retro-quote # 900002

retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time #  900002

Figure 8 e-zine interviewer: How do you feel about pop culture moving in strange directions, where new music sounds quite old?

Andy McLuskey of OMD: " I think it’s not really moving in strange directions. It’s moving in entirely predictable directions. What’s happening is that we’re in this sort of post-modern, or I’m now informed neo-postmodern, (whatever the hell that’s supposed to be) world, where basically most creative cultural pursuits, it’s all been done before. So if you want to be in a band, if you want to be an artist, if you want to be a film director, what are you going to do that hasn’t been done before? And so we’ve got these sort of circular whirlpools where styles seem to be coming in, going out, going around in circles. And you get a mash-up where somebody will go, “Okay, if I add this style with that style, that’s a new combination. Nobody’s done that.”

"Pop music is eating itself. It was predicted that it would. And pop music, its popular culture and in many ways it’s high brow culture as well. It’s all going around in circles because there’s sense of fashion, and they call it a sense because there’s no actual fashion, it’s a sense of fashion. And there’s still this perceived requirement that things have to go ‘forward’ in inverted commons when in fact there’s no ‘forward’ to go to. That still happens but the world isn’t changing as quickly in terms of the technology. We could play synthesizers because they became available to kids who could buy them from their mother’s mail order catalog. Rock and roll happened because of the electric guitar in the ’50s became available.

"There’s been no new technological advancement since computer music. And so there’s been no real dramatic shift that has affected the way that music is made. So now it’s just all about style juggling. So it doesn’t surprise me. It’s not strange. It’s entirely understandable. It’s just those of us who are old enough to already see it go around in circles are just sort of mildly amused. We’re not saddened because nothing can be done about it. It’s just the way things are."