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

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