The Retro Man

 "This second volume in a series bringing together short stories of veteran science fiction author Gordon Eklund leads off with 'The Retro Man,' a visionary tale of a man reliving his life in reverse time."

A science fiction short story from 1977 - and quite an early appearance of the concept of "retro" in the Anglosphere. (In France, it's in use from the beginning of the decade, referring to a kind of nostalgic cinema).

For instance, I have not come across any "retro" references in Anglosphere music writing until the early 1980s.

the word "retro" (an intermittent series)

When did the word "retro" enter common parlance? Or music-critical parlance?

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. 

retro - early sightings 1 of ??

 

Not that early (1989  - 'retro' starts popping up fairly frequently from the start of the '80s). And it's a loose use of the word (retro, strictly speaking, is a new thing in the style of the old, not the actual old thing itself recirculating as a classic or golden oldie, a comp or career retrospective), but nonetheless an interesting framing of a lifetime's work