My sense is that sightings of that word are rare before 1980.
Certainly back in the first half of the '70s, it was not a term in common use - when I read through all the Roxy Music coverage of that time, it never popped up once (even though it's nowadays a cliche to talk about them as retro-futurist).
Then in the early '80s, "retro" starts to crop up. It parallels the rise of a raft of phenomena that seem aligned with retro-spection: the emergence of what we would now call vintage; record fairs; the mushrooming number of reissue labels; the seepage of concepts like postmodern and postmodernist into the discourse. There was a term "retro-nuevo" that was bandied about in, I think, the mid-Eighties.
Here's an early use of "retro" - Robert Palmer's Retro Rock, a limited-edition vinyl release. It's listed in Discogs as follows:
Robert Palmer – Retro Rock
Label: Clayton Webster Corporation – RR-82-20
Format: Vinyl, LP, Transcription
Released: Oct 5, 1982
Genre: Rock, Funk / Soul, Non-Music, Pop
Style: Classic Rock, Public Broadcast
A1 Give Me An Inch 2:47
A2 The Sailin' Shoes Medley 8:15
A3 Kid 2:53
A4 Work To Make It Work 4:27
A5 Gotta Get A Grip On You 3:27
A6 How Much Fun 3:18
B1 Jealous 3:28
Which Of Us Is The Fool Medley (10:47)
B2.1 Which Of Us Is The Fool
B2.2 We Got Love
B2.3 Pressure Drop
B3 Can't We Still Br Friends 3:10
B4 Got A Bad Case Of Loving You 4:42
At first I thought this was one of those publicity records that labels used to send to radio stations - to be played on air as if it were a real interview, or as promo just to sway deejays and producers. It has the look of a career to date recap - Palmer's greatest hits and non-hits.
But actually it turns out that this is a vinyl document of a TV or radio broadcast. And it's the show that's called Retro Rock. And it seems to specialize broadcasting old concerts. This show was broadcast in October 1982 but the recording is from seven years earlier.
But then there's some anomalies in this account - most glaring, how could Robert Palmer have performed a 1979 song by The Pretenders in 1975?
The press release also references the performance including Palmer's "smash single" from a few years ago, "Bad Case of Loving You" . That was a medium-sized hit in America in 1979. It was originally written and recorded by Moon Martin in 1978. Something is not right with this press release and the dating of the concert!
If I was more familiar with Palmer's oeuvre I could probably spot some more temporal discrepancies.
7 comments:
The "iconic" (it says here) shop American Retro opened in Old Compton Street in 1986 and lasted more than 25 years, although it has closed now. I think I may still have a brooch I bought there lying around the house somewhere. IIRC, it didn't sell actual vintage stuff, but new clothes and accessories in vaguely retro styles. When it started, I think the prevailing theme was 1950s Americana - biker jackets, etc - broadly aligned with the massively successful Levis commercials that came out at around the same time.
Ah, yes, maybe that is a turning point, a fulcrum in the spread of 'retro' as a word. That 'kind of thing' - I recall an American diner 1950s style burger joint with the little jukeboxes on each booth, the Levis ads with classic soul songs in them that you mention - seemed to mushroom right about then, mid-80s, late '80s. George Michael's "Faith" video.
Actually I was surprised when looking through old style bibles like The Face in the early '80s, and quite a lot of content - and the look of adverts - is bound up with retro-styling, graphic design "quotes", revivalisms, little clubs dedicated to rockabilly or whatever. Jon Savage did his famous "The Age of Plunder" piece for the Face in '82 or '83 I think.
"Vade retro, satana." (Go retro, Satan. First known use traced to 1415)
Perhaps the music press or underground press used "retro" to describe the 1972 London Rock 'N' Roll Show. That concert sure looks like the first big retro-rock event.
https://flashbak.com/the-london-rock-n-roll-show-1972-oz-frendz-and-let-it-rock-46229/
possible but i don't remember seeing the word when I trawled through the music papers of that time. I seem to recall it was a word used in France in the early '70s to do with films set during the Second World War and a fashion trend for 1940s clothing that sprang up
There was a dude in America who did these 50s rock'n'roller nostalgia package tours and then events at places like Madison Square Garden - and I think that was a few years earlier than the Rock'n'Roll Show in London. Sha Na Na also is some kind of ahead of the game by being behind of the game type move. That is 1968/69.
Ah that is funny. But it's a bit like how the word 'punk' features in Romeo and Juliet as an insult. It's not really an early use of punk as it signifies to us. Even when it appears in West Side Story ("naturally we're punks" in "Gee Officer Krupke" it's more like the prehistory of punk-as-punk - the meaning-sediment on which the later concept is built)
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