tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post5751525836293855567..comments2024-03-28T02:53:44.198-07:00Comments on RETROMANIA: retrotalk2022 - bringback cultureSIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-37859846590819731532022-06-29T03:55:25.843-07:002022-06-29T03:55:25.843-07:00With Japan there was also this thing in the 1980&#...With Japan there was also this thing in the 1980's and 90's where bands that had been "forgotten" in the rapid-obsolescence pop culture of the UK and US could actively tour there and still be "famous" - bands like The Human League, ABC, etc.<br /><br />There was also this thing going on where bands could be more actively commercial, and appear in TV adverts etc. and not be found out, this kind of behaviour being still somewhat taboo in the West. IIRC Iggy Pop did an advert for Suntory Whisky in Japan way back when rock stars just weren't supposed to do that kind of thing.<br /><br />The Japanese didn't view what were "old" bands in the West with nostalgia, because they didn't have that inherent notion of obsolescence to being with. I think that is what is happening on in Western culture now - the old bands aren't surviving and thriving out of nostalgia, it is just that the old notion of cultural obsolescence has withered away. This is quite disorientating for those of us who were very invested in that notion!Phil Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214245608032305452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-67493878453195732822022-06-27T18:35:35.247-07:002022-06-27T18:35:35.247-07:00I feel like paragraph three has already been happe...I feel like paragraph three has already been happening in hipster music for a while - someone like Ariel Pink does all these era / genre crossing atemporal hybrids, or alternative-history pop counterfactuals<br /><br />And para 4 - well there's actually a whole chapter on Japan in Retromania, about the record collector culture there and the approach to recycling and recombining Western pop and unpop. Not exactly the angle you mention but more like Japan as the hipster vanguard - anticipating how the rest of the world will later learn to process culture. SIMON REYNOLDShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-64178207530100250582022-06-27T15:06:27.488-07:002022-06-27T15:06:27.488-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Edhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01409303370931148796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3505022452508665567.post-41305145750374861762022-06-27T11:04:47.892-07:002022-06-27T11:04:47.892-07:00If you would have asked me in 1985, or even 1995, ...If you would have asked me in 1985, or even 1995, who would be headlining Glastonbury in 2022, I would have tried to have conceived of some unbelievably strange type of music which was just beyond my imagination. There is no way on Earth I would have said Paul McCartney.<br /><br />I can actually foresee a future when all these bands are actively competing in the charts again, but in an even more intense, chronologically-desegregated way. Where e.g. "Golden Brown" is vying with "Unfinished Sympathy" to become No.1. This will especially be the case if a cheap, discrete physical product comes into being that has the same function as the 7" single, to make proper charts viable again.<br /><br />Would be quite funny if youth cults start to develop that put bands of different eras and different styles together. A scene that is built around Duran Duran and Hawkwind for example, spotting stylistic similarities that were impenetrable to their original audiences.<br /><br />The atemporality thing is also reminiscent of how people in places like Japan have consumed Western music for decades already - they are not aware of the all the cultural delineators and taste hierarchies of "sophisticated" Western consumers, and so have always treated Western pop culture as a smorgasbord. Perhaps we are just catching up with the Far East in this sense.Phil Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214245608032305452noreply@blogger.com