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

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