tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post1212405502886166516..comments2024-03-28T02:53:44.198-07:00Comments on RETROMANIA: Join The UnprofessionalsSIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-21391896934318244642015-11-09T20:37:07.109-08:002015-11-09T20:37:07.109-08:00That's an interesting argument Ed, I shall hav...That's an interesting argument Ed, I shall have to ponder and digest<br /><br />But one initial quibble - Classical music (meaning orchestral music, quartet music, art song etc) wasn't only new in the 1780s, it was new again and again.... it became a self-renewing tradition that evolved, swerved, self-ruptured for a couple more centuries.. Likewise, Film's newness wasn't limited to the 1920s, it again became an evolving art-form that renewed itself, fissured, expanded its scope as new technology became available etc etc. <br /><br />I don't think there is an equivalent of a Noel Gallagher of film, unless we count Quentin Tarantino. The craft analogy, applied to film, would mean someone making a film in a particular era-style/technical-limitations of a period - like silents, or Technicolour 50s Cinemascope,or... and using the narrative-tropes, character archetypes etc of specific genres. That's occurred as a one off (The Artist) but there are no White Stripes type careers in film making based on such retro-ism - at least that I know of.<br /><br />So one argument might be that Oasis were doing the equivalent of someone in the 90s trying to update the Western (i.e. a genre whose heyday was, what the 40s? already becoming a tad self-conscious by the 50s? having early attempts at reinvention w/ Peckinpah, etc in the late 60s and early 70s, obsolete and disappeared from mainstream movies screens by the 80s). <br /><br />I don't think 'rock' is quite equivalent in scale to an artform like Theatre, Cinema... it's one genre, one historical phase, one region within a larger formation .... maybe Recorded Popular Music is the only term broad enough.... Recorded Popular Music, being a format rather than a genre per se, will obviously continue and probably be the site of newness now and then - meanwhile as Rock - like Jazz before it - becomes a craft, a traditionSIMON REYNOLDShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-83905589597645797362015-11-09T18:59:32.512-08:002015-11-09T18:59:32.512-08:00Would we really, though?
As I get older, I find m...Would we really, though?<br /><br />As I get older, I find myself becoming increasingly sympathetic to the idea that it's perfectly fine to work within a tradition, rather than trying to create a new one.<br /><br />Rock stars are like blacksmiths or thatchers or armourers: there's not as much call for their services as there used to be, they don't play the central role in society that they used to, but they have a craft that it is still worthwhile, and they can practice it either skilfully or ineptly. And there is even now a lasting satisfaction in a well-shod horse or a perfectly balanced broadsword.<br /><br />To be honest, I can't really think of anyone working in the rock tradition with any very impressive craft skills these days. Tame Impala, maybe? But in soul and funk people like Adele, Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae are all regularly enjoyable.<br /><br />Of course it's more exciting to be in at the start of something: Classical music in Vienna in the 1780s, film in Hollywood in the 1920s, psychedelia in San Francisco in 1967. But those art forms have produced plenty of great work when their heydays were far behind them.<br /><br />It's like the way that older forms of entertainment survive advances in technology. People thought film would kill the theatre, and they thought television would kill the movies, and they thought the internet would kill television. I guess now they think Facebook will kill the internet. It never happened: all the old media have found ways to live on among the new, if often on somewhat different terms. It's the same with music. Rock's not dead; it's just old.<br /><br />Edhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01409303370931148796noreply@blogger.com