Yea ok I guess that Victorian schtick was kind of a thing in haight-ashbury also?Very true, but it seemed like a local phenomenon though... Almost as if the old SF Victorian architecture made everyone want to dress up like the gold miners and cowboys who were there a hundred years earlier.
― Reality Check Cashing Services (Elvis Telecom), Friday, April 13, 2012 9:13 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Possibly more directly a fashion begun by the members of the Charlatans?The band that started the local rock scene and also had members who owned antique outlets. From what I've seen of the styles of the time Victoriana was just one of several, Cowboys, Indians, Valentino-esque arabs and various other film stereotypes being among the more dressy-uppy. I think more prevalent was a style they referred to as 'mod' which was a warped take on Carnaby street and tends to be what you see bands like Jefferson Airplane & the Grateful Dead wearing. doesn't seem to come directly from actual mod but took its name from there.
& thinking of mod it has always struck me as deeply strange that a style (or set of them) that was constantly changing and trying to keep itself as cutting edge as possible should become something stereotypically retro
― Stevolende, Sunday, 15 April 2012 19:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
strange that a style (or set of them) that was constantly changing and trying to keep itself as cutting edge as possible should become something stereotypically retro
yeah, but the most self-consciously "up to date" things always date the fastest and usually become what we remember as retro
― BEMORE SUPER FABBY (contenderizer), Sunday, 15 April 2012 19:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
this book is dumb imo
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:18 (5 months ago) Permalink
"I posed the question on I Love Music, the hyper-intelligent discussion board"
vs
hey how about instead you eat my ass you clueless cum bubble
― simon trife (simon_tr), Thursday, September 26, 2002 12:31 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― finally rich, fun-packed, fulfilling (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:23 (5 months ago) Permalink
The library has this book, but I've never gotten around to reading it.
― this will surprise many (Nicole), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:29 (5 months ago) Permalink
feeling nostalgic for the time when i read this book.
― tylerw, Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:31 (5 months ago) Permalink
yeah, this book is really dumb. As usual he is good at writing condensed histories of bands, scenes or whatever but his theorizing wavers between being utter bullshit or else so totally OTM that it amounts to stating the bleeding obvious.
― everything, Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:38 (5 months ago) Permalink
well tbf after twenty pages i decided to sleep instead but
i. the preface's eliza-carthy-vs-joanna-newsom opposition is problematic -- claiming that carthy feels free to make the kind of record she does because she relates to folk as a living tradition whilst 'freak folk' only works on the basis of record collecting is ... problematic? i mean, yes, i like newsom and don't care for carthy but i don't think reynolds genuinely gives a shit about either, and if he did he'd have realised this makes a bad example.
'it's in her blood' is an icky argument for carthy -- like, any agency she might possess is just thrown out already. meanwhile to claim that yr average freak folk band consists of listening to records from the 70s and tries to Do That is ... silly, i know devendra banhart sings like a young marc bolan but the musical DNA of the thing as the whole is far more to do with the living tradition of jam bands obv --
but then this is also to ignore the fact that 70s folk is itself already in a deeply complicated relationship with the past, is basically forced to invent its own past as it modernises
but then you don't even need to go there, just ... does simon reynolds go to a sunburned hand of the man gig or listen to 'have one on me' and think "yes nothing original is taking place here" because at this point i just totally cease to trust his ears
ii. and then having failed to define his case he sets out to investigate it by narrating in the first person some recent experiences of his own in museums and suchlike -- i know the anecdotal recourse to stuff that's already been on the blog or in the paper is nice for composing a book but i think recalling one's own recent experiences is a bad motor for a book proposing to investigate the notion that recall of one's own &/or the culture's recent experiences has become a (cough cough) cultural dominant
iii. there's, like, two index references to jameson, try harder
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 22:20 (5 months ago) Permalink
I thought it was entertaining. Was like reading a 500 page-long old Momus blog post or something (if you're into that kinda thing).
― mr.raffles, Thursday, 3 January 2013 03:08 (5 months ago) Permalink
I'm a hundred pages into it. The beginning is kinda rough, as most of his points are pretty obvious, especially if you've read his blogs or interviews. I'm hoping it will get better and more about specifik artists.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 3 January 2013 11:33 (5 months ago) Permalink
I think general consensus is it's a good read so long as you take the initial premise with a pinch of salt. Luckily most of this is in the beginning and final chapters, so it's easy to do.
― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Thursday, 3 January 2013 12:32 (5 months ago) Permalink
p. 26-31: reynolds points out that the 'i love the __s' documentaries are banal, with wholly cosmetic reference to derrida
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 02:08 (4 months ago) Permalink
p32-3: barry hogan cited as an authority on the economics of rock music
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 02:10 (4 months ago) Permalink
p33-34: "Musician/critic Momus railed against the 'museumification' of pop, comparing it to the way that classical music has a repertory of 'venerated masterpieces' that are endlessly reinterpreted."
...
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 02:12 (4 months ago) Permalink
"Mitchell and Forsyth and Pollard were forthcoming and engaged about all these 'how' aspects of their re-enactment projects. But somehow the 'why' kept eluding us in our conversations. The same thing happened when I checked out art criticism on this subject, which left me with little more than a vague impression that the work was timely and resonant."
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 02:27 (4 months ago) Permalink
"But what's really significant isn't so much the 'total recall' as the instant access that the Web's cultural databases make possible. In the pre-Internet era, there was already way more information and culture than any individual could digest. But most of this culture data and culture matter was stashed out of our everyday reach, in libraries, museums and galleries. Nowadays search engines have obliterated the delays involved in searching through a library's murky, maze-like stacks."
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 02:29 (4 months ago) Permalink
best way to read this is as reynolds trying to externalise his own midlife crisis + read its features on the culture at large, i think -- when you personally stop practising exegesis and just process cultural developments as a series of trends it's easy to imagine that the trends that are going on are uniquely empty of semantic content -- what's funny is how when he actually bestirs himself to *think* about the modes of past-obsessed music (like in the section on nico muhly and ohneotrix point never) it sounds like it is doing something interesting, vital, original
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 13:05 (4 months ago) Permalink
suspicions:
i. the global archive existed in our heads before it was a reality, which is why none of the stuff he isolates is exactly *new*ii. it took a decade or two longer for the situation to become as obvious in pop music (by which i mean 'everything except improv and classical') because it's impossible to make 'historical pop music' in the same way as it is possible to make a 'historical film' or write a 'historical novel' -- so pop music appeared to continue to do 'new things'iii. addiction to the novum, as an aesthetic mode, is as much a symptom of culture under capitalism as dependence on pastiche
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 13:11 (4 months ago) Permalink
Tell me that quote from Momus was laughed at by Reynolds.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 20 January 2013 13:50 (4 months ago) Permalink
no!!
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 14:05 (4 months ago) Permalink
his cultural myopia is astounding : ipod, therefore i am a "pilgrim's progress for the twenty-first century music fanatic"
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 14:56 (4 months ago) Permalink
this two pages after he's ragging on paul morley for sounding too much like a wired writer who refers to steve jobs 'building his brand like michelangelo painted the sistine chapel' ( = from a scaffold, presumably)
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 14:57 (4 months ago) Permalink
whatever.
i'm enjoying this so far. only 'wha?' moment for me was when he lumped 'naturals' in as a retro porn fad.
sometimes tits are just tits, man.
― gnarly_sceptre (+ +), Sunday, 20 January 2013 20:42 (4 months ago) Permalink
thanks for yr contribution to the thread
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 20 January 2013 21:12 (4 months ago) Permalink
feel like this belongs in here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/pop-culture-past-growing-faster-presentnot entirely sure what his point is, though! the 12-year-olds-think-rodriguez-is-bob-dylan comment is pretty lol-some though.
― tylerw, Thursday, 7 February 2013 17:49 (4 months ago) Permalink
this belongs here too, i suppose: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2013-02-06/music/why-we-can-t-leave-the-90s/i dunno, this all ends up depressing me, like i should feel guilty for enjoying reissues of old stuff. why? should i feel guilty about reading henry james? [not to say that's the authors of these pieces' intention, but whenever i read this stuff, that's how i end up feeling. think about my feelings.]
― tylerw, Thursday, 7 February 2013 17:55 (4 months ago) Permalink
Yesterday I read an interesting anecdote about Paul Weller. Apparently an early review accused him of being a "revivalist" because of the clear debt owed to Pete Townshend. He cut it out, stuck it on a piece of cardboard and below it wrote "How can I be a fucking revivalist when I'm only 18?".
This struck me in particular because he was "reviving" a style that was less than 10 years old! I was a child of the 70s and a teenager of the 80s, and in retrospect culture was certainly moving very fast but can you imagine being accused of revising something from 2004 today?
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Thursday, 7 February 2013 18:53 (4 months ago) Permalink
no, in part because we're pretty conscious of what every 2004 artist was reviving themselves
― da croupier, Thursday, 7 February 2013 19:42 (4 months ago) Permalink
the 12-year-olds-think-rodriguez-is-bob-dylan comment is pretty lol-some though.
not really related but it made me think of when Dylan went to china a couple years back and the young folks in the audience were singing along way more to his newer stuff than the old classics. Thought that was pretty cool.
― brimstead, Thursday, 7 February 2013 20:06 (4 months ago) Permalink
i'm guilty of overrating some things because they have a compelling back story or w/e, but ... who cares? back story is part of the fun. i think at this point, that rodriguez album is probably overrated. it's good but not THE MOST AMAZING RECORD YOU NEVER HEARD or anything. but that doesn't mean it's not a fun thing to listen to/think about/etc.
― tylerw, Thursday, 7 February 2013 20:09 (4 months ago) Permalink