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

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.

It certainly was in the 70s - the 50s must have seemed idyllic from the vantage point of 1974. I wonder if one reason people are feeling fond of the 90s now is because it was such a relatively untroubled time to live. That bred shallowness and apathy to be sure but while taking in all the news this summer I've been wistful for a pre-9/11, pre-financial crisis world. Though maybe that only applies to people like me who remember the 90s - possibly the kids are just in it for the tunes.

I find it hard to be too angry about 1991 retro because it was such a great year for music imo - a ton of classic hip hop and dance music, Blue Lines, Foxbase Alpha, Screamadelica, Nevermind, Loveless, Achtung Baby, etc. This is a year when the deluxe reissues are aimed squarely at me.

I'm looking forward to 2017 when the Telegraph will no doubt run an article starting "Is it just me, or are the nineties coming back...?"

xp yeah there's been very little 20-years-since-Blue-Lines-hype but there's an album that could do with a remastered double CD issue.

Grunge Nostalgia you say? Reynolds isn't having any of it:
http://www.slate.com/id/2302202/

Are you being nostalgic for this thread a few hours ago?

eighties revival didn't really start til like '99 though

Wait – then why were compilations like Living in Oblivion already unearthing obscurities in '92 and '92? Why did college stations start hosting "retro lunches" during which deejays played Flock of Seagulls and Peter Godwin? Our college bar hosted "Eighties Nights" in 1996!

Not being sarcastic, by the way – just pointing out that necrophiliacs were having fun with the decade as soon as it ended.

Are you being nostalgic for this thread a few hours ago?

That was the deluxe reissue link.

doh! onset of Alzheimer's.

It certainly was in the 70s - the 50s must have seemed idyllic from the vantage point of 1974. I wonder if one reason people are feeling fond of the 90s now is because it was such a relatively untroubled time to live. That bred shallowness and apathy to be sure but while taking in all the news this summer I've been wistful for a pre-9/11, pre-financial crisis world. Though maybe that only applies to people like me who remember the 90s - possibly the kids are just in it for the tunes.

― Now he's doing horse (DL), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:37 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

Was it really such an untroubled time? The early '90s had its fair share of things to be troubled about, depending on who and where you were in life - AIDS, the Gulf War, the recession and the Major government are just four first-hand things I can remember people worrying about, and I was only 9 when the decade started. Seemed to be a lot more explicit agit-prop in music back then too - RATM, Manics, the Levellers, even Nirvana to an extent, all seemed to be railing against some sort of establishment ethos.

Not being sarcastic, by the way – just pointing out that necrophiliacs were having fun with the decade as soon as it ended

Yeah but that wasn't cool though was it? You know a revival's in full swing when bands can rip off a previous decade without looking cringeworthingly unfashionable in the process.

Well, of course, but I think thats part of the problem with rose-colored nostalgia. The 80s nostalgia always seemed weird to me, celebrating an era of supposed excess, ignoring the decimation of inner cities, crack, etc etc. I mean, there is always this sort of selective memory that kicks in when this kind of cultural nostalgia wave hits shore.

The 80s nostalgia always seemed weird to me, celebrating an era of supposed excess, ignoring the decimation of inner cities, crack, etc etc

you're mixing speculation and fact. I can argue convincingly the fifties, sixties, and seventies celebrated excess in their respective ways.

xxpost To me it was the 1998-2000 period that felt most shallow and apathetic, but then I was living around students with little-to-no interest in politics or current affairs. It's all subjective. This is why I think many people, particularly middle class people, fetishise the era they themselves spent their early childhoods in - they see it as a simpler, more appealing time. Also - the knock on effect of whatever music you listened to as an impressionable teen seeming very vital and meaningful while older, more cynical listeners believe they can see through the veneer.

xxp to jon ^^^there's always some weird blinders on what / who is reviving. i dont think there's a selective memory, really, just that the same ppl who ignored those things in the 80s continue to ignore them now, ppl who were forced to live through it still have nostalgia for the music & style of the time. I mean, air jordans are some of the most popular shoes out right now etc

Well sure, but that has always been part of the marketing hook of 80s nostalgia though, specifically mentioning the "era of excess". My point was really just that this nostalgia is really selective about what it chooses to celebrate and ignore.

(xpost)

Yeah, deej, that's true I suppose.

The key word is 'relatively' here. I get that if you were living in Yugoslavia or Rwanda the 90s were probably not a barrel of laughs but neither have or had much direct impact on British or American pop culture. In the UK, certainly, the 90s feel like a much more benign decade than the 80s and 00s, to say nothing of now.

^^^ which is why anyone saying the nineties were a Holiday From History (or Malkmus' glib remarks in Sunday's NYT) is an imbecile.

I don't think the nineties revival's got much to do with how benign or malign that decade might have been - comparatively or not. My generation was largely responsible for a lot of the music of the eighties revival and I think for the most part they weren't really concerning themselves with the effects of the miners' strikes, apartheid, the Falklands or any number of external issues happening in the world at the time etc, because these didn't play a big part in their childhood consciousness.

xp Of course I meant relative. Even when I was all rave-ahoy I was following Bosnia and Rwanda - Fukuyama was wrong and all that. No time in history is untroubled but in the west after 1992 there was prosperity, an absence of major wars and right-wing govts were either out of power or winding down - escapism was easy. The collapse in agit-pop coincided with this - more a last spasm of 80s dissent than a new kind. Musically 1988-92 feels like an interregnum to me - in terms of how we remember and stereotype the 80s and the 90s it's not quite either.

DL I've been thinking the same thing for years! I took to calling 1990 through about fall 1991 'the nineties before "the nineties"' because it really was.

For me the eighties ran 1983-1992 really.

You need Clinton in the White House for the proper 90s.