Summer's here and the time is right for -- catching up on your reading before the Fall Semester hits you like a ton of bricks! I've finally had a chance to start reading Simon Reynold's latest book, Retromania, on the meaning of the nostalgia fetish evident in recent pop music.
Reynolds' book addresses our current situation of music overload, now that digital media has made it possible to both access and archive music in vast quantities. This technological capacity means that the musical past is always with us, and in fact, Reynolds argues, has become a killing burden on the present. One consequence of accumulating music is that it's become, as Mark Paytress notes, "increasingly detached from everything but itself." Disconnected from any social reality other than the desire of "exquisitely discerning consumers" (Reynolds), pop music has become literally monstrous, i.e., no longer existing on a human scale.
It's not just that pop musicians have given up on originality; they've also renounced the attempt to imagine the future. Such progressive projects used to be the pop singer's raison d'etre (think of David Bowie in the 70s). Currently, Reynolds argues, pop music at its best recasts the musical past, and at worst, merely recycles it.
I will try here and in future posts to consider some of the broader implications of Reynolds' argument. If Reynolds is right, I think we need to reconsider the claims Simon Frith puts forth in Performing Rites (1998). Here Frith argues that behind every music genre lies "an implied community." Music serves a primary social function, binding the individual listener to a larger collective. Yet does looking over the virtual shoulder of your Facebook friends to discover what they're listening to on Spotify constitute community building in any meaningful sense? Frith's sociology of genre would seem to presume a now outmoded psychology of listening. It no longer describes the current moment, where music mostly refers to itself, not the world. I incline more to Reynolds' opinion, that we mostly listen to music in ways that tend to isolate us.
Reynolds combines his argument about pop nostalgia with a fascinating alternative history of rock music, relevant to my own work on 60s British rock. Reynolds make a point of differentiating hippie subculture from the genuinely progressive moment of British rock circa 1965-66, represented by the Yardbirds, the Who, and UFO era Pink Floyd.
By the feedback solo here:
Or this long form improvisation:
Or the sonic collage/guitar solo here:
Severing the Who from hippie makes sense given that band's always ambivalent relation to the movement, despite their having played the two signal festivals of the hippie era.
Contrary to a consensus that maintains that hippie looked forward to utopia, Reynolds maintains that the subculture was nostalgic: for "authentic" indigenous cultures, fin-de-siecle graphic art, and "vintage" clothing. And despite received notions about punk as anti-establishment, Reynolds argues that Malcolm McLaren was as nostalgic as the hippies he vilified. Before there was SEX, McLaren's first business venture was Let It Rock, a vintage clothes store specializing in Teddy Boy fashions. The self-declared pop Situationist was also looking back, obsessed with the Teddy Boys he recalled from his boyhood in the late 1950s, revering them equally for their style and hooliganism.
If you don't know what the Teds were about, click here:
(end part one)
Reynolds' book addresses our current situation of music overload, now that digital media has made it possible to both access and archive music in vast quantities. This technological capacity means that the musical past is always with us, and in fact, Reynolds argues, has become a killing burden on the present. One consequence of accumulating music is that it's become, as Mark Paytress notes, "increasingly detached from everything but itself." Disconnected from any social reality other than the desire of "exquisitely discerning consumers" (Reynolds), pop music has become literally monstrous, i.e., no longer existing on a human scale.
It's not just that pop musicians have given up on originality; they've also renounced the attempt to imagine the future. Such progressive projects used to be the pop singer's raison d'etre (think of David Bowie in the 70s). Currently, Reynolds argues, pop music at its best recasts the musical past, and at worst, merely recycles it.
I will try here and in future posts to consider some of the broader implications of Reynolds' argument. If Reynolds is right, I think we need to reconsider the claims Simon Frith puts forth in Performing Rites (1998). Here Frith argues that behind every music genre lies "an implied community." Music serves a primary social function, binding the individual listener to a larger collective. Yet does looking over the virtual shoulder of your Facebook friends to discover what they're listening to on Spotify constitute community building in any meaningful sense? Frith's sociology of genre would seem to presume a now outmoded psychology of listening. It no longer describes the current moment, where music mostly refers to itself, not the world. I incline more to Reynolds' opinion, that we mostly listen to music in ways that tend to isolate us.
Reynolds combines his argument about pop nostalgia with a fascinating alternative history of rock music, relevant to my own work on 60s British rock. Reynolds make a point of differentiating hippie subculture from the genuinely progressive moment of British rock circa 1965-66, represented by the Yardbirds, the Who, and UFO era Pink Floyd.
By the feedback solo here:
Or the sonic collage/guitar solo here:
Severing the Who from hippie makes sense given that band's always ambivalent relation to the movement, despite their having played the two signal festivals of the hippie era.
Contrary to a consensus that maintains that hippie looked forward to utopia, Reynolds maintains that the subculture was nostalgic: for "authentic" indigenous cultures, fin-de-siecle graphic art, and "vintage" clothing. And despite received notions about punk as anti-establishment, Reynolds argues that Malcolm McLaren was as nostalgic as the hippies he vilified. Before there was SEX, McLaren's first business venture was Let It Rock, a vintage clothes store specializing in Teddy Boy fashions. The self-declared pop Situationist was also looking back, obsessed with the Teddy Boys he recalled from his boyhood in the late 1950s, revering them equally for their style and hooliganism.
If you don't know what the Teds were about, click here:
Isn't it possible to argue that restricting one's studies to a small period, one defined in terms of which consumer bin its product fits into, is itself proof of the thesis that pop culture--and its purveyors and hopeful analysts--is at this point only and regressively concerned with its own repeating moment? In this respect, a study of the purported subject can only recycle the subject being studies? A closed loop closing every tighter--like being locked in your room with only that week's top forty to play for eternity?
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to say that I'm honored that you chose to break your silence by commenting on my blog! No one I know has heard much from you since the 1930s. I think your next step should be to contact Alan Wald.
DeleteI think the hope of any historiography, including rock historiography, is that one can achieve some self-reflexive distance on a moment, even if the moment that provides the unit of study is admittedly narrow. But I certainly agree that there seems to be something particularly hermetic or self-consuming about pop culture studies, especially of this sort (Reynolds).
But I do like the distinction he draws between an experimental avant-garde and hippie (and punk).