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

But at what point are you just talking about kind of general pop group influences and references? I mean, the Stray Cats were rockabilly influenced. The Smiths, not so much. The Beatles and a million other bands did cod reggae numbers but that's not really the same thing as, say, On-U Sound.

even when you hear the rockabilly or whatevs the imprint of "The Smiths" on top tends to obscure them.

Exactly.

No, I don't know that song - just listening to Tiger Bay without the expanded track listing, though. Was the electronica element on it retro in 1994? (I ask because you'd mentioned house, but I didn't know if that qualified at that time as a retro element.)

There's also a real drama to Saint Etienne's music that is very strong and which I cannot pin to the past. I think it pervades the music and overwhelms its postmodern aspects more than what Laetitia Sadier did in Stereolab.

I don't think there are any Stereolab songs that sound so much like Neu! that they actually could be Neu! songs in a parallel world. Stereolab may be a new kind of paradigm, but not because they don't "transcend" their base material. A band like The Strokes might fit the bill better, in that they have songs that more or less could have come out in 1978.

Obviously all bands "reference" the past in some way, so if retromania is a valid concept it can't just be about referencing the past but the way one does it.

Obviously all bands "reference" the past in some way, so if retromania is a valid concept it can't just be about referencing the past but the way one does it.

yeah, I can't believe that anyone would deny the obvious differences between the bands we're talking about. When Stereolab came up, Tim F immediately said "[shift to] To sounding like Neu?". Which is a pretty common response to Stereolab. I've never heard anyone say "The Smiths? oh, you mean that band that sounds exactly like Gene Vincent?" "Hey mom, you like the Beach Boys? You might also like the Jesus and Mary Chain."

No, I don't know that song - just listening to Tiger Bay without the expanded track listing, though. Was the electronica element on it retro in 1994? (I ask because you'd mentioned house, but I didn't know if that qualified at that time as a retro element.)

No, not at all (though not achingly modernist either, unless doing a handbag house single counts which maybe it does). It's more that doing the "hey let's connect past musical ideas with current ones" seems to be a fairly standard m.o. including in respect of Stereolab (and other bands in the early 90s from Primal Scream to Pulp to Pram to other bands that don't even start with a "p" like Laika).

At any rate I wasn't denying that Stereolab might be different to previous evocations of the past in pop music, I was just saying I don't think they are year zero for post-modernism in music, and it seemed odd that Tim E was saying that they represented a "major shift" in underground rock when the ways they can be distinguished from other bands evoking the past seem pretty specific to them.

No, definitely not year zero - I actually grew up with the '60s revival in the '80s.

I was in the U.S. and can't speak to Pram or Laika. Bands like Jessamine might have been an American equivalent as far as other, perhaps comparable things going on at the time. There was a sense with Stereolab, though, that they were just nailing it, no? That they were really taking it pretty far?

Maybe "major shift" was not the right way to put it. To me, they were something to take seriously and there hadn't been anything that postmodern to take seriously since the '80s.

Yes, I think it's fair to say that no band before stereolab had seemed so consummately post-modern.

At least I can't think of any better candidates off-hand.

I think the thing about Stereolab was not just the wearing of influences on their sleeve but the distancing effect. It seemed like they were *using* their influences in almost a clinical way - like a graphic design element in a collage or something.

yeah, I think the graphic design / collage parallel is otm

Reynolds shows up on comments thread here to defend book's thesis:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/08/what-ive-been-reading-11.html#comments

That was funny. Citing the mash-up phenomenon to refute the premise of Retromania is some serious point-missing. Almost thought that comment was tongue-in-cheek at first.

John Voorheis August 19, 2011 at 9:58 am

I find it hard to take the last item seriously, except maybe for the sort of music that white people in the US listen to. Essentially everywhere else has most assuredly seen new musical forms – and even the US has, if you count Moombahton for the US (Dave Nada did invent it in DC after all.)

Just off the top of my head, in the 2000′s, you have the whole post-UK Garage family explosion – Dubstep, grime, UK Funky, the sort of nodding-to-pop post-Dubstep stuff a la Jamie Woon, James Blake, et al.; you have the Africa-Diaspora-European Techno artist confluence that results in new Kuduro, Coupe Decale and its Parisian variant Logobi, South African House (which is like Dutch house and sped up Kwaito beats with rapping in Xhosa and Zulu over top); Even Dutch House, come to think of it, is really just Bubbling slowed down and tech-house’d out, kind of an Amsterdam equivalent of Texas trill chopped and screwed; And don’t front on the whole 3Ball MTY scene.

ALL of these things are legitmately pop music, just not to, like I said, white folks in the US. Just because WE’VE dropped the ball on cultural output doesn’t mean other people aren’t picking up the slack.

and now he's having a go at Reading.

thats the best piece i think ive read so far in terms of making his argument clear

I agree with the argument that an event like this is "top-down" nostalgia that people maybe didn't even ask for, but I'm not sure that I see it as an example of nostalgia culture being hegemonic.

Waiting until it would take more time to read the thread than to read the book to think about actually reading the book.

simon r & nostalgia make me think of this

Simon Reynolds has an adorable, little-boy-lost smile - and a truly superb penis, long and thin but firm and silky, which I had the pleasure to fellate some time in the early nineties, in the glorious, dying hours of a South London rave.
― Patrici4 Far4, Monday, May 15, 2006 9:41 AM

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thats the best piece i think ive read so far in terms of making his argument clear

― funky house septics (D-40), Wednesday, August 24, 2011 3:03 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Agreed.

If I can be self-serving I would say that the shift in the article to a more reflexive stance vis a vis the media's erm mediating role is basically the point I was trying to make upthread.

This decision is perplexing on a number of levels. First, there's the obvious oddness of interrupting the schedule of live groups in favor of a dead group. Then there's the curious fact that Reading's promoters, aiming to capitalize on 2011's status as the Official Anniversary of Grunge, are showing the footage of the gig on its 19th anniversary, a year ahead of customary schedule. (Nirvana did actually appear at Reading in August 1991 but were still relatively unknown and played midway through the bill.) Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this exercise in time travel, though, is how it isn't really that surprising. It's exactly the sort of thing that you'd kinda expect from a pop culture increasingly characterized by a compulsion to revisit and reconsume its own past.

Also, that the performance is available on DVD anyway.

The retrospection feels rote, the predictable upshot of the way that commemorative cycles have become a structural, in-built component of the media and entertainment industry. This revival is largely top-down, not grass-roots. Everybody benefits: Magazines generate content to fill their pages, record companies can bolster their ailing bottom line by rereleasing archival material (guaranteed profits, since the original recordings were already paid for long ago) in spiffy, bulked-up form, and the commentariat gets something to reassess and pontificate about.

i think this is really the boring (capitalist-materialist) truth of it; and it results not from the threat of "running out of past" but by unprecedentedly cheap access to an inexhaustible mountain of it

The final para reads as uncharacteristically GreilMarcusian for SR!

it's a bit rmde

I thought this article was going to be about Yuck. My main issue with this Nirvana broadcast more than anything else is I never saw the point in going to a festival to watch a big screen. There was always a cinema tent, which I used to avoid on principle. Was this being shown on the main stage in the middle of the day or what? Reading's a bit shit IIRC as you don't get access to the main area out of hours and there's fuck all else to do between 12pm-12am, hence why it's full of kids turning portaloos over and setting fire to things. So if they're broadcasting this show on a smaller stage or out of hours, I don't see the problem.

Reading fest was alright for me, because after the last band I could pop home for sleeping etc.

They're screening it on one of the smallest stages very early on Sunday evening, in a tent where they regularly show films. This is a non-event, it's not like they're sticking it on before the Main Stage headliner.

In that case it's not news. It's not even objectionable. If they were interrupting Sunday's mainstage schedule of bands to project OMG-Nirvana on a mural-sized screen, that might be ridiculous, but yeah I can't see the problem with this. The average age at Reading tends to be around 18 y/o so it's more of a tribute and a chance for kids to experience part of their youth culture's heritage. I can't see the problem, but then I'm at work and couldn't read the entire article. I have been reading Retromania though and it's at its best when it's not trying to make a case for itself.

Huh. In that case it's a really dishonest premise for an article.

Very dishonest it seems. Huge difference between "alternate stage" and a tent that traditionally shows films.

According to this, which I see no reason to disbelieve, it's on after some PJ Harvey shorts and before someone called "Mike Bubbins". They're also screening a Beastie Boys film.

Um, also they don't seem to be showing it at Reading - just Leeds - unless I'm going mad?

Leeds never got to see it first time round.

Yeah, after learning more about when and where it will actually be shown, the whole article just smacks of Reynolds being really opportunistic with a "DO YOU SEE!" momement to promote his book. Which, you know, writers need to do from time to time, but I feel like there are plenty of other, legitimate options to do so without being dishonest.

^^ I agree. Seems like a cheap shot from SR to me.

just noticed upthread I got my AMs and PMs the wrong way round.

i know none of you care, it's just i thought quite hard about getting them round the right way before posting :-\

^^^ Addicted to his own past.

Alternative stage schedule for Sunday
18:25 Nirvana 92 Live At Reading Screening
17:30 Rubberbandits
17:00 Tom Wrigglesworth
16:30 Marlon Davis
15:30 Tim Minchin
15:00 Jarred Christmas
14:30 Steve Hughes
14:00 Mixtape and Disco
13:30 Tom Deacon
13:00 Seann Walsh
12:30 Josh Widdicombe
11:30 Popcorn Comedy

If she said Tim Minchin was a "black hole in history" I wouldn't have a problem tbh.

That article doesn't read like dishonesty to me really, it reads like he didn't bother to do the very basic bit of research necessary to find out what was actually happening.

First, there's the obvious oddness of interrupting the schedule of live groups in favor of a dead group.

This part is what seems dishonest to me, they aren't slapping this up between "live" stage acts or anything of the sort, its a film running in a film tent.

he didn't bother to .. find out what was actually happening.

This. Someone could have told him, but then he'd just have gone oh! and deleted his article and started again...

Granted, he's right about the nineties revival seemingly being done by rote. It's like all the music execs sat down in 2005, and laid out their five year plan to be rolled out in 2010 because "by then the little people will be sick of make up and synth-pop", scrabble about in the backs of their minds and sign a few kids whose cool uncles had decent music collections back in '91 blah blah... Funny how both Yuck and Brother had had previous stabs at the music game as different bands last decade.

the lineup stevie T posted makes it sound like it's the only film showing in that tent.. ? unless i'm missing something

I'm not sure it's that calculated. It's the 20th anniversary so it's inevitable - the 50s revival kicked off in the 70s, the 80s in the 00s, and so on. Turns out nostalgia for past masterpieces doesn't extend to buying shitty homages by Yuck and Brother.

Yeah, that does read more like a "stage", although more like a comedy stage. I was referring to what someone said about it being shown along with PJ Harvey shorts and the Beastie Boys movie.

(xpost)

It's easy to be cynical about retro - especially if you lived through the nineties the first time round and witnessed the eighties revival (a revival as unabashedly explicit as eighties music and fashion itself) happen in front of your very eyes. People born in the late eighties/nineties might argue that there's nothing wrong with this at all - they're just attracted to the sounds and styles of their early childhoods. Maybe this is an innate psychological thing - like the psychedelic imagery of the '60s being filled with rocking horses and candy cane and whatnot - a lot of pop/rock could be seen as a wish to retreat to the womb-like safety of your generation's equivalent of a nursery-room.

eighties revival didn't really start til like '99 though, before that it was all about

http://operatorchan.org/vg/arch/src/vg68560_beastie-boys-sabotage-video-still.jpg

and

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2010/01/05/1262725012-dazed-and-confused3.jpg

xpost I personally find the warm crackle of late-70s disco and early-80s pop incredibly comforting. It's not a fashion thing at all - it's simply the music that filled my environment before I was even conscious of the world around me and has become innately appealing by proxy.

No, I can assure you the 80s revival was in full swing throughout the middle part of the 90s. Local bars in the college town I was in from '94-'98 all had a "flashback" night that was all 80s music and they were all really well attended.

alright

one of the interesting things about the mammoth archive of c20 media available to us now is that parents no longer are stuck with whatever's on TV at the moment. i.e. my son is watching old episodes of sesame street (because i like them) instead of the night garden or teletubbies (which i don't like at all)

speaking of dazed and confused, one of my favorite lines is where they're speculating about the 80s, and how they're sure it'll be cool. "the 60s were so... awesome.. and the 70s, well.. the 70s obviously suck"

xpost it's not as though in the '90s everyone universally just stopped listening to '80s music. it takes a bit more than that to constitute a full-on cultural revival.