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

i blame sha na na. come to think of it, growing up in the 70's, i couldn't really get away from the 50's. the 50's were everywhere. and to be fair, there has been an 80's revival going on since 1990. even people in the 60's eventually got over their fetish for the 20's. but do you know what i REALLY hate? movies from the 30's and 40's set in the gay 90's.

it would be kinda of nice though if things DID go away for awhile. nothing goes away anymore.

TS Eliot OTM

and the first thing I thought of reading this was the 50s nostalgia craze in the mid 70s - people thought that was the death knell of pop culture too

who said "the past is forever present"? someone said that i think.

things used to be more disposable. in a sense. years ago. people got rid of their kid stuff. not anymore. every lame goddamn thing you ever half remember is right there for you to look at whenever you feel like it. that has to change something in the air.

and i just figure almost every moment of recorded history - tape, vinyl, wax cylinder, film, etc - is up for grabs now and forever. people didn't have that kind of access in the boring old days. all i had were robert klein albums where he would go on and on about playing stickball as a kid. now i can actually buy vintage stickballs and histories of stickball and it goes on and on and i can devote my life to writing songs about arcane street games of the 19th and 20th century if i wanted to. the past is alluring. especially if you look out the window. you ever see what's out there? i mean, can you blame people?

and as far as the blurb for the book goes, no, there is no end to the past. there really isn't. you could never use it all up. ask writers. they'll tell you. writing is all about reading the past. why wouldn't music be?

there has been an 80's revival going on since 1990

I first became aware of it with this album, which came out in '96, by which time the early '80s signifiers were distinctly retro, were distinctly of the past.

I've always thought of eighties revivalism as ramping up around 1997 - early nu-electro (e.g. IF), indie synth pop revivalism (e.g. The Pulsars), "Your Woman" at the top of the charts.

The only early 90s eighties revivalism I can think of is The Magnetic Fields. What else?

US cover is much worse than the UK one.

I was about to disagree, but then I saw the apostrophes in the years.

The alt-rock radio station I listened to in the early '90s had (ca. 1993-94) an '80s hour every day at noon, in which they played mostly college-rock/new-wave stuff like the Violent Femmes or the B-52s or Wall of Voodoo.

"The only early 90s eighties revivalism I can think of is The Magnetic Fields. What else?"

well there was a carry over from the 80's to the 90's, but new people making goth and industrial and ebm and other 80's strains ran with the 80's sounds. not strictly retro but similar enough and most of their inspiration was 80's-derived.

kinda like how younger people (or non-western people from japan or south america who came to the party late) started making '68 psych in '72.

well there was a carry over from the 80's to the 90's, but new people making goth and industrial and ebm and other 80's strains ran with the 80's sounds. not strictly retro but similar enough and most of their inspiration was 80's-derived.

Not really revivalism though, right? Like, it's more the equivalent of post-Nickleback bands always still sounding like 1997, yeah?

okay i'm bored and being critical but thats okay cuz critics can be critical right? but this from the blurb just keeps sticking out:

"and that although earlier eras had their own obsessions with antiquity - the Renaissance with its admiration for Roman and Greek classicism, the Gothic movement's invocations of medievalism"

soooooooooooo, correct me if i'm wrong, but both the renaisssance and old school goth were periods of, like, 300+ years? can you really even judge the modern pop era yet? there was a whole lot of friggin' derivative lute music going around for a loooooooooooong time way back when.

Haha -- the eighties revival on my college radio station started in '93! A year after the first Living in Oblivion comp. A Flock of Seagulls, Adam Ant, Romeo Void, Spandau Ballet, etc were already taxonomized as "eighties."

"Not really revivalism though, right?"

right, but music identified with an earlier time. using the sounds and techniques of that time. like dixieland bands in the 40s and 50s. there were people who played it at the time of its origin and there were younger people in dixieland revival bands. just as there were younger industrial and goth people in the 90's and beyond who aren't strictly speaking nostalgia acts but whose music will always be identified with an earlier time.

I mean contemporary artists signifying "eighties" in an explicitly revivalist sense.

soooooooooooo, correct me if i'm wrong, but both the renaisssance and old school goth were periods of, like, 300+ years? can you really even judge the modern pop era yet? there was a whole lot of friggin' derivative lute music going around for a loooooooooooong time way back when.

Without knowing enough about these eras to comment, I think it's probably fair to postulate that:

(a) the past becomes "the past" culturally much faster now than ever before;
(b) the cycles of revivalism have also sped up over the last 40 years or so, and now double over each other; but
(c) such revivals are still "revivals" (at least initially) and so can be distinguished from, say, periods of slow development of largely derivative music; and certainly
(d) having regard to the above, creates a dynamic rather distinct from previous historical obsessions with the past, such that the answer "but revivalism has always and will always be with us" does not dissolve the point of difference the writer is trying to capture.

The past becomes "the past" much faster as we age, and we're all at or approaching Simon's age.

yeah, i mean the evolution of sound and music in the 20th century was so blindingly fast, like a mad race, and its kinda crazy to think that it would keep that speed up. people's brains need time to grow more and also internalize all the stuff that happened in the last 100 years. a lot happened!

right, but music identified with an earlier time. using the sounds and techniques of that time. like dixieland bands in the 40s and 50s. there were people who played it at the time of its origin and there were younger people in dixieland revival bands. just as there were younger industrial and goth people in the 90's and beyond who aren't strictly speaking nostalgia acts but whose music will always be identified with an earlier time.

Again, though, isn't that distinct from the notion of "retro" in terms of travelling back in time to bring something back to the present?

Like, Phil Collins doing "You Can't Hurry Love" in the 80s was "retro", Marillion crafting odes to Selling England By The Pound was not.

The key difference being an essentially unbroken line of continuity in the second case, with the implied underlying statement "this sound has not changed (substantially) and ought not to change."

Whereas retro always carries with it the implicit acknowledgment of jumping back over all sorts of contrary developments in between.

hmmm, i'll have to think about that. phil's cover always seemed very much of its time to me!

The past becomes "the past" much faster as we age, and we're all at or approaching Simon's age.

I meant in the past 100 years.

I'd say actually the opposite of the above possibly - in line with Tom's piece on the long past and the short past.

but i get you. 50's rock DID stop. in the early 60's. and by the mid 60's it was "oldies" music. and has been ever since. but people still don't call 1976-style punk bands "revival" acts because there is a continuous line. it never stopped completely.

did it really? I always thought that Sha Na Na, Bryan Ferr's These Foolish Things, Bowie's Pin Ups and a host of cover albums by the Band and Nilsson from the same period showed how by the early seventies rock had formed a canon.

*Ferry's

Yeah I think implicit in a revival is the idea that something has gone out of fashion. Once it's revived it never really falls out of fashion again I think.

80s revivalism stopped signifying 80s revivalism once the (full-fledged) revival era had become as long as the era it was reviving. It is now substantially longer.

but people still don't call 1976-style punk bands "revival" acts because there is a continuous line.

The closest thing to a revival would be the 2001 "new rock revolution" (with the caveat that it was by no means all 1976) - because what was not continuous was this music dominating the critical (and to a lesser extent commercial) sphere, even though bands of a similar nature had been floating around during the entire intervening period.

i'd like to read the book cuz i want to know how much simon goes into how people USE the past now. if they use it differently now that they have a seemingly infinite amount of past sources to plunder. people can pinpoint one year in one music scene's life in one place in the world and study it comprehensively and never leave their couch. what does that do to music and how people deal with that information. or does it make any difference. it makes it easier to be knowledgeable about the past obviously. don't know if it makes for better music.

i think it does make for shorter attention spans. it takes time for a "movement" to grow.

how people USE the past now. if they use it differently now

I don't know. Did Sha Na Na use the past in a distinctly different way than Xeno and Oaklander?

um, maybe?

One of the reasons I'm interested in the specificity of the idea of "retro" is that I don't feel like pop culture is very explicitly retro. Like, when Lil Wayne samples Haddaway I don't think he's doing it because he expects it to remind people of Haddaway; rather, it's more that the source material chimes in with the current sound so as to make it a logical hook to plunder. It doesn't signify "the past" that strongly to me.

Was it always like this? Is this what you mean about Phil, Scott? That his Supremes cover didn't actually call to mind the 60s at the time?

In dance music definitely there has been a shift: 10 years ago you could talk sensibly about various strains of classicism and traditionalism and revivalism, but these have all have been done so much now that it all codes as this kind of hazy contemporaneity, music doesn't code so clear as present-focused or past-focused any more.

yeah, i don't think phil was going for straight-up nostalgia. like sha na na were. it was a very modern cover of an old song. obviously people would be reminded of the old song, but i think he just liked the song! i dunno. i don't things now are all that retro now either actually. especially in the undie/indie world. people are using old sources, but they aren't using motown, they are refrerencing pretty obscure stuff that a lot of people have never heard in the first place. this is true of rap and other beat-derived music too. and modern r&b too.

To be fair the clip rather hit you over the head with the revivalism angle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYC5E4perb8

strict retro re-creates almost totally. like The Faint did with 80's stuff. people who steal a synth line from a Goblin track aren't retro. they just know a cool sound when they hear it. and as we all know theft is timeless.

In dance music definitely there has been a shift: 10 years ago you could talk sensibly about various strains of classicism and traditionalism and revivalism, but these have all have been done so much now that it all codes as this kind of hazy contemporaneity, music doesn't code so clear as present-focused or past-focused any more.

yeah - after ten years of instant digital availability the history of pop music feels more like a continuum than discrete eras

yeah, totally. about phil. but it sounded perfectly normal next to huey lewis and john cougar and john fogerty or whoever on 80's pop radio. it was totally in keeping with the 80's thing. it really was a modern cover.

Collins also, unwittingly, sold a song from his past back to fans. It worked as a gesture to the fans his age who remembered the Supremes and were already getting teary-eyed about their lost youth, and to young'uns like me and Scott just discovering the Supremes.

but it sounded perfectly normal next to huey lewis and john cougar and john fogerty or whoever on 80's pop radio. it was totally in keeping with the 80's thing. it really was a modern cover.

Yeah I can see how a revival of early motown was just like a logical extension of all sorts of tendencies in 80s pop (thesis: eurythmics as singlehandedly summarising the 80s' drift from future to past).

Today's equivalent (though not as good as Phil) would be "The Time (Dirty Bit)" - which sounds very 2010/2011 if only because so much contemporary music is informed by the 80s with greater or lesser degrees of consciousness and intentionality.

(thesis: eurythmics as singlehandedly summarising the 80s' drift from future to past).

Reynolds and Marcello Carlin would say that the success of Eurythmics signaled the ossification of New Pop or something -- the duo's obsession with The Canon, ec.

*etc

what about those godawful Motown covers by James Taylor and Linda Rondstart in the 70s. more like clumsy appropriations I suppose - or hijackings.

and the retro-soul trend in 80s black pop. Nelson George coined the term "retro nuevo" in a Village Voice review of Regina Belle

it's the post-modern thing, no? probably starting with rap, i guess. collage. pastiche. use anything and everything for effect. pop art. whatever. everything is fair game. its simpler in a lot of ways, but its also confusing to sort out. and post punk/indie-rock its also in many ways the only choice a lot of creative people in the underground have because most of them can't read music or play actual instruments and that has changed the game in many ways. people don't sit in rooms practicing scales ten hours a day like they used to unless they are metal/classical/jazz musicians. in many ways, people are incapable of aping the past because they can't play the past. and the people who DO ape the past faithfully are fully-fledged revival artists playing old blues, old rock, old folk, etc. older forms that are more folk art now than anything and not really critically or (pop)culturally relevant to a lot of people.

christ that was some sort of x-post but hell if i can remember to what. i went away for a smoke...

and yeah the reissue phenomena is amazing and all that, but just because people are obsessed with collecting every afro-pop and afro-psych and cumbia-psych comp that comes out doesn't translate into people everywhere MAKING that music again. cuz, like i said, lots of people wouldn't know how. it does make for cooler record collections though, and i'm all for that. and a wider awareness of past coolness. maybe some of that will rub off. we can only hope.

My problem with current (Top 40) music is that it's too stagnant and everyone are using the same handful of producers or not borrowing songs from other writers once in a while as an effort to "keep it real" so the artists end up burning out faster.

what about those godawful Motown covers by James Taylor and Linda Rondstart in the 70s. more like clumsy appropriations I suppose - or hijackings.

Along with Motown, how about the endless hijacking of Great American Songbook?

My problem with current (Top 40) music is that it's too stagnant and everyone are using the same handful of producers or not borrowing songs from other writers once in a while as an effort to "keep it real" so the artists end up burning out faster.

waht

modern pop and r&b totally cyborgian 22nd century stuff more often then not. even when it steals from, like, 90's trance tracks.

almost ten years since this came out, which makes it kind of retro in its own right.

have things changed much in current pop culture discourse? I definitely think there's less of a 'war on nostalgia' these days; much fewer trappings of rockism vs poptimism.

Attempts to revive the 90s and 2000s feel more surface-level rather than a wholesale mining and apeing of tropes.

And hearing a young person listening to Smooth radio the other day elicited more of an 'aw that's sweet and strangely quaint' reaction from me rather than 'cuh, another person stuck in the past'

It was outdated almost from the moment it was published, shiny modernism was not exactly in short supply throughout the 10s and many of its biggest artists couldn't have emerged in any other decade.

i agree. i enjoyed the book and thought it had a lot of interesting things to say (as well as exploring some interesting facets of pop history i wasn't previously experienced in), but as soon as i finished it i had a sense of 'but of course that was then, this is now'

I'm completely unsure how younger generations treat nostalgia but I'm pretty sure it's unlike how people older than me did (with repackaging and midddle-browing of rock acts from the 1970s), or the 'OH MI GOD THAT'S SO SHIT I LOVE IT' sardonicness of students when I was at uni.

Things that I've seen revived by Gen-Zers tends to be more surreal and meme-based than tongue-in-cheek or overtly reverent: Trippy videos where the Simpsons melt into the walls; ill-advised Limp Bizkit tattoos; Pokemon cards selling for millions of dollars etc...

There's an extraordinary post from 2011 on this thread where someone claims that when Nevermind came out, it had "no dramatic or cross-cultural impact at the time". Let me just stop you there . . .

i never read this but always felt that it was dishonest; all creativity is based on past creativity; it always seemed like a difference in degree arg masquerading as a difference in kind arg to me

I think there was also a good deal of time in the 2010s spent finding new and creative ways to revive the 80s again. Like people getting really into City Pop. Though one could argue that City Pop in a way is kind of a 90s nostalgia type of thing since its influence can be felt in lot of ephemera for North American audiences being exposed to it through video games and anime, and then tracing that backwards.

I was hoping for there to be a big New Jack Swing revival in the 2010s, but all we got was that Bruno Mars song.

It seemed natural to anticipate a 90s revival in the 10s, but that it never really coalesced around a reviving a specific sound seems to confirm that internet/streaming/sharing really has dissipated that kind of collective reassessment.

I also people put too much stock in the idea of "the 20 year rule". I find revivalism tends to hue closer to being with split with halves of previous decades. Like I associate the 80s with late 50s/early 60s, the 90s with late 60/early 70s, and the 00s with late 70s/early 80s. And that still doesn't factor in revivals of revivals or weird anomalies like the Swing Revival of the 90s. So the 2010s would have had more of a late 80s/early 90s vibe going for it, which I think happened in some cases, but not as much I thought there would be. But then again, maybe post-Grunge left enough of a lingering sour taste for a lot of people, that it would still be a while till we got a Grunge revival. Also I find in many cases, it's never the obvious things that get revived either. It's often weird background ephemera, like people digging deep into old soundtracks or library music, or using vintage instruments, or rediscovering artists that might have been ahead of there time.

i never read this but always felt that it was dishonest; all creativity is based on past creativity; it always seemed like a difference in degree arg masquerading as a difference in kind arg to me

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Thursday, October 29, 2020 2:49 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

funny, a lot of people upthread who hadn't read the book came to a similar conclusion