Retromania - new book by Simon Reynolds

Qvist

Well-Known Member
This should be interesting:



We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have indeed reached a tipping point 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 - never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?


Due out in June 2011. So if we want to have a good long discussion about it without having to be encumbered by what it actually says, we should probably start soon.

cheers
 
We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have indeed reached a tipping point 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 - never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?

I hear that this was the precise reason Moz gave EMI when he pulled out of all promo for the 'Bona Drag' 20th Anniversary Expanded Redux Edition.
He scrawled 'We're all heading toward a cultural-ecological catastrophe. Off to LA. ttfn...' on the reverse of an Esma Cannon postcard.
 
This should be interesting:

We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have indeed reached a tipping point 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 - never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?

Due out in June 2011. So if we want to have a good long discussion about it without having to be encumbered by what it actually says, we should probably start soon.

cheers

June 2011 can't come soon enough! Reynolds is my favorite music writer and I know he'll deliver the goods. He's had some great stuff on his blog recently about re-visiting older artists for a fresh listen. Presumably research for his book.

As to his general thesis, I don't think there's any doubt that we're already knee-deep in a period of artistic exhaustion. Not to say there isn't "good music" being made, since there is. It's just-- for the most part-- unoriginal and not distinctive. Christ, even Beck seems original at this stage of the game. :squiffy:
 
June 2011 can't come soon enough! Reynolds is my favorite music writer and I know he'll deliver the goods. He's had some great stuff on his blog recently about re-visiting older artists for a fresh listen. Presumably research for his book.

Simon Reynolds has a blog?! I can't wait either, he is also my favorite music writer.

As to his general thesis, I don't think there's any doubt that we're already knee-deep in a period of artistic exhaustion. Not to say there isn't "good music" being made, since there is. It's just-- for the most part-- unoriginal and not distinctive. Christ, even Beck seems original at this stage of the game.

Didn't we briefly touch upon that subject in some other thread a while back? :)

cheers
 
Simon Reynolds has a blog?! I can't wait either, he is also my favorite music writer.

Oh, you didn't know? He's got several. Here's your ticket to the feast:

http://blissout.blogspot.com

Didn't we briefly touch upon that subject in some other thread a while back? :)

We did, yes, in the way that Herman Melville "briefly" touched on the topic of large ocean-dwelling mammals. But I think we're all still suffering from exhaustion. That thread could fairly be described as a devastating, nobody-wins cage match/battle royale in which every weapon was deployed but folding chairs. However, now that the Lil Wayne thread has petered out, I am prepared to roll up my sleeves and have another go. :rolleyes:
 
Oh, you didn't know? He's got several. Here's your ticket to the feast:

http://blissout.blogspot.com

Yay!


We did, yes, in the way that Herman Melville "briefly" touched on the topic of large ocean-dwelling mammals. But I think we're all still suffering from exhaustion. That thread could fairly be described as a devastating, nobody-wins cage match/battle royale in which every weapon was deployed but folding chairs. However, now that the Lil Wayne thread has petered out, I am prepared to roll up my sleeves and have another go. :rolleyes:

Or in the same way that Proust delivered a brief and succinct observation on the nature of time and experience. :D


Your description is very good. It was like World War I, with no America. I have a nagging feeling that new perspectives are needed, and that these might emerge from the inconclusiveness of the last discussion, once things have gestated. Maybe even from the brief description of Retromania. I find several questions occurring to me when reading it, and surprisingly most of them is in the direction of doubting his basic point.

On the other hand, I am disconcertingly busy as well as semi-ill. Please remember to ask me in a couple of days how it's going, so that I can answer "Still Ill". :D

cheers
 
Your description is very good. It was like World War I, with no America.

I suppose I would have been "the Hun" in that case. :rolleyes:

I find several questions occurring to me when reading it, and surprisingly most of them is in the direction of doubting his basic point.

Really? What are your objections, even if only tentative?

Reynolds, as a professional critic-- a great one-- probably recognizes a lot more recycling and reappropriation than we do. If you dig around on his blog, his account of electronic music in the UK from rave music through its subsequent stages of development through the Naughties is highly informative, though admittedly useless esoterica to anyone outside of London's underground scene. The drying-up of musical innovation in an increasingly jejune hybridization of genres seems to have been a pet topic for a few years, at least, and I'm guessing he'd have lots of concrete insights to share.

Taking a band at random, since I just played a few songs of theirs last night, it would be interesting to hear his take on the "retromania" intrinsic to Arcade Fire-- I can hear so many influences in their songs, to the point of almost making them seem like an 80s tribute act, and yet I can't really put my finger on any single element which strikes me as a direct lift or copy. Weirdly, as I was listening to "Sprawl 2 (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" I kept thinking of where I'd heard bits of it before-- Depeche Mode?-- and then, suddenly, I flashed on the source. It's the Scissor Sisters' "I Don't Feel Like Dancing", which is itself a song strongly redolent of the past, yet pointing back to somewhat different signs and markers than Arcade Fire. Twins conceived in a laboratory, separated at birth, one raised in big-city discos, the other in the suburbs...

But is this "retromania" the same kind as the Mojo/Rhino variety? Maybe one of the problems (with the description, at least) is that it neither clearly distinguishes, or attempts to tie together, what appear to be two separate problems: the glut of reissues and nostalgia, on the one hand, and the obvious and undeniable absence of any substantial avant garde. They would seem to be related, in my opinion, but the description's a little vague. In any case, while I would read his account open-mindedly, prepared to find its faults, I admit I'm somewhat in agreement already. It's in the air. It's practically common sense. The phenomenon he's talking about is already much more accelerated and visible in movies, which are almost universally awful now.

I hope you feel better, although I don't see how being "semi-ill" makes you any different than the rest of us. :)
 
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