Which artists legacies have improved/worsened during the 2010s?

well, it's easier to like Grandma's music than your parents'.

xxp Chuck Berry is a case where I think his being a legit creep may have tarnished his glow somewhat.

also feel like more ppl finally gave credit to marvin berry as the true originator

nu metal still sounds awful to me

I like The Breeders but they were not better than Pixies imo

Bob Dylan still seems like a thing, Hendrix I agree seems
to have lost some of his cultural cachet. I think w/ Elvis and Chuck Berry they are amazing but they’re also a bit too close to oldies music, their innovations and skills are absurd but the genre is one without a home these days. They seem a little quaint to a lot of ppl maybe. I feel like the same fate hasn’t befallen Sinatra, which is weird since those dudes supplanted him as a more modern and dangerous kind of cool.

Huge uptick for Nina Simone this decade

feel like fat jumpsuit Elvis is the enduring image that most people have these days. there are thousands of Elvis impersonators and it seems like they *only* do that version of Elvis

when I was 17 I bought up those megaselling comps of Elvis & The Beatles, plus the classic Floyd CDs...Beatles & Floyd still sound kinda relevant, there's a tie to modern pop music...but Elvis just sounded old. I mean I loved the CD but everything about felt like an antique. at least up to "Burning Love" or so. feel like "Suspicious Minds" is gonna wind up his best known song someday

Sixties girl-group music had a big revival in interest in the mid-2000s (probably spurred by Rhino’s excellent One Kiss Can Lead to Another box set, and a few other things) — seems like this has faded into the background again.

I see the Rhino box is now apparently OOP and sells for mucho dinero online, btw.

The last big national Elvis concern was the #1s set, which sold crazy numbers in 2002

elvis's legacy has to deal with the one-two punch of "vegas elvis" having eclipsed classic cool elvis in the public mind (which is unfair since he was still frequently making excellent music in the 70s -- the first time i heard that huge elvis hits compilation i was blown away when "way down" came on) and the lingering effects of the old "elvis was just a racist who ripped off more deserving artists" take which i still see pop up now and then.

I feel like I’m not encountering Elvis’s songs & indicia in random movies, TV shoes, etc. the way I did in past decades... as if his estate isn’t pimping that stuff the way they used to. Not sure if this “foot off the gas” (if it’s real) reflects a lesser degree of cultural interest in Elvis, or is actually driving it to some degree... may be a chicken-and-egg thing.

Some of this may just reflect the fact that Boomers are aging out of producing “content,” and Gen X / Millennial nostalgia has come to the foreground, due to the ages of the folks making most the movies and series now.

Even when he died, there was a "let me explain who this old dude was and why he mattered" tone to a lot of the coverage that I found astonishing

lester bangs's essay on this subject is kind of this, but also a kind of meta-exploration of what it means to have to "rehabilitate" elvis for those who only remember fat vegas elvis and i'm assuming everyone hear has read that but if not it's well worth reading

I see the Rhino box is now apparently OOP and sells for mucho dinero online, btw.

― stan by me (morrisp)

ftr this was $50 new when it came out and now sells online for $40 plus shipping

essential document imo

The copies I saw were $100+ but maybe I was looking at “New” grade instead of used.

Yeah, I got it when it came out, it’s tremendously great (I own tons more girl-group comps, but I’d recommend that box above all others)

The Killers one has always been very puzzling to me. It’s like the un-rockiest band that rockists clinged to this decade. Also their rhythm section could qualify as one of the least creative ones in rock history.

There's a humongous Elvis section in every single used record store, which really drives home how (A) His longtime, collecting fanbase is dying off or cashing in, and (B) Just how much ELVIS STUFF there is, and how poorly complied it is by RCA. They didn't really start delivering the goods until the CD era.

^ gene vincent and buddy holly also

not the RCA thing but how people expect three figures for original crickets LPs and it's just like no dude the people don't want that anymore

what about local h tho

Some of this may just reflect the fact that Boomers are aging out of producing “content,” and Gen X / Millennial nostalgia has come to the foreground, due to the ages of the folks making most the movies and series now.

― stan by me (morrisp), Thursday, July 11, 2019 12:36 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Elvis' peak influence/audience was basically a few years before boomers, save maybe the absolute oldest ones.

Except this boomer obviously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpb4ZAAP6Z4

I really want to write a book on the strange/ubiquitous space Elvis inhabited in the 1980s if there was enough money in book writing and if I wasn't actively trying to leave the industry all together

Stevie Wonder feels like he's been massively up this decade as well. I mean his reputation was always sky high but his influence is a lot more audible in R&B from this decade than the last.

Watching old episodes of Red Dwarf a few months ago, Lister's character seems obsessed with a pop culture era that feels so distant now it's hardly relevant - old film stars and rock'n'roll icons from the 1950s, but I'm guessing these were all considered fairly credible retro-hipster touchstones for Gen Xers at the time

Watching old episodes of Red Dwarf a few months ago, Lister's character seems obsessed with a pop culture era that feels so distant now it's hardly relevant - old film stars and rock'n'roll icons from the 1950s, but I'm guessing these were all considered fairly credible retro-hipster touchstones for Gen Xers at the time

― frame casual (dog latin)

i took that as part of the joke, kind of a piss-take on the ubiquitous sf notion that people in the distant future are obsessed with the culture of the 20th century

re : Chuck Berry and Elvis, I think the last time they were relevant was Pulp Fiction for the former and Ocean's 11 for the latter... so yeah, a long time ago !

Calvin Harris was a fairly successful but kind of joke figure 10 years ago when he still insisted on singing, now absurdly rich and a much better rep as a producer of more critically approved pop bangers

i took that as part of the joke, kind of a piss-take on the ubiquitous sf notion that people in the distant future are obsessed with the culture of the 20th century

― Un Poco Loco Moco (rushomancy), Thursday, July 11, 2019 9:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

True true, but also I think it was assumed (at the time) that these icons would have some relevance to the target audience watching. If a similar show today started referencing these (actually very famous) touchstones, the joke wouldn't resonate - it would feel quaint rather than funny.

it's almost like science fiction is actually about the present rather than the future or something

A pox upon you ILM, Who's Next is better than I remembered. I now have a bushel of records to visit.

*revisit

Well, yeah

With the '50s, '60s, '70s, it seems to me to be the transformation of living memory into the dead past. I approve, if only because tacky paintings of Jimi in heaven next to the Andrews Sisters appeal more to me than tacky paintings of Jimi in heaven next to Kurt Cobain. (Kurt will get there eventually!)

I really want to write a book on the strange/ubiquitous space Elvis inhabited in the 1980s if there was enough money in book writing and if I wasn't actively trying to leave the industry all together

back when I was in grad school there was a professor from India who was teaching a course on Elvis and he came to all the parties and turned every conversation about movies into a discussion about Elvis movies etc.

nothing is relevant

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, July 10, 2019 5:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Elvis' peak influence/audience was basically a few years before boomers, save maybe the absolute oldest ones.

There's a humongous Elvis section in every single used record store, which really drives home how (A) His longtime, collecting fanbase is dying off or cashing in, and (B) Just how much ELVIS STUFF there is, and how poorly complied it is by RCA. They didn't really start delivering the goods until the CD era.

― frustration and wonky passion (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, July 11, 2019 1:23 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, RCA and/or the Colonel just shat out whatever for a payday. Given how horribly scattered and shoddy his discography was from roughly the mid-'60s through the mid-'80s, it's shocking how respectfully and cohesively his work has been presented since the '90s. Maybe his legacy hasn't improved in the '10s, but the reissue campaign kept it from tanking.

I'll be honest, there's some Elvis stuff I like (I think "That's the Way It Is" is an amazing document) but I have a hard time working up much enthusiasm for large swathes of his music - it's so mannered and melodramatic, and there's so much of it (and so much crap)

The Elvis discussion here reminds me that the whole "kitschy Fifties" thing is also more or less faded from pop culture since the 90s as well. You know, bowling shirts and Leave It to Beaver references. I'm reading Douglas Coupland's Generation X and there's a fair amount of that in there, and of course, embodied in the The B-52's and Jon Waters. MST3k also had a lot of "gee whiz 50s" jokes. (And to bring it back to the King, SPIN had an "Ask Elvis" column, right?) It has sort of moved up to the Sixties, but there's less irony in folks wearing or decorating their apartments in late Sixties style--I find most people I know who dig the era as I do think it is legitimately cool, as opposed to the liking it for tacky/kitschy reasons.

I keep thinking about this viral tweet about Netflix show Someone Great about how a black girl would never have a photo of Elvis in her room, which makes me think that people have long forgotten the era of kitsch/Velvet Elvis/etc

Tbf the very notion of 'bad taste' has taken a severe beating over the past 15-20 years.

i think the '50s fading has been pretty natural, it seemed like the peak nostalgia for that era was the '80s, and now thirty-plus years later the peak nostalgia is for the '80s. Stranger Things is like the new Stand By Me etc.

G-Eazy and Logic still embrace that turn-of-the-50s Rat Pack aesthetic tho

Should I pitch this as a Slate essay?

jazz d-bags are really the only ones keeping the 50s going at this point imo

Probably helped along by 50s music largely disappearing from oldies stations. I remember tuning into Nick at Nite as a kid and the bumpers were that 50s aesthetic, lots of I Love Lucy etc. Now I see it broadcasts Friends and Full House!

Also, like, there is a lot more representation in media and I can’t imagine a lot of non-white Americans have the fondest memories of anything that happened before 1964

xxp speaking of which, Sun Ra's profile seems higher than ever, tons of great new remasters/reissues coming out all the time

XP Rockabilly D-Bags still keepin' the '50s alive too.