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

Xpost (seems it's impossible for me not to make vast grammatical errors while bashing away at a phone, fuuuu-)

In fact, to save you the trouble of reading it, that's pretty much the premise of the book in the first place

this is why i have no interest in the book! just a stupid, stupid premise

I think this has more to do with your abhorrence of certain values than any premise, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it and there wouldn't be a book to discuss.

Anyway, enough bickering - what about the topic of reverence? craftmanship? Learning from Past masters? Originality doesn't just drop fully fledged from the womb. The concept of originality, as mentioned in SR's bit about Japanese art and culture, is fairly recent in itself. Even in Britain, early 19th century painters were taught to paint by rote - breaking rules was unheard of. Is it wrong for a band like, say, Yuck to so admire the sound of Dinosaur Jr as to want to recreate it for themselves? What about dance artists like Lone who seems to be obsessed with mimicking early Warp records? Is that wrong? If I were an artist and someone berated me for ripping off e.g. Talking Heads, would I be pissed off, or would I take it as a complement, as having attained the sound of my latter day heroes?

Ah sheeet. Just realised I've left the bloody book lying around somewhere in Shoreditch Town Hall. I was three quarters through and all. Buggeration.

xp lex, I think you're far too dogmatic re: pop's future vs its past to accept any of SR's argument. You simply don't want it to be true, ergo you call it stupid. But it's not like SR spends his time making this shit up - there are issues to be addressed here even if you don't agree with him on what constitutes a problem.

Also, it's a cheap point to say dog latin prefers cliche to "reality". They're all competing narratives.

I think I figured out what bothers me about Reynolds' use of the term "retro."

To me, a movement like Northern Soul is what I would consider retro because of the way that it exclusively mined a single historical moment and spawned a whole nostalgic youth culture tribe. But over the past decade, revivalism has functioned much more like it did at Optimo, in terms of picking and choosing from a grab bag of the past, free from any contextual baggage and cohesive tribe-defining narrative.

Even a band like White Stripes is not quite retro in the same way as say the Jam -- again, the absence of an associated youth culture tribe. Now the artist is free to be nostalgically focus on a particular period, but it's not really required of the audience. And the framing, the imagery, the use of stuff like a Digitech Whammy pedal puts the Stripes' revivalism in a contemporary context that frees the audience from necessarily having to share the artist's obsessions.

I think musicians over the past decade have approached revivalism in a really similar way to what Roxy Music did, but Reynolds is treating it them like they're Sha Na Na.

It seems like a lot of bands today are reviving more obscure, forgotten niche styles - styles that may never have been very popular to begin with. This is less like the old retro bands and more like an act of historical detective work, which is made possible by the vast universe of past music now available to us. Finding something sufficiently obscure and trying to really understand what was unique about it and then bringing it back to life is creating something new, I think.

good point

xxxpost. Right, there are bands taking a "really similar" approach as Roxy Music in the same way that Sha-Na-Ma took a "really similar" approach as Little Anthony and the Imperials. Don't really see the difference.

My two cents is that Reynolds is a great writer about music and I love his stuff. However it seems that the protocols of the publishing industry demand that his little vignettes about the Human League or whoever have to be hung on a grand narrative, which is usually bogus and should be ignored.

And I think the relationship between revivalism and nostalgia is more complex now. An esoteric musical niche that was never popular can still trigger some kind of nostalgia in a person. Just like we can be nostalgic for periods that existed long before we were born. But artists now can kind of find these highly personal realms of nostalgia that are dependent on their unique life experience, and use those to create something new and personal that doesn't necessarily trigger the same nostalgia in the audience.

Whereas I think we've traditionally thought of retro art as being something that taps into a larger shared experience and therefore triggers a collective nostalgia. And that's almost always something that would have to appeal to an older audience who is nostalgic for a particular period of time in their youth. That's quite a different process than somebody in their 20s borrowing stuff that was made 30 years before they were born.

xpost

Right, there are bands taking a "really similar" approach as Roxy Music in the same way that Sha-Na-Ma took a "really similar" approach as Little Anthony and the Imperials. Don't really see the difference.

Well, by similar approach to Roxy Music, I mean creating a hybrid of past styles and contemporary styles without any concern for the purism and authenticity that some revival movements demand. I don't mean that they sound anything like Roxy Music.

I mean, on the one hand you have the 60s folk revival, blues traditionalists, northern soul, Daptone, and on the other hand you have Dylan going electric, Hendrix, Roxy Music, and Panda Bear.

Yeah well some people would point out that Sha-Na-Na only sound superficially like Little Anthony either. I've only ever heard one Panda Bear song and it reminded me strongly of 80s era twee-pop band St Christopher.

Listen folks, the best way to read a Reynolds book is to ignore the introduction and the opening and closing chapters which are supposed to contextualize the whole thing, and read the rest of the chapters in any order you like. He's good on the little details and the overall theme is generally garbage.

Interesting distinction between collective and private (or imagined) nostalgia, wk.

I don't think Reynolds in any of his writing denies that a lot of revivalists (or, let's call some of them quasi-revivalists) bring something new to the table - and he seems to be specifically enamored of people like Panda Bear or Ariel Pink who he sees as making music drawing on the past but which could never have been made in the past. It's more like: he considers that this will be harder and harder to do over time because the number of forgotten moments in history that can be mined and the ways in which

I would say the key difference between Person Pitch and J Lo's "On The Floor" is that while the former is deliberative-imagined (the music is set up to draw attention to the intermittent out-of-time-ness of its vocals) the latter is indifferent-collective (the song straight revives and interpolates "Lambada" which everyone above a certain age will remember, and "twists" the revival only in the sense of depositing it into a contemporary sounding pop song, but is equally happy if you recognise all of this or if you don't).

Which I guess is the same distinction SR is drawing: to him Panda Bear remains post-modernist in a good way (though not as good as full blown modernism was) whereas "On The Floor" would be post-post-modernist, indicative of a culture where quoting from the past is so accepted and routinised that it registers barely if at all.

In this way, SR is able to be inconsistent and judgmental about what kinds of revivalism are good and what kinds are bad (or, at least, more indicative of a depletion of cultural ideas and futurism).

I'm interested in whether he develops the above in the book because I don't know that in his articles he's thought through this disparity (assuming I'm correct in ascribing it to him) enough.

I feel like I disagree with it but I'm not quite sure what my position is yet.

I've only ever heard one Panda Bear song and it reminded me strongly of 80s era twee-pop band St Christopher.

I've never heard of them, but I'm listening now and liking it. thanks. the guitars kind of remind me of the Dovers who coincidentally were sampled on the song Walkabout by Atlas Sound & Panda Bear.

Listen folks, the best way to read a Reynolds book is to ignore the introduction and the opening and closing chapters which are supposed to contextualize the whole thing, and read the rest of the chapters in any order you like. He's good on the little details and the overall theme is generally garbage.

Big truth bomb - there's lots to be enjoyed about this book even if you don't agree with it's premise.

Nads. I really wish I hadn't lost the damn thing.

So should I get the uk version or is the u.s. Ok? I seem to remember ppl upthread saying something was missing from the u.s.?

to him Panda Bear remains post-modernist in a good way (though not as good as full blown modernism was) whereas "On The Floor" would be post-post-modernist, indicative of a culture where quoting from the past is so accepted and routinised that it registers barely if at all.

Part of the appeal of postmodernism is/was that stylistic signifiers are a major part of the content of a given piece of work. If the J. Lo song is just quoting a riff, it doesn't have that in the same way. Postmodernism involves a greater commitment to some kind of style.

I think that's what Tim F was saying. Without those signifiers we get into some kind of post-postmodern "everything old is new again" situation?

"Listen folks, the best way to read a Reynolds book is to ignore the introduction and the opening and closing chapters which are supposed to contextualize the whole thing, and read the rest of the chapters in any order you like. He's good on the little details and the overall theme is generally garbage."

yeah without repeating myself, the opening and closing chapters kinda ruin in fact what is basically like a slightly conflicted ('this shouldnt feel right.... but it does!') love letter to retro scenes. i loved the bits with billy childish and the guy from the crypt label and the cramps. the book in fact made me more in love with crazy retro obsessives. the first and last chapters basically ruin the premise of the book and have little to do with whats in between. he should have just written a book in full favour of retroism and given the first and last chapters to the wire or guardian or something.

whole book is kinda rockist btw. even in spite of the bits on hip hop and dance music. like hes just waiting for rock to get 'futuristic' again, forget the places which are futuristic (limited though they may be).

It's easy to see how someone valuing postmodernism would hear a record like Britney Spears' "Toxic" and hear the signifiers but not hear the commitment they would in, say, Stereolab. So, just drawing a distinction between those two things is not being inconsistent.

"Toxic" may not be so great an example actually.

I think what is inconsistent about the approach is that in a situation where you are saying modernism is better than post-modernism which is better than post-post-modernism, you are ignoring the fact that (what looks to you like) modernism is more likely to emerge from (what looks to you like) post-post-modernism than it is from (what looks to you like) post-modernism*.

i.e. it is precisely the lack of "commitment" in a past-sampling pop song to some vision of the past that can make it more fully "present". Despite the prominence of the sample, "On The Floor" has much more in common with other pop music of 2011 (which admittedly SR considers to be revivalist from top to bottom anyway) than it does with Kaoma.

A better, or easier to read example in retrospect is something like Missy Elliott's "The Rain(Supa Dupa Fly)" - yes, it samples "I Can't Stand The Rain", but the presence of that sample does not make it different in character or resonance to Missy's other hits of that era not based around a prominent sample.

So the problem I have I guess is that this three-tiered hierarchy should really be considered to be more like a loop - distinctions can be drawn, sure, but not across-the-board qualitative distinctions.

* To be more accurate I guess SR seems to go for what you might call meta-post-modernism - music which he considers doesn't so much bring elements of the past to the present (I don't think he's a massive post-95 Stereolab fan, for instance), but rather erm "problematises" the very relationship between past and present - e.g. hauntology, music which seems to want to capture the sepia-toning-and-fading effect of misremembering and nostalgia (Boards of Canada, Ariel Pink, Panda Bear). However, this strikes me as a category within post-modernism rather than apart from it.

The thing is, and I can speak for myself here and my own perceptions over time, I personally felt, quite genuinely, that serious postmodernism in pop music was a type of advance. So, in that sense, I was perhaps seeing it as a modernist-like development. It certainly didn't feel like any less of a modernist-type development than, say, punk or '80s New Pop.

Tim can you break down what ou mean by "advance" in that context? It's not that I disagree, more that I think understanding what we mean when we use such terms in different contexts really gets to the heart of this issue.

Yes, quite simply that when I first heard Stereolab in 1993, it was a moment when I felt that underground rock music had just made a major shift.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/declaration-of-independence.jpg

http://www.amspressinc.com/thumbnails/rae_2_small.jpg

Yes, quite simply that when I first heard Stereolab in 1993, it was a moment when I felt that underground rock music had just made a major shift.

― timellison, Friday, 29 July 2011 03:25 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

To sounding like Neu?

Is there something about Stereolab that would distinguish their brand of postmodernism from prior bands that had heavily referenced the past (Jesus & Mary Chain to name one random example)?

It wasn't just Neu!, it was this crazy confluence of things - Velvet Underground, Young Marble Giants... It was very specific (as opposed to a group like the Jesus and Mary Chain) and, to me, also seemed to poise a challenge for indie rock to take sound - equipment and production - more seriously.

jesus & mary chain strike me as extremely specific

Really? I'm certainly not saying it hadn't happened before. The first Bangles EP is very specific.

what makes a record specific?

yeah, it definitely wasn't just Neu. Krautrock + french pop + John Barry twangy spy guitars + then contemporary shoegaze, all combined into something new. And it was very "post rock" in the sense of embracing disco, easy listening music of the '60s, breathy female vocals, etc. in a way that American bands of the time weren't really doing. I don't really see how JAMC really referenced the past much at all???

but rather erm "problematises" the very relationship between past and present - e.g. hauntology, music which seems to want to capture the sepia-toning-and-fading effect of misremembering and nostalgia (Boards of Canada, Ariel Pink, Panda Bear).

This strikes me as way too much rationalizing of what he likes vs. what he doesn't like. BOC, Ariel Pink, and Panda Bear all plunder the past, but they're great. Other bands are influenced by the past and yet suck. That's the only distinction that matters.

I don't really see how JAMC really referenced the past much at all???

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

I mean, Reynolds argument seems to be that music is on the decline because of too much borrowing from the past. And yeah, he recognizes that there's a big historical precedent for such activity, and yeah, he's complicit in the retromania, and yeah there are contemporary artists who borrow from the past that he likes because they're good, but still, it's a path that's doomed to lead nowhere. I guess it makes sense what people are saying about ignoring his whole ridiculous introduction and conclusion. I'm not sure I could make it that far since I read these articles he's been writing lately and I disagree with basically every sentence in the first and last third of each piece.

you guys are making this book sound fucking terrible

saying jamc doesnt reference the past is wtf. its the beach boys w/ hella guitar distortion + whiney otm

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

re: be my baby beat...

I guess this is similar to my issue with the dubstep stuff where people focus on the rhythm above all else. Sure they used the Be My Baby beat on one song. But everything else about that song and everything else they did sounds totally unmistakably '80s.

multi xposts

sometimes I wonder if half of the people who mention the beach boys have ever actually listened to a beach boys song.

the whole of "Just Like Honey" sounds like Phil Spector via Husker Du, dogg

sometimes I wonder if half of the people who mention the beach boys have ever actually listened to a beach boys song.

― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, July 29, 2011 4:24 AM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have, in fact, listened to many beach boys songs fyi

I guess this is similar to my issue with the dubstep stuff where people focus on the rhythm above all else. Sure they used the Be My Baby beat on one song. But everything else about that song and everything else they did sounds totally unmistakably '80s.

multi xposts

― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, July 29, 2011 4:22 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

isnt the issue more that you seem to just ignore rhythm?

stereolab doesn't sound totally 90s?

But everything else about that song and everything else they did sounds totally unmistakably '80s.

How could I forget this Jesus And Mary Chain classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rZWw9HE7o

A band like the Lyres were more fundementally postmodern than the Jesus and Mary Chain, I would think. "More specific" meaning lots of detail.

What about that song sounds like the Beach Boys besides a simple I IV V progression and a major key melody? There are no vocal harmonies, no intricate arrangements, and the lyrics aren't remotely beach boysesque. I can't hear anything that I would consider to be a signature of the Beach Boys.

stereolab doesn't sound totally 90s?

Maybe I just don't have enough perspective on it yet, but early Stereolab still sounds pretty convincingly '60s french pop + '70s krautrock + '80s shoegaze to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4OJ4EQajk