Retromania - Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past

[BillF]

I think that expressing themselves in the music of the past is now a natural thing for many jazz musicians - it's not just a marketing ploy.

Oh, I'm not suggesting these musicians are choosing the style of music for commercial reasons; the love is clearly genuine.

Just that often the way it's assembled has a clear marketing angle. Which is understandable - like anyone else making a living you have to get your wares noticed.

What seems to have changed in the last 30-40 years, however - and I think this is where Reynolds is coming from - is that it used to be easier to market things as new and breaking with the past. Whether the music of the 60s/early 70s really was iconoclastic or not all the time, the idea of breaking new ground was one of a number of marketable concepts at that time.

It still has a hold on niche listeners but I don't see that desire to tear it up as being anywhere near as attractive an ideal as it was once.

This is a general feature of the arts in our times and is characteristic of the move from modernism to postmodernism. Where jazz is concerned, I recall reading a very meaningful chapter on this in Alyn Shipton's New History of Jazz.

I agree that use of the names of jazz musicians from the past serves as a marketing strategy, but it also acknowledges that the past was a classic era when giants were alive, as contrasted with today's minor figures who understandably want to imitate. In this jazz is experiencing what has always happened in the arts: there's a classic era and then there's what used to be called a "decadence" - from Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson on the one hand to Beaumont and Fletcher on the other; or from Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo on the one hand to Tiepolo on the other.

Edited September 4, 2011 by BillF

[Bluesnik]

This arrived yesterday morning and I'm already 150 pages in.

you hipped me to a book i want to read. and i didn't know this was coming up. it seems very interesting and hits the nail on the head. i know reynolds from way back when and i'm sure he has some very important book about britain in the punk years or postpunk. i just don't happen to know the title now. and i'm very interested in pop culture. always have been.

[A Lark Ascending]

you hipped me to a book i want to read. and i didn't know this was coming up. it seems very interesting and hits the nail on the head. i know reynolds from way back when and i'm sure he has some very important book about britain in the punk years or postpunk. i just don't happen to know the title now. and i'm very interested in pop culture. always have been.

I finished it last night. His conclusion is a bit uncertain - the old fogey wants to say 'it's all copying today', the self-aware 'modernist' wants to see something great in the future. He seems too nice a chap to get really brutal.

His earlier books include 'Rip It Up And Start Again' and 'Bring the Noise'. He's a Brit but has lived in New York for a while and now in California.

I was unfamiliar with 90% of the music he wrote about but just found myself drawing the parallels with the contemporary music I do know all the time.

BillF wrote:

In this jazz is experiencing what has always happens in the arts: there's a classic era and then there's what used to be called a "decadence" - from Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson on the one hand to Beaumont and Fletcher on the other; or from Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo on the one hand to Tiepolo on the other.

Yes, he deals with that idea towards the end of the book.

[Alexander]

My daughter's (age 11) favorite artists:

1. The Beatles

2. Michael Jackson

3. Elvis Presley

Edit: I just asked her to name her current top 3. She now places The Beatles and Elvis at numbers one and two. Rhianna is now number three. She says she still likes MJ, but he's no longer in the top three.

Edited September 5, 2011 by Alexander