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? 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?
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What was it Winston Churchill who said those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it? In the case of modern pop music it may as well be a case of those that play pop music are doomed to repeat it. That is if one agrees with Simon Reynolds mainly polemical 420 pages on what he calls Retromania.
What is Retromania? First we have to get out of the way that Retromania is not the same as nostalgia. Nostalgia is in a nutshell memories of time and place. Hence hear a piece of music from the past and a time or place is brought into the imagination. Retromania on the other hand is the fact that modern music relies on the past. He writes that this is not really a new thing as such but there is a modern tendency to rapidly relive the past via retro use of music with in a very short period of time. He goes back as far as The Beatles who morphed into what they were when as a new band starting out their main playing style was Rock n Roll from a few brief years prior and all morphed into what they became. Being a long book this is on my part a simplistic take with the author going into great depth of detail.
It might be worthwhile to point out that this book was released in 2010 so at the time of me reading and then writing this review a decade has passed. In my opinion not much has changed, so I think the author is very much onto something. Music seems to me at least to have reached a point that there is next to no “brand-new sounds” that I know of. I am a music devotee of the highest order. I am looking to always find new artist to thrill me and I find many. The age of streaming services have been a godsend for me. Interestingly, when the author touched on these services he was convincing in his suggestions that the vast majority of a younger generation who had not lived the past thought that what they may have been listening to was a brand-new sound when it was Retromania on the part of the artist. And many an artist he interviewed admitted as such. “new old music” as he called it is just that, new old music.
When finishing this book I thought of a few of my none-scientific anecdotes that make retromania a truism for me.
A work colleague of the same vintage as me about 10 years back said he didn't like modern music. What do you mean as modern music, I asked. Rap he said, they don't make good stuff like ELO any more he said. Rap was hardly modern at that time and as this book convinced me that ELO were the epitome of Retromania even in their own time.
My manager, also the same vintage as me, has admitted his musical life ended with his youth. AC/DC and Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young are all there are and nothing other counts. Who are you playing he asked, King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard I replied. He then went into hysterical laughter and stormed back into the outer office and uproariously laughed about the name to one and all and then got the shock of his life when the much younger brigade said yes they had head of them and liked them rather a lot. Stupid name he mumbled to himself without realising that the name is a nod to The Doors Jim Morrison and King Gizzard are at times a victim of Retromania as their sometimes Psychedelia is really another retro nod to a past style.
Just recently when walking in a nearby park one afternoon I came across a lass in her 30 playing a Harp in the warm winter sunshine that is Brisbane. We got chatting and she gave me a lovely impromptu song or three. US harpist Joanne Newsome was discussed. When I first heard Newsome a decade back she did seem like a brand-new sound to me, but in reality she based a lot of her music on past folk styles. Be that as it may, I told my harpist about this book, and she recommended Bjork's fairly recent Vulnicura as very much a “brand-new sound”. I have since given it a listen a few times and as much as it is a fine album, it is really retro if the truth be told. Strings are aplenty in the Trip Hop style and also ambient electronica. Maybe my park harpist had not really listened to too much trip hop?
I watched a game of Australian Football on TV and after the game a player was presented a sound system for best on field. The presenter, a player from a past age said you can now play Pat Benatar in one room and Cat Stevens in another. The young player said I don't even know who they are. Yes old man who are these has beens? I laughed.
And that comes to my final comment. As much as a music tragic such as myself can listen to music from the dawns of time to whatever is the latest release, the fact of the matter is that what we all once liked (and still do) becomes redundant. All there is is retro and even then it is nothing but a mania.
Highly recommended to the poor old music lover who is always looking for that brand-new sound.
