{"id":3825,"date":"2013-10-01T20:37:54","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T02:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=3825"},"modified":"2013-10-02T14:52:04","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T20:52:04","slug":"i-believe-in-yesterday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=3825","title":{"rendered":"I believe in yesterday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"8track\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The following review of <\/em>Retromania by Simon Reynolds originally appeared<\/a> in <\/em>The New Republic in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Who wants yesterday’s papers?\u201d sang Mick Jagger in 1967. \u201cWho wants yesterday\u2019s girl?\u201d The answer, in the Swinging 60s, was obvious: \u201cNobody in the world.\u201d That was then. Now we seem to want nothing more than to read yesterday\u2019s papers and carry on with yesterday\u2019s girl. Popular culture has become obsessed with the past \u2014 with recycling it, rehashing it, replaying it. Though we live in a fast-forward age, we can’t take our finger off the rewind button.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is the past\u2019s grip so tight as in the world of music, as the rock critic Simon Reynolds meticulously documents in Retromania<\/em>. Over the last two decades, he argues, the \u201cexploratory impulse\u201d that once powered pop music forward has shifted its focus from Now to Then. Fans and musicians alike have turned into archeologists. The evidence is everywhere. There are the reunion tours and the reissues, the box sets and the tribute albums. There are the R&B museums, the rock halls of fame, the punk libraries. There are the collectors of vinyl and cassettes and \u2014 God help us \u2014 eight-tracks. There are the remixes, the mash-ups, the samples. There are the \u201ccurated\u201d playlists. When pop shakes its moneymaker today, what rises is the dust of the archive.<\/p>\n

Nostalgia is nothing new. It has been a refrain of art and literature at least since Homer set Odysseus on Calypso\u2019s island and had him yearn to turn back time. And popular music has always had a strong revivalist streak, particularly in Reynolds\u2019s native Britain. But retromania is not just about nostalgia. It goes deeper than the tie-dyed dreams of Baby Boomers or the gray-flecked mohawks of Gen X punks. Whereas nostalgia is rooted in a sense of the past as past, retromania stems from a sense of the past as present. Yesterday\u2019s music, in all its forms, has become the atmosphere of contemporary culture. We live, Reynolds remarks, in \u201ca simultaneity of pop time that abolishes history while nibbling away at the present\u2019s own sense of itself as an era with a distinct identity and feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

One reason is the sheer quantity of pop music that has accumulated over the past half century. Whether it is rock, funk, country, or electronica, we have heard it all before. Even the edgiest musicians have little choice but to produce pastiche. Greatly amplifying the effect is the recent shift to producing and distributing songs as digital files. When kids had to fork out cash for records or CDs, they had to make hard choices about what they listened to and what they let pass by. Usually, they would choose the new over the old, which served to keep the past at bay. Now, thanks to freely traded MP3s and all-you-can-eat music services such as Spotify, there is no need to make choices. Pretty much any song ever recorded is just a click away. With the economic barrier removed, the old floods in, swamping the new.<\/p>\n

Reynolds argues that the glut of tunes has not just changed what we listen to; it has also changed how we listen. The rapt fan who knew every hook, lyric, and lead by heart has been replaced by the fickle dabbler who cannot stop hitting Next. Reynolds presents himself as a case in point, and his experience will sound familiar to anyone with a hard drive packed with music files. He was initially \u201ccaptivated\u201d by the ability to use a computer to navigate an ocean of tunes. But in short order he found himself more interested in \u201cthe mechanism\u201d than the music: \u201cSoon I was listening to just the first fifteen seconds of every track; then, not listening at all.\u201d The logical culmination, he writes, \u201cwould have been for me to remove the headphones and just look at the track display.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given a choice between more and less, we all choose more, even if it means a loss of sensory and emotional engagement. Though we don\u2019t like to admit it, the digital music revolution has merely confirmed what we have always known: we cherish what is scarce, and what is abundant we view as disposable. Reynolds quotes another music writer, Karla Starr: \u201cI find myself getting bored even in the middle of songs simply because I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

As all time is compressed into the present moment, our recycling becomes ever more compulsive. We begin to plunder not just bygone eras but also the immediate past. Over the course of the last decade, writes Reynolds, \u201cthe interval between something happening and its being revisited seemed to shrink insidiously.\u201d Not only did we have 1960s revivals and 70s revivals and 80s revivals, but we even began to see revivals of musical fashions from the 90s, such as shoegaze and Britpop. It sometimes seems that the reason things go out of fashion so quickly these days is because we cannot wait for them to come back into fashion. Displaying enthusiasm for something new is socially risky, particularly in an ironical time. It is safer to wait for it to come around again, preferably bearing the \u201cvintage\u201d label.<\/p>\n

For musicians themselves, the danger is that their art becomes disconnected from the present \u2014 \u201ctimeless\u201d in a bad sense. The eras of greatest ferment and creativity in popular music, such as the mid-60s and the late 70s, were times of social discontent, when the young rejected the past and its stifling traditions. Providing the soundtrack for rebellion, rock musicians felt compelled to slay their fathers rather than pay tribute to them. Even if their lyrics were about getting laid or getting high \u2014 as they frequently were \u2014 their songs were filled with political force. Those not busy being born, as Dylan put it shortly after taking an axe to his folkie roots, are busy dying.<\/p>\n

Now, youth culture is largely apolitical, and pop\u2019s soundtrack is just a soundtrack. Those not busy being born are busy listening to their iPods. Whether it\u2019s Fleet Foxes or Friendly Fires, Black Keys or Beach House, today\u2019s bands are less likely to battle the past than to luxuriate in it. This is not to say they aren\u2019t good bands. As Reynolds is careful to note, there is plenty of fine pop music being made today, in an ear-boggling array of styles. But drained of its subversive energies, none of it matters much. It just streams by.<\/p>\n

Retromania<\/em> is an important and often compelling work, but it is also a sprawling one. Its aesthetic is more Sandinista!<\/em> than \u201cHey Ya!\u201d But Reynolds is sharp, and he knows his stuff. Even when his narrative gets lost in the details, the details remain interesting. (I didn\u2019t know, for instance, that the rave scene of the early 90s had its origins in the trad-jazz fad that preceded Beatlemania in England.) Reynolds might also be accused of being something of a retromaniac himself. After all, in worrying about the enervating influence of the past, he echoes the complaints of earlier cultural critics. \u201cOur age is retrospective,\u201d grumbled Emerson in 1836. \u201cWhy should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?\u201d Longing for a less nostalgic time is itself a form of nostalgia.<\/p>\n

But Reynolds makes a convincing case that today\u2019s retromania is different in degree and in kind from anything we\u2019ve experienced before. And it is not just an affliction of the mainstream. It has also warped the perspective of the avant-garde, dulling culture\u2019s cutting edge. It\u2019s one thing for old folks to look backwards. It\u2019s another thing \u2014 and a far more lamentable one \u2014 for young people to feed on the past. Somebody needs to figure out a new way to smash a guitar.<\/p>\n

Photo from Eight Track Museum<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following review of Retromania by Simon Reynolds originally appeared in The New Republic in 2011. “Who wants yesterday’s papers?\u201d sang Mick Jagger in 1967. \u201cWho wants yesterday\u2019s girl?\u201d The answer, in the Swinging 60s, was obvious: \u201cNobody in the world.\u201d That was then. Now we seem to want nothing more than to read yesterday\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3825"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3832,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions\/3832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}