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

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.