The book is not a lament for a loss of quality music – it's not like the well-springs of talent have dried up or anything – but it registers alarm about the disappearance of a certain quality in music: the "never heard this before" sensation of ecstatic disorientation caused by music that seems to come out of nowhere and point to a bright, or at least strange, future.

this doesn't really exist, not in any universal sense. the "never heard this before" sensation is entirely personal, having more to do with the listener's frame of reference than the artist's. i hear mind-blowingly innovative music all the fucking time, and i'm hardly young. i don't get hit as hard or as often as i did when i actually was young, but a tiresome familiarity is one of the great burdens of age.

i agree in general that we live in an retro-saturated era. as reynolds quite correctly points out, the past is now immediately available to us in a way that's truly radical. this makes the past seem infinite (as it is) relative to a paltry present and an unknown future. i agree that the internet has worked to turn pop away from the promise of radical futurism towards the comfort of a shared, comprehensible past. i've gnashed my teeth about the same thing on these boards, but that doesn't incline me to buy the half-baked arguments and alarmism trafficked in this piece. what we need are arguments that make the promise of that unwritten future soar, that point us towards the wonders we could be inventing ― not grousing about other people's blinkered retro fetishism.

i am certain that when we listen back to the music of 21st century, we will hear a palette of sounds and styles no less distinctive than that which characterizes any other era.

I would much rather read something looking at the lack of a futurism in the modern day. I just don't think his observations ring true. Perhaps to a casual observer great leaps were made in the past, and now we can struggle to see genres micro-mutate into the next new thing in a differentiable way because we have a greater access to a greater mass of information about stuff.

another thing reynold's piece hints at but doesn't quite grasp is that we really are living through the end of the cycle, the dying days. the 20th century was an uninterrupted series of bombs going off in human culture and society, each more powerful than the last. every certainty attacked, every tradition debased, every possibility explored, every perspective deconstructed, every taboo transgressed. it more than lived up to its billing as "the century of the atom," not least in its comprehensive atomization of everything that preceded it.

towards the end of the 20th century, however, art and culture began to hit the wall wr2 "the shock of the new." a resource that had seemed endlessly renewable up to the 70s suddenly began to run dry. history had ended and nothing was shocking. every radical new invention began to seem like a trivial repurposing of something that had long existed. you can only smash complacency so many times, after all, before smashing itself becomes complacent.

electronic pop and dance music have managed to keep the 20th century flame, that inventor's optimism, burning by the simple application of technology. the technology of sound production and recording have kept pace with the utopian dream, allowing radical invention to flourish in these genres long past the point where the rest of the world grew tired of "radical invention" as an end in itself. i suspect that the important challenge for western arts cultures in the early 21st century will not be the manufacture of brave new worlds. it will, instead, be the task of rebuilding, of sifting through the cratered rubble left behind by the 20th century's endless bombardment to see what's worth keeping and what of lasting value might be made with the debris.

which makes "retromania" a potentially positive symptom...

was kinda with you on that first post, lost u on the 2nd one

dang. shoulda stood pat.

but yeah, that 2nd post was essentially a rebuttal to the first. at that point, i was critiquing my own argument as much as reynolds'. not sure i buy the ultra-conservative "now is a time for rebuilding" schtick myself, but i've been tempted to offer it as an explanation for our current (seeming) fondness for the comforts of the past. as an inveterate sci-fi nerd, my fondest hope is that it's just a lull before the next great leap forward.

towards the end of the 20th century, however, art and culture began to hit the wall wr2 "the shock of the new."

Whoa boy y'all need to read some Frankfurt School. And this book:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kNPQbe-OL._SL500_.jpg

but yeah first post basically OTM.

god, the third paragraph in that 2nd post is SO FUCKING POMPOUS. sounds like winston fucking churchill wrote it. regrets...

not at all familiar with either the frankfurt school or petro. book really worth a read? any other suggestions? i ask cuz "the frankfurt school" seems to include an enormous amount of published work.

Do disagree with this assertion in the article:

"When they look back to the early 21st century, their pics will look like they were taken two or three decades earlier, summoning up a long-lost era they don't have any reason to feel nostalgic about."

Disagree because I do think there's reason to feel nostalgic. Not philosophically, but aesthetically? Definitely.

xpost

I'd read the title article from Aftershocks of the New. I don't agree with its conclusions re: Madonna vs. Kiki de Montparnasse but it's still a gorgeously written reminder that "the shock of the new" is historically contingent.

For the Frankfurt School on these matters, check out several essays by Kracauer in the collection The Mass Ornament, ed. Thomas Y. Levin, esp. "Those Who Wait," "The Group as Bearer of Ideas," The Hotel Lobby," "Cult of Distraction," and "Boredom."

Actually, the title of the Petro essay is "After Shock, Between Boredom and History."

thanks, kevin. often feel lost in discussions of philosophy, political theory, and academic crit, especially when it comes to precedents and names. i just don't have the background.

kiki de who's that again?

She's one of the gals on the cover of Petro's book above. More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_de_Montparnasse

"But it's strange to me that so many people (on this thread, and elsewhere) have formed strong opinions on 'Retromania' without reading it."

dude, i think people are really gonna read it though! no such thing as bad publicity. plus, people are thinking about this stuff a lot. i know i am. it's a good spark for discussion. and yeah disagreement. i'm gonna read it. like i said here before i was thinking about writing something about this kind of thing and then seeing simon's thing at the EMP conference made me think some more. it made my head hurt! but then i read jay's thing and realized i didn't have to write anything, cuz he was kind enough to have already done it.

i still plan to steal some of simon's material though. you know, for other things. once i bastardize it, nobody will know where it came from. hey, he inspires theft. that's a good thing.

kiki de who's that again?

― scott seward, Thursday, June 2, 2011 6:49 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

the shock of the nu

in the times article - paywalled so i cant link to it - he concludes that perhaps its just a western thing, that pop culture/music is dying HERE. but perhaps in india and china and the middle east, that may be where the next big thing will come from, where things WILL move at a faster, fresher pace. im not sure about that, and if it did, then it will have to be in english for people to really latch on to it here (or westerners will copy their innovations and sell it back to us/them). but thats an interesting point. the whole 'dont talk about it til its out thing' idea is a bit weird i think - were discussing other things hes written about it, if not the actual book, so its all related.

I think in some cases it can take political and social upheaval/dissent to spurn people into making truly new and unique music. Otherwise they start getting misty-eyed about the days when there was some common stomping ground or political focus to work against - leading to revisionism of punk, hippie, rave etc...

This is why I find things like South African house music so exciting and vibrant - this is music made by the first generation of musicians after apartheid, and I can see parallels between what's going on there and the post-war '60s movement in the West. It's celebratory, but still has an edginess to it that expresses dissent.

The Western world doesn't seem to have had a unifying banner for young musicians to cluster under, and so they seek out the sounds of previous eras - i.e. Dance music used to have an undercurrent of the illicit - driving to secret locations, avoiding the cops etc. Now dance music has become more acceptable - superclubs, famous DJs, TV ads. Same as punk music and hippie music before.

i feel like adorno will probably be in the index of the actual book

i kind of want to read this but by god that cover is awful. also: i am not convinced reynolds has the chops as a thinker or theorist or whatever to actually do the topic justice. also the guardian article i kind of skimmed and still went 'yes but WHAT ABOUT X' at least three times so i don't know.

Doglatin you don't think you might be just a little over-romanticising a lot of things you haven't experienced?

Dance music used to have an undercurrent of the illicit - driving to secret locations, avoiding the cops etc. Now dance music has become more acceptable - superclubs, famous DJs, TV ads.

I'm no expert meself, but you're like 10-15 years out of date there aren't you?

LOL, Matt DC, I had a feeling you'd pop up here, but to answer your question I think.. not really - at the heart of all these movements was a sense of danger and political charge that quickly dissipated with popularity.

It's no coincidence that rock'n'roll came out only a few years after WWII - a celebration of new found freedom and values following that period of austerity and fear. There's no doubt in my mind that the earliest of hippies really did want to bring peace to the world - again, a direct consequence and reaction to Vietnam etc. Punk was a revolt against troubling economic and political times in the UK and US etc...

I really do believe that music doesn't exist in a vacuum - that lyrics and ideas are influenced by the world around the artist. Without major change in the world, it's harder to catalyse similar changes in art and music.

This is why it's the countries going through major changes, for better or worse, that will be producing the most forward-thinking and visceral music. I'm not saying that inert environments are devoid of new ideas, but that they will be the ones prone to recycling ideas from the past when they were going through those changes.

― orchestral pygnoeuvres in zee park (contenderizer), Friday, June 3, 2011 12:32 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

Love this post. can you write the book instead of SR please?

Punk was a revolt against troubling economic and political times in the UK and US etc...

Never bought this one. Anyway, the 80s were more troubling economically and politically IMO.

Also !!!!! at the notion that there isn't any focus for dissent or protest in the UK in 2011.

Paul Nicholas endlessly appearing on Top of the Pops singing "Reggae Like It Used to Be" was more of a wellspring for revolt than the balance of payments deficit

xpost Yes there is, of course there is, which is why UK music has been going great guns this last year or two. Dubstep and Funky were THE soundtracks of the recent protests, for example.

But the evolution of dubstep and funky has nothing to do with recession or public sector cuts! You're just cobbling together bits of musical and social received wisdom with a side order of romanticism. There was a decide between the WWII and rock and roll. The current South African house scene is 20 years after apartheid. You're drawing very very spurious connections between events.

Also you're suggesting that we're having a period of vital 'forward-thinking' music AND a period of slightly aimless comfy nostalgia at the same time, which is probably true but it kind of undermines the rest of your argument.

Paul Nicholas endlessly appearing on Top of the Pops singing "Reggae Like It Used to Be" was more of a wellspring for revolt than the balance of payments deficit

― Tom D has taken many months to run this thread to ground (Tom D.), Friday, 3 June 2011 12:34 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Don't know what this is, but surely you're now referring to the medium, not the reason.

There's so much that can affect music - house prices (if there's no cheap practice space, how do bands get started and how do scenes like Ladbroke Grove and LES flourish?); unemployment (can't get the hours in if you've got a fulltime job, can you?), politics (cos everybody hates the Tories (sic)); new technology (someone gets their hands on a 303 or 808 or autotune and uses it differently from normal = a new sound and a new scene). What I'm saying is that changes and innovations in music don't just HAPPEN - they need to be catalysed by seismic or incremental changes in the general conscious. If everything's running in a comparatively smooth way, music will struggle to move on - it still will move on, but you're not going to get huge game-changers happen for no reason.

xp yeah there's a massive difference between actual protest music and someone spontaneously hooking up some kid's ipod to their system at a demo

surely you're now referring to the medium, not the reason.

Not sure what you mean

Anyway, Tom E OTM here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jun/02/tom-ewing-adele-success

Specifically: Music business stories – like most business stories – are a cocktail of post-facto rationalisation and wishful thinking... A lot of good music gets released all the time: sometimes, some of it gets bought. Beyond these boring facts, the rest is storytelling and hope.

It's obviously OK to discuss a book before reading on it, based on one article, but you have to give SR some leeway in the meantime. No point saying "yes but WHAT ABOUT X" when X (and Y and Z) are in the book.

Anyway, the 80s were more troubling economically and politically IMO.

That's a strange reading of history. The mood in the mid-late 70s was one of unravelling and collapse. The 80s had plenty to enrage the left but not that pervasive, across-the-board gloom.

But the evolution of dubstep and funky has nothing to do with recession or public sector cuts! You're just cobbling together bits of musical and social received wisdom with a side order of romanticism. There was a decide between the WWII and rock and roll. The current South African house scene is 20 years after apartheid. You're drawing very very spurious connections between events.

― Matt DC, Friday, 3 June 2011 12:38 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well, I'd say 5 years technically between end of WWII and the dawn of rock'n'roll. It took years after WWII for countries to recover, so do you not think there's a correlation here?

Apartheid ended 20 years ago - exactly. Those 20 year old producers are the first to have lived outside of this. It represents a new exuberance that would have been repressed were they born before. And it's not as though the troubles aren't still going on, which gives the music a certain roughness that you don't get in other kinds of house.

Have you been to South Africa?

Have been reading this book this morning. It's better than the Guardian precis, but I hafta say, Grimey Si's US exile leads to some rather baffling statements, such as:

"In some ways chavs are Britain's last bastion of futurist taste..."

Well, I'd say 5 years technically between end of WWII and the dawn of rock'n'roll. It took years after WWII for countries to recover, so do you not think there's a correlation here?

Except rock and roll started in the USA and it certainly did not take the US years to recover from WWII, they actually did rather well out of it

Except rock and roll started in the USA and it certainly did not take the US years to recover from WWII, they actually did rather well out of it

Well if they did, that's the catalyst - and once the UK and other countries were ready, they joined in.

Music is a soundtrack to a time and place - reflecting and influencing in equal measure - from Morissey's humdrum towns to George Harrison and Ray Davies' Taxmen to Bob Marley's Exodus to Shut Up And Dance's Ravin I'm Ravin - all these represent social and political change in some way, and all are iconic of their place and time.

sorry, I'm feeling very tetchy and tired today btw because of having to walk my bike all the way home after finding the back wheel missing at 2am following the Ford & Lopatin gig.

You are kinda like that guy who keeps predicting the world's about to end and when it doesn't, just says he got his calculations slightly wrong this time

"Also !!!!! at the notion that there isn't any focus for dissent or protest in the UK in 2011."

there is but there is little/no music reflecting it. def not funky. def not dubstep. grime perhaps. but that was a long time ago.

Not sure I want or have the chops to wade in to this argument, but I did think that SR's recent Wire article was much more coherent and convincing than the Guardian article.

So for those who've read/are reading the book, does Reynolds make a convincing argument that "It's the mania that's new" to quote from Dave Haslam's review?

people running down the street smashing cops in the face with electric typewriters and old yardbirds LPs

the unabomber impulse is strong if slightly half-hearted. won't be long though before every beardo in the land has a humble underwood on their desk and no internet connection. they can talk about secret sources for the best vintage typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.

Ha -- that immediately reminds me of Patrick Farley's "The Guy I Almost Was":

http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

From 1998! About growing up in the seventies, envisioning a retreat to typewriters etc. as time goes on and then...discovering the Internet.

does Reynolds make a convincing argument that "It's the mania that's new" to quote from Dave Haslam's review?

Yes imo. Short answer why: the internet.

OK will tackle when it hits these shores. Thanx!!!

As long as SR can explain to me why my complete remastered collection of every Twilight Zone episode ever produced sits lurking in my hard-drive, unwatched - the very thought of beginning it fills me with anxiety, yet not beginning it at all also fills me with anxiety - then I'll be pleased. No pressure.

Honestly, now that I'm in my 30s there's just not enough time to be retro. Once I dug through crates. Now I bookmark reviews of books about digging through crates and forget I've bookmarked it. Actually maybe I'm in my 60s.

yeah you are a fogey

Just wait'll the reissue of my 2006 bookmarks comes out, it's gonna be a must-read. I'll send you guys a review of it.

i love you, tracer

Ha -- that immediately reminds me of Patrick Farley's "The Guy I Almost Was":

http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

From 1998! About growing up in the seventies, envisioning a retreat to typewriters etc. as time goes on and then...discovering the Internet.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, June 3, 2011 1:09 PM (2 hours ago)

This was so great! I still get that fantasy a couple times a year, "I will forsake...phones. I will wear only...knapsacks."

I'm content with 2011. There's a lot of things IN 2011 that are crap, in the same way that much about life is crap, but it's still life and still 2011 so rah.

200+ houses destroyed by a tornado up the road from me in springfield the other day. i ain't complaining about nothing.

in fact if you ever hear me complain about anything just hit me.

but seriously my allergies are REALLY bad this season. oy, enough already.

if anyone needs anything new in their life, the new album by Rat Catching on the Fedora Corpse label is superb. a one woman show. roland juno-6, jen sx2000, korg monotron, casio vl-1. vinyl only though, i think. very cool.

Rat Catching on the Fedora Corpse label

laughted out loud

roland juno-6, jen sx2000, korg monotron, casio vl-1

did she buy her gear from you?

Vinyl only you say...

"Honestly, now that I'm in my 30s there's just not enough time to be retro. Once I dug through crates. Now I bookmark reviews of books about digging through crates and forget I've bookmarked it. Actually maybe I'm in my 60s."

otm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/daftsod.jpg

why did he name this pop cultures addiction rather than musics addiction? seems like a misnomer considering music is his main focus.

Retromania is the sound of a pop critic’s midlife crisis.

I've started reading this - so far it's more interesting than I expected.

I think it's way more nuanced and varied than any extract or review would suggest. It's more an exploration than a manifesto and the autobiographical elements enrich the ambivalence. This bit in the Telegraph review made me lol:

I found myself reading it in a sushi restaurant, with Japanese food travelling around on a conveyor belt, while digital animations projected onto a wall and the British rapper Tinie Tempah’s number-one hit single Pass Out exploded from hidden speakers in a sonic fizz of bleeping hip hop, electro, drum and bass and dancehall.

Sushi on a conveyor belt? Slow down, spaceman.

Yeah, it's definitely more than a 450-page rant about pop-music-these-days. He gets that out his system in the intro and prologue and then uses that as a diving board to explore the history and documentation of pop culture as a whole in a fairly balanced way.

Saw this is in Waterstone's the other day, reduced already, or do they do that to a lot of new books these days?

I got my copy remarkably cheap from Amazon.

I'll wait till it turns up in FOPP for £3, prob'ly three or four months from now, sorry Simon.

don't think Waterstone's reduces new stuff per se, more knocks a wedge off the RRP because it can

and yeah I don't think I've paid more than a fiver for any of the SR books I own

don't think Waterstone's reduces new stuff per se, more knocks a wedge off the RRP because it can

I suspected that, to make you think you're getting a bargain

how much cheaper? its 9 quid on amazon.

those sushi on conveyor belt places generally have mediocre sushi

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011pph2#synopsis

Really good discussion of this on last night's edition of Night Waves (about 20 mins in). Simon is interviewed but they rope in the sceptics too.

Don't think he was too convincing, but no one was out there to get him or anything.

guys just reminding you amazon is the devil ok carry on

Excellent interview at Thequietus, as usual: http://thequietus.com/articles/06386-simon-reynolds-retromania-interview

Can I just say Thequietus is the one music site I always keep up with aside from ILM?

It's profoundly frustrating and, frankly, delusional of the publisher that in this day and age of instant gratification/digital downloads/etc. that the release of this book is delayed by 6 weeks in the U.S.

pdf/epub?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-retro-rock-20110710,0,3613794.story

Ahistorical bullshit.

Once upon a time, pop's metabolism buzzed with dynamic energy, creating the surging-into-the-future feel of periods such as the psychedelic '60s, the post-punk '70s, the hip-hop '80s and the rave '90s. The 2000s felt different. The sensation of moving forward grew fainter as the decade unfurled.

Oh you mean the psychedelic '60s that were built on the foundation of a folk revival, an interest in indian classical music, music hall, avant garde electronic music from 15 years prior? The hip-hop that was built almost entirely on sampling 20 year old records? The '90s rave music that basically just revived underground club music from the '80s?

yeah, that stuff.

If anything killed pop-music's forward momentum it was the endless fracturing of music into meaningless sub-genres with a built-in expiration date. Which then leads to the tendency to drive one idea into the ground for a couple of years before some writer coins a new genre name and people change the sound up slightly and pretend it's something different.

i find that this essay does not get more interesting every time i read it

That's because you're re-reading it, hence you're guilty of retromania!

Anyone have further information on what the deal is between the UK and US versions of this book are? I am planning on purchasing it and want to know what the best version is and who I can direct my Twitter snark at regarding these differences.

There are no differences other than the cover.

Cool thank you very much for the info!!!

why is the UK cover so FUCKING HORRIFIC.!!?>!???

i like the cover! also i think it kinda links back to the yellow and pink of Rip It Up's cover but maybe that's not the intention.

just finished this. it was a great read, beautifully written, lots to think about, and achingly researched, and if it makes people think about the stasis of pop which i dont think most people would disagree with (though there have been exceptions as this board knows like juke, grime, dubstep etc) then thats great.

but despite the first and last chapters, this was more like an exploration of retro trends and fetishists. i expected it to be more of a larger manifesto about how we have gone wrong and how we can put it right, rather than an examination/exploration of retro culture/nostalgia industries etc over the years, fascinating as all that is/was.

the other thing i found a bit strange was that for all the talk of sci fi and how space programs inspired optimism for the future and sci-fi sonics in music and so on, i thought he missed a bit about not just wanting music to SOUND like the/a future, but for music to aspire for other things to be better, all the old big battles like equality, poverty, peace (dont lol) and so on. ideological optimism for the future (or disatisfaction with the present, but then most music around or at least thats popular isnt really about reflecting much to do with the now either). but i dont think there was much about anything like that. it was largely about the sci-fi dreaming slant. didnt seem much about the diminishing role music plays in a lot of peoples lives either, the way its been relegated to something less significant than it was, which is another factor in why it wont be going at full throttle speed as it once did, or not much mention of it in any case.

^^ this. all of this. I enjoyed the book, but you're raising some absolutely key points which do get hinted at but could've been explored in a little more detail.

I say enjoyed, although admittedly I haven't quite finished it yet. It's a good read and I like the way it certainly isn't all about yelling at clouds.

it was sort of like reading a great degree/masters dissertation

i found it odd he barely mentioned the smaller role music plays in the cultural landscape these days esp when im sure he knows it/cited sci fi writers view of our tech-drowned present, which should have set him off travelling down that path, one where music is everywhere but meaning less - youd think his kids approach to media and the web etc would have made this figure a bit more.

Maybe he didn't want the book to sound so much like his blog.

the diminishing role music plays in a lot of peoples lives either, the way its been relegated to something less significant than it was

this isn't actually true

actually the book sounds very much like his blog, its quite personal at times, with him talking about his babysitter, family and so on

lex isnt it?

actually yes the book does come across at times as him fighting the impulse to go full-curmudgeon and at times i think that is exactly what was needed if he was trying to really do a lester bangs-isn 'make ppl sit up and take notice' type of piece

i think music is as immensely significant to people as it ever was

the kind of people to whom it's not significant are not the kind of people to whom it'd ever have been significant

and "significant" is a gradient anyway

xxpost: lester bangs or allan bloom? some of this sounds like "the closing of the american ear"

lex otm

Isn't it his point that music is significant to fewer people? Or plays a less central role? Rather than it is less significant to 'a person'

But then this runs into the general problem of 'royal we' nonsense

But then I don't understand the desire for music to be 'new' in the first place and find it a peculiarly British thing

Or perhaps more...the desire for some kind of idea of progress, or disappointment at its perceived absence

xxpost
ound it odd he barely mentioned the smaller role music plays in the cultural landscape these days esp when im sure he knows it/cited sci fi writers view of our tech-drowned present, which should have set him off travelling down that path, one where music is everywhere but meaning less - youd think his kids approach to media and the web etc would have made this figure a bit more.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Wednesday, 27 July 2011 11:14 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i think music is as immensely significant to people as it ever was

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 13:55 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

I'd be interested in hearing examples/reasons from both sides of this argument as to why/why not music is as significant to people.

It's certainly not as significant to the people around me as it used to - but that's mostly down to the fact my peers aren't teenagers any more and that I have little to go on as to modern teenagers' investments in listening.

Personally, I listen to music more than ever before and invest a great deal of time in it. But sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get as much out of music as I did out of, say, Parklife which was the first CD album I ever bought. These days I'd say 70% of music I come across gets a cursory 1-3 listens and then gets relegated to sitting around on my hard drive, maybe never to be heard again.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a record that could have the kind of cultural impact today as, e.g. Fear Of A Black Planet, Never Mind The Bollocks, Nevermind (to name three random examples) or any number of so-called "canon" albums. Sure you've got award winners, bestsellers, Coldplays and Adeles - but these aren't having any sort of profound effect on the public conscious at large, they're really just moving units in time for the next gout-du-jour. You've also got a huge amount of Pitchfork-friendly albums of varying quality.

One of the main differences, and this is mentioned by SReynolds, is that today we have access to so much new music, we arguably don't take as much time over a release as we once might. The temptation to skip and shuffle around our HDs and YouTubes is so incredibly strong. So while I was technically listening to less music in the '90s, I was listening to the same albums a lot more deeply.

Find the argument that "there is too much music now therefore we pay less attention to each release" really confusing

I never gave more time to individual releases in the past than I do know.....I missed out on stuff then also.

Main difference is, I hear better music now and play it more often

Also - I was reading an interview with King Creosote the other day where he said:

On one hand a genius from the modern age can come along and make something that sounds as good as Diamond Mine, but in general I find it a real drag and best avoided whenever possible. If technology results in a machine that drops one back into a pre-technological era, than I’m all for it. I’d punch 1974 into the dial and would probably expire in time for the millenium celebrations.

Retromania, as far as I've read, might berate this kind of attitude - but is it necessarily a bad or unhealthy position to hold?

post - seriously? are you saying you listen to the same amount of music now as you did in the pre-MP3 era? And that you honestly listen to it with the same (for want of a better word) care as you did then?

I know I'm much more likely to listen to an album if I buy it on CD than if I were to download it off D3m0noid or whatever. It's just a psychological thing of having bought a product with packaging and a disc I have to put into a machine.

That isn't what i said

what i said was the amount of time i would give to a release (ie before deciding whether to buy it)

very sorry, not sure i understand that either... ?

the smaller role music plays in the cultural landscape these days

Titchy have you, like, looked at the news at all this week?

If i went into a record shop in the past I wouldn't give any single i listened to about as long as i would today off a youtube or mp3

sorry i mean i WOULD give them about the same amount of chance

I listen to each track probably more times since getting an mp3 player also

the smaller role music plays in the cultural landscape these days

Titchy have you, like, looked at the news at all this week?

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 14:50 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Could be argued that the repercussions of Winehouse's death are largely a product of the cult of celebrity than investment in music, but good point all the same.

i get the impression that dog latin is way too invested in his flimsy, simplistic and blinkered argument because it'd make him feel better about the fact that it applis to HIM, individually, but i wish he'd stop speaking on behalf of "us" or "society" or "everyone"

people need to really think before they ever use the first person plural

The mechanics of being able to fit music around your daily routine (especially on the move) are easier and more convenient than they've ever been as well. I'd say the average amount of time people spend listening to music has gone up since the 90s.

That said I remember buying a lot of stuff blind in the mid-90s, stuff I didn't immediately like and because I'd paid £15 of my limited cash for it would play it again and again trying to get into it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Not sure I expend that level of effort any more, but then again that's as much a question of economics as cost - I have more cash now and even without free music a single record would feel like less of an investment. But I hear more good stuff now.

Agree with lex - and I don't want to state my position as either typical or unusual

OMG you have got to be kidding me. I have worked at a computer nearly my entire adult life...started out with a walkman, graduated to Discman, then early internet radio.

I have never been more excited about music than the present. I have waited my whole life to listen to heaps of obscure dance tracks all day!! Albums, schmalbums. I feel as if I am going to pay for this in the afterworld.

Not everyone has a job where they get to have music on in their office, though.

i get the impression that dog latin is way too invested in his flimsy, simplistic and blinkered argument because it'd make him feel better about the fact that it applis to HIM, individually, but i wish he'd stop speaking on behalf of "us" or "society" or "everyone"

people need to really think before they ever use the first person plural

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 14:57 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

That's funny, I don't remember having argued about, for or against anything in this thread? Just commenting.

mdc otm about both being able to listen to music more now and "trying" to get into albums, but i don't feel as though i'm closed off to slow burners or growers these days, they still happen.

when a great album or single hoves into view i get as obsessive about playing it on loop 904387343473 times as i ever did, eg my last.fm stats for beyonce's latest

Mount Cleaners experience is analogous to mine - I also am unable to listen in the office (much)

Even a cursory glance at last.fm shows others have this experience although I forget to turn it on

It's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a record that could have the kind of cultural impact today as, e.g. Fear Of A Black Planet, Never Mind The Bollocks, Nevermind (to name three random examples) or any number of so-called "canon" albums. Sure you've got award winners, bestsellers, Coldplays and Adeles - but these aren't having any sort of profound effect on the public conscious at large, they're really just moving units in time for the next gout-du-jour

looks like an argument to me dog latin, a position you've staked out

i totally understand if you want to distance yourself from it though, it's not a very good one

I do listen to much fewer albums....almost no recent albums although lots of older albums and compilations

Fear Of A Black Planet, Never Mind The Bollocks, Nevermind

prefer music to have no cultural impact

http://www.last.fm/user/lexpretend/library/music/Beyonc%C3%A9/_/countdown

^^cursory listens, not spending as much time on or getting as much out of a recent track as i used to when i was a teenager

oh wait

I'm 36 and have spent more money on music in the last two years than ever, and also spent less money, thanks to mp3's and downloads, thanks to which I think I'm a better critic: it's so much easier to be discerning when I'm continually immersed in the past and present of music.

also i can't play it right now cuz i'm in an office but rest assured it's playing over and over in my head

me and my BOOF and my BOOF BOOF RIDIN
all up in that BLACK with his CHICK right BESIDE HIM

Looking at my last.fm shows much in the way of multiple plays of new (and new to me) music though most of my plays aren't scrobbled

Last.fm stats of yourself (and others) could 'prove' this argument in any direction depending on who you are - but my own stats show a high degree of multiple plays of (mainly) new (and new to me) music (when i remember to actually turn it on anyway)

meant to only have the second line there not the first

I'm 36 and have spent more money on music in the last two years than ever, and also spent less money, thanks to mp3's and downloads, thanks to which I think I'm a better critic: it's so much easier to be discerning when I'm continually immersed in the past and present of music.

Interesting take -- at 40, I'm...similar, but not exactly in the same boat. In essence my music purchasing goes three ways at this point:

1) The very occasional online purchase, often motivated by someone getting me a gift card for iTunes or the like.
2) Scrounging through the CD dollar bins at Amoeba, which increasingly turn up all sorts of old *and* new releases all over the place (along with parallel dollar or even one cent purchasing via Amazon Marketplace)
3) Purchases towards the kind of microlabels that Simon talks about in the book, though this has been very scattershot this year due to my moving expenses and other factors.

All this is of course complemented by the wide range of promo material I have access to due to being a writer, for which I'm grateful. Overall I'd say my actual purchasing is certainly less than it was but the sheer *amount* of music I deal with is vast.

prefer music to have no cultural impact

Weird thing to say. Take it or leave it, fine, but to actively prefer no wider cultural ripples at all?

In general, the question "is music more or less than or about as important as it was before" is really a question about how we as a culture portray the importance of music in the stories we tell ourselves about the world, and has little or anything to do with actual people actually experiencing music.

For a long time music derived a good deal of its perceived importance from the fact that it was a convenient stand-in for youth culture generally. Explaining what bands young people were into was a shorthand for explaining the many and varying codes, allegiances, alliances, habits, languages and lies of young people, many of which observers were not in a position to identify let alone understand.

Now that more parts of youth culture are reported on and taken seriously, this microcosm approach to the kids becomes less necessary - girls screaming when they see the beatles isn't the only truth of girls we're in a position to tell, let alone the only truth worth telling.

prefer music to have no cultural impact

Weird thing to say. Take it or leave it, fine, but to actively prefer no wider cultural ripples at all?

― Strictly vote-splitting (DL), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 2:20 PM

was kind of referring to the albums Dog Latin mentioned, none of which I could ever imagine listening to...but....in general actually kind of yes i do prefer (I don't have a valid explanation, it just is)

I still buy CDs, but to me it is like buying a book on a topic, a hard copy of something for archival purposes. I don't hate them, it's just that the cult of the CD kind of bothers me. I like the aesthetics of shuffle play, it isn't new at all, it takes me back to the days when I got most of my music from the radio.

I'm not sure there's such thing as music with no cultural impact, even the most obscure music has some kind of cumulative impact.

80 years ago the arrival of the object (canned music) meant we were going to value music less and now the departure of the object means we are going to value music less.

I'm not sure there's such thing as music with no cultural impact, even the most obscure music has some kind of cumulative impact.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 2:41 PM

What I mean is I don't understand the desire for music to mean something (more) or have some kind of (ok, if you like, larger) cultural impact

xxxposts

It's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a record that could have the kind of cultural impact today as, e.g. Fear Of A Black Planet, Never Mind The Bollocks, Nevermind (to name three random examples) or any number of so-called "canon" albums. Sure you've got award winners, bestsellers, Coldplays and Adeles - but these aren't having any sort of profound effect on the public conscious at large, they're really just moving units in time for the next gout-du-jour

looks like an argument to me dog latin, a position you've staked out

i totally understand if you want to distance yourself from it though, it's not a very good one

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 14:04 (8 minutes ago)

Again, examples. I'm happy to change my mind about this one, but tell me - exactly what is coming out right now that is likely to have the same dramatic and cross-cultural impact as such (admittedly plucked from the air) examples above? I'm not saying these albums are better or more worthy than what is coming out today - there's loads of great music coming out that thrashes the shit out of these records (I don't really care that much for any of them, save maybe Nevermind but that's irrelevant).
Take NMTB - that's a record that's seen as a cultural, not to mention historically significant masthead. Replace all the words on the front cover with symbols and I believe a significant number of people would still recognise it. Same with the "swimming baby" on Nevermind. The Grundy interview gets parodied in comedy shows - NMTB even has a panel show named after it. 30+ years down the line, it's not so much an album any more as a meme or icon that's recognised even by those who haven't heard a note from the Sex Pistols.
I'm not saying that this kind of thing is impossible these days, but it seems less likely now that certain values like music tribalism are diminishing among fans. At the same time, there's much more out there for people to discover. So rather than all the kids at school rushing out to buy, say, the same Smiths* album and then pouring over it together the next day, it's more likely they'll be carving out individual, possibly more diverse, niches for themselves via the internet - downloading up to twelve albums in a week, surfing through YouTube vids etc. So you're simply not going to get this kind of dramatic hivemindy fanaticism as you once might.
Perhaps it's fairer to say that people aren't any more or less invested in music than they once were - they just treat it differently. As Matt DC said - if you download an album off a P2P and it's not what you'd hoped, you're less likely to give it as much time as if you'd taken a chance on a CD in a shop. We now have this wide musical tapas to choose from, so if you don't like boiled beef and carrots, you can pick and choose.

*I'm using lex-bait examples on purpose here btw.

What 'cult of the CD'? I'm not sure such a thing exists, does it?

Prefer records to have no covers couldn't give a shit about cover art and CDs are vile

FWIW - My listening is restricted by time these days more than anything else. My office is music-free, so I get 30 minutes in the morning, maybe a few at lunch and 30 minutes back. Then I'm kind of lucky if I get a minute to listen to music at home. I'm actually surprised I get to listen to anything at all.

All the things Dog Latin mentioned are gone I'm glad are gone

exactly what is coming out right now that is likely to have the same dramatic and cross-cultural impact as such (admittedly plucked from the air) examples above?

why does this matter?

by the way, one of the irritations provoked by the GaGa hype a couple of months ago was the number of smart critics who praised the album as if it represented a return to the dramatic cross-cultural megasellers of their youth. That era is gone! Move on!

Because it's nice to see Korean prisoners dance to Thriller on YouTube.

I'm happy to change my mind about this one, but tell me - exactly what is coming out right now that is likely to have the same dramatic and cross-cultural impact as such (admittedly plucked from the air) examples above?

Fear of a Black Planet and Nevermind had no no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time. People who cared cared, otherwise these things build over time. The Adele album now is a bigger deal than either of those were at the time.

30+ years down the line, it's not so much an album any more as a meme or icon that's recognised even by those who haven't heard a note from the Sex Pistols.

Pretty sure a straw poll of the average bus queue would prove this to be false.

I'm not saying that this kind of thing is impossible these days, but it seems less likely now that certain values like music tribalism are diminishing among fans.

On what basis? Most listeners weren't particularly tribalistic even in the 80s and 90s.

So rather than all the kids at school rushing out to buy, say, the same Smiths* album and then pouring over it together the next day

This never happened.

it's more likely they'll be carving out individual, possibly more diverse, niches for themselves via the internet - downloading up to twelve albums in a week, surfing through YouTube vids etc. So you're simply not going to get this kind of dramatic hivemindy fanaticism as you once might.

Because it never existed in the first place.

Fear of a Black Planet and Nevermind had no no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time.

Sorry Matt, but that's nonsense.

What I mean is, I want good music and a broader variety of music to be available to more people, not just people with $200 a month to blow on CDs.

I am not sure what tribalism is, it seems like a lot of people I have known for a long time consume along the same lines they did twenty or thirty years ago. Which is good or really, really bad, depending on how open-minded they were to begin with.

Nevermind had no no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time

i was about 9/10 when this came out and i remember lots of people talking about it at that point, i think nevermind prob had a pretty huge cultural impact. smells like teen spirit was huge.

not read simon's book but i largely agree with the thesis, especially as regards modern pop, the stuff in the charts currently is only "new" in the sense that the idea of being able to forcibly meld so many pre-existing genres together in one song is quite "new".

Fear of a Black Planet and Nevermind had no no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time. People who cared cared, otherwise these things build over time. The Adele album now is a bigger deal than either of those were at the time.

and Paula Abdul, Bryan Adams, and MC Hammer were bigger than all of them put together.

post - you are a strange fellow, but power to you, and I can imagine more and more people agreeing with you. Unless there's some alternate technological shift in the future, I can imagine generations growing up to think of cover art as a bizarre antiquated concept.

I was so excited about an album I heard the other day, I wanted to give a copy to everyone I knew. A few years ago I'd have maybe burnt or taped it and given it to friends or work colleagues, but this time I though 'no - that's a weird thing to do when they could easily go on Spotify and listen to it that way'. I don't make mix CDs for people either - once a prime bonding method for me at aleast.

It's not entirely nonsense, I'm bluntening the argument a bit but Doglatin is talking about these records as if they immediately attained the sort of canonical significance we can see at a distance of 20-odd years, and wondering why he can't see that in the albums of today.

I'm happy to change my mind about this one, but tell me - exactly what is coming out right now that is likely to have the same dramatic and cross-cultural impact as such (admittedly plucked from the air) examples above?

Fear of a Black Planet and Nevermind had no no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time. People who cared cared, otherwise these things build over time. The Adele album now is a bigger deal than either of those were at the time.

A bigger seller maybe - refuse to believe people Adele's record will go on to inspire as much as those two other albums, but then this is all relative as ever.

I don't know – I still burn CD's for people's birthdays! I'm also posting stuff on Dropbox.

Nevermind did immediately - at least within a year if not the day of release - attain canonical significance. It changed alternative/underground rock's sense of itself forever, swept away the 80s model of hard rock, opened doors for dozens of other bands, and sold millions and millions of albums. And when Black Planet came out Public Enemy were (along with Ice Cube) the most controversial, exciting and widely discussed band in the most controversial, exciting and widely discussed genre of the day. I suppose we could get into definitions of "cross-cultural impact" but neither of these were just normal good records well-liked by their fans.

So you're simply not going to get this kind of dramatic hivemindy fanaticism as you once might.

lol someone obviously not familiar with insane internet stan culture

swept away the 80s model of hard rock

In the light of history it seems to have encouraged a dual repurposement of it (one part decided to get tougher/grungier/more 'industrial', the other part just said 'fuck it' and moved to Nashville).

On what basis? Most listeners weren't particularly tribalistic even in the 80s and 90s.

You went to school then right? Did you never encounter dichotomies between fans of various music? Maybe it was just the schools in my area, but I remember VERY strong (and rather childish) tribal alignments that could lead to serious social repercussions if crossed. If anything this seemed even stronger in the eighties - punks would avoid metal, Smiths fans were famous for their dedication and seen as a tribe in their own right. I've definitely noticed a shift in the last 10-15 years where, say, rock kids wouldn't have any problems delving into electro or drum'n'bass or dubstep or hip hop.

refuse to believe people Adele's record will go on to inspire as much as those two other albums

fyi it's not actually for you to decide, but instead of focusing on adele why not focus on the obvious precursor to her, a canonical album with as much cross-cultural impact as any of the examples you've listed, ie amy winehouse?

isn't the nub of this the idea that technology causes bigger trends or tribal events than music does nowadays? eg for instance, was the advent of spotify a bigger musical event than any lp release?

i'm not saying it definitively was, but i think the idea that technology now drives all the big (and less big) "buzzes" where once music was people's window into the world, is probably worth exploring.

i don't think this devalues music at all though, it'd be silly to draw that conclusion. it's just a matter of what things become cultural trends...i think tech and the internet drives everything, in a way more splintered way though, naturally.

nb i was 9/10 when nevermind came out and heavily into the charts starting from 1991 but i somehow completely missed "smells like teen spirit", the first nirvana song i heard was the following year, and i had no idea when SLTS sounded like until the late 90s

it was shit

Most listeners weren't particularly tribalistic even in the 80s and 90s.

A numerical majority of record-buyers, no, but people who were passionate about music, undoubtedly.

post - you are a strange fellow, but power to you, and I can imagine more and more people agreeing with you. Unless there's some alternate technological shift in the future, I can imagine generations growing up to think of cover art as a bizarre antiquated concept.

When vinyl first appeared there were only cardboard or paper sleeves and people made a fuss about 'canned music' and how it was being 'reduced to an object'.

i went to school in the 90s. kids into brit pop HATED what i was into - r&b and hip hop - with a passion and condecension. people into hip hop didnt hate rock but didnt really like it much either. i remember one kid who was really into prince as i was but then britpop came along and he totally ditched all of that stuff for oasis lol.

I've definitely noticed a shift in the last 10-15 years where, say, rock kids wouldn't have any problems delving into electro or drum'n'bass or dubstep or hip hop.

Shouldn't you applaud this?

So its kind of (and this is problem with SR also) don't make mistake of thinking the past is 'how it always was'

"Shouldn't you applaud this?"

no

So you're simply not going to get this kind of dramatic hivemindy fanaticism as you once might.

lol someone obviously not familiar with insane internet stan culture

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 16:11 (45 seconds ago) Bookmark

Keyword here is: internet. Of course you're going to find kindred spirits on the internet.

Maybe it was just the schools in my area, but I remember VERY strong (and rather childish) tribal alignments that could lead to serious social repercussions if crossed.

thing is beneath that layer of super-dedicated types you have a whole bunch, indeed "most listeners", who like and purchase music but aren't actually that fussed about dedicating themselves to a genre or subculture or whatever

its very hard finding people in the real world into grime

"Shouldn't you applaud this?"

no

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2),

Tribalism has its uses, but not when it turns parochial and snobbish (lol high school)

it took me a while to not hate rock music and the fans

fyi it's not actually for you to decide, but instead of focusing on adele why not focus on the obvious precursor to her, a canonical album with as much cross-cultural impact as any of the examples you've listed, ie amy winehouse?

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 16:13 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Really? Really? I know she's just died and everything, but...

xp SR doesn't make that mistake though. He's talking about a particular period, not the entire history of music.

let's just call each other assholes

i think you are wilfully refusing to see things you don't want to see at this point, dog latin

what cross cultural impact did she have? the reason shes big news is cos shes a celeb draw and sold a lot of records, ie a big (if unlikely) pop star. and she influenced a lot of terrible artists into being (or influenced labels into bringing those artists into being). other than that i dont really see it. great records but shes just a great original, not someone with wider impact.