" Your Fave Band Is Reuniting – But Not For the Reasons You Think" - an attempted marshalling of rationales for the legacy act festival / reunion boom, by Danny Wright at Vice.
I must say I don't disapprove of this kind of thing nearly as much as I did when I wrote Retromania. "Disapproval" isn't quite the right term, anyway - "distaste" is more like it. I could empathize with the reasons bands did this kind of thing. What else are they supposed to do with themselves?). Money - you can't blame 'em really, mortgage payments to keep up. Plus there's that resolution of interband conflicts/ friends reconciled / writing a happier end to the story than the probably messy and bitter split-up. The distaste was more about the idea of me being at one of these events, what it would feel like, and also the sense of being a target demographic.
But, having gone to a couple of these elder-laden festervals in the last few years, I acquired a teensy bit of taste for this kind of thing (a certain queasiness lingers, though). The events are an intriguing mixture of amusement and bemusement. Simply as a sociological phenomenon, there's stuff to observe and to consider. What happens when a youth culture ages out? How weird does it get when subcultural types valiantly persist with the look, despite the attrition of the years. A mass elegy for one's bygone identifications and intensities.
There's something salutary about being shoved amidst your own (approximate) kind. Seeing how everybody's grappling with decrepitude.
Also, occasionally, there'll be some actually entertaining performances. Bands you never quite managed to see in their (and your) prime, but they can still pull it off. They might even be better on some level - musicianship, having the experience and/or the budget to put on a great show.
Hey, as I'm about to click post on this, the missus alerts to me an upcoming festerval that is trying to out-Cruel World Cruel World - Darker Waves. Although the lineup isn't that Gothy in fact.
I suppose what I wonder about is not the top three ranks of the line-up, but below that.... sub-legends (Clan of Xymox, Chameleons etc). It can't be that rewarding, financially or in terms of ego, reconnecting with the compact following, having to play in the mid-afternoon.
Also wonder about the musicians who join legends that have suffered personnel erosion... whose function is prosthetic. (Like, are they any other original band members in "Psychedelic Furs" now, apart from Butler Rep?). I suppose it's a gig. You get to ply your trade. Maybe you were a fan of the leg in question.
7 comments:
Amused to see Death in Vegas and the Cardigans on this bill, for some reason.
"I suppose it's a gig. You get to ply your trade. Maybe you were a fan of the leg in question."
It would, in a way, be like the British musicians in the 60 and 70s, who did session and live work with the legends of American R&B and country. The kids might learn something!
None of those logos seems apt for the band (well, the bands anyone has ever heard of). The closest is Soft Cell, I guess, but surely theirs should be in neon lights?
It's convenient, though, that they've drawn a line on the poster between the bands people have heard of and the bands nobody remembers. But does X belong below that line, and She Wants Revenge above?
Yes you are right, the fonts and colors are ghastly! The Violent Femmes on in particular. The Human League one seems to have some relation to the font used on Dare.
Re She Wants Revenge - yeah with these things there's always some emo-ish type band that is much higher up the lineup than you'd think it ought to be. The kind of group that was on the front cover of Alternative Press in the 2000s probably.
It’s strange the way this only even seems to be a concern in “pop” music (for want of a better term). Any other form of music and your age is pretty much irrelevant. Just bought Ralph Towner’s latest album, he’s in his 80s but his chops and touch are still sublime and his originals are great, this album is as good as anything he put out in the 70s. At the end of the day he’s a musician so what else is he going to do? If he still has the desire to create and people still want to see him perform and buy the records, good on him.
"[T]he lineup isn't that Gothy in fact."
I had the same reaction. Clearly the choice of name is an attempt to ride the coattails of Cruel World (and perhaps, more widely, the "dark" turn in pop culture with Wednesday, Stranger Things, etc.)
Also, the choice of location is about as un-Goth as you can get. Huntington Beach is haven of Trump support and intolerance. And mid November is hardly the best time to put on a festival by the sea in Southern California. Bring your jacket.
Ralph Towner - I guess it's not music that's ever been indexed to youth particularly. So there isn't an idea built in of aging as a decline in vigor; probably the contrary, in fact. (Vigor not being the operative word anyway).
And as a result you wouldn't get a nostalgia effect - there'd be no demand for him and John Abercrombie to reunite to perform the entirety of Sargasso Sea from track 1 to track 8, to crowds of people wishing to relive 1976.
For the record - when I saw The Furs last year here in Boston, they had (3) original members - Ritchie, his brother Tim on bass and their saxophonist, Mars Williams (well, he's not original but he started popping up 1983-84 so close enough). And to your other point about some acts "possibly even being better now" - I would cite the Furs as well. Their new guitarist is quite good but even better than him is their current drummer,Zack Alford (touring drummer for Bowie). He's given those songs a better beat and relevant, needed kick in the ass. I caught them last year here in Boston touring with X (two radically different fan bases - aging punks and 50 something wine moms). The Furs really rocked. Wish they played more off the first two albums though.
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