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Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past
One of The Telegraph’s Best Music Books 2011
We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of culturalecological catastrop...more
We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of culturalecological catastrop...more
ebook, 368 pages
Published
July 19th 2011
by Faber & Faber
(first published October 1st 2010)
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LOved it.
Could be subtitled "cynical Music Journo in search of the next big thing and hasn't found it"
Really interesting premise though I didn't agree with all his findings.
iShuffle: Reynolds talks of the wonder years when we bought an album a month listened to LPs in full, and bemoans modern iShuffle culture.
I do not miss the old days - iShuffle has liberated us from "artists" telling us HOW we should listen to their music, in what order and how long between each song. Fuck that! Artists may w...more
Could be subtitled "cynical Music Journo in search of the next big thing and hasn't found it"
Really interesting premise though I didn't agree with all his findings.
iShuffle: Reynolds talks of the wonder years when we bought an album a month listened to LPs in full, and bemoans modern iShuffle culture.
I do not miss the old days - iShuffle has liberated us from "artists" telling us HOW we should listen to their music, in what order and how long between each song. Fuck that! Artists may w...more
Oct 05, 2012
Jacobmartin
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
gen-x,
punk,
british,
criticism,
2000s,
rock-and-roll,
hipster-irony,
metal,
historical-perspective,
music,
rock-stars
As a 22 year old man I may not seem like the target audience for this book. But its premise seemed interesting enough that I'd pick it up for my Kindle (which is decorated with Apple stickers defaced with slogans I believe in, Banksy and Beatles Yellow Submarine stickers because desecrating the slick digital items of today is punk rock maaannn...).
It's a decent analysis of where pop music is headed, and considering I don't like much auto tuned atrocities hurled at us from the radio like those da...more
It's a decent analysis of where pop music is headed, and considering I don't like much auto tuned atrocities hurled at us from the radio like those da...more
Unpacking my thoughts about this book could really eat up some time and space if I let it, so I'll do my best to stay concise. Long story short, Simon Reynolds' new book "RETROMANIA" is imperfect and flawed in a few key areas, and yet at times I felt like it was written just for me and my "ilk". It concerns itself with 21st century culture's, particularly musical culture's, incessant need to look backward for inspiration. Both underground and mainstream culture have run out of original ideas, th...more
It was odd reading a book by Simon Reynolds that wasn't positive and excited, as with Rip It Up and Energy Flash, but there was still a lot of brain food and enjoyment to be gleaned.
Having been born in '78 and become a music fan/fanatic/know it all in my teens, most contemporary music has always been recombinant and more aware of its past than its future, but Reynolds is right in saying that that mode has become more total and more acceptable in the last decade.
Previously Reynolds' books have se...more
Having been born in '78 and become a music fan/fanatic/know it all in my teens, most contemporary music has always been recombinant and more aware of its past than its future, but Reynolds is right in saying that that mode has become more total and more acceptable in the last decade.
Previously Reynolds' books have se...more
Or really, 3.5 stars. Reynolds is a very good writer, and a very good thinker on music and popular culture. Here, he tackles the current state of pop music: pop is essentially eating itself, digging into the past and endlessly recycling old tropes rather than coming up with something new. Some don't see a problem with this state of affairs; Reynolds laments it.
The book is knee-deep in examples of this kind of recycling, so much so that it almost becomes simply another cog in the retromanic machi...more
The book is knee-deep in examples of this kind of recycling, so much so that it almost becomes simply another cog in the retromanic machi...more
I think "Retromania" is the best music book of the 21st Century so far. But of course I am not including the great rock n' roll memoirs, but just talking about "music books" as a cultural thing. And this is a very important book to me, with respect to how music fans react to pop in general. If you are like me, a long term fan of pop music and its trends, and you are middle-aged, one thing comes to mind. There is nothing new happening in contemporary music. In fact its a shocking fact. If i get a...more
One of the best books on music I've ever read by one of the finest writers on the subject around today. Reynolds manages to weave an exhaustive and comprehensive narrative around practically all areas of popular and alternative music of the past 50-60 years, connecting the dots from doo-wop to dubstep to paint a pretty thorough picture of recurring musical trends and ideas throughout the development of popular music, and what that tells us about the future of music and of society at large.
This i...more
This i...more
This is the best book I've read in 2012! Timely and thoughtful, Retromania finds author and critic Simon Reynolds (author of the post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again) exploring the dual concepts of retro and nostalgia within music (and to a lesser degree fashion and art), from their historical beginnings with the dawn of post-modernism and the revivals of folk in the US and jazz in Europe during the postwar era to the post-90s, internet and technology-enabled obliteration of the very idea...more
With some editing, this would easily have been a five-star book. The subtitle is a little inaccurate. It's really about pop music. Other aspects of popular culture are introduced, but only by way of making points about the relentless recycling of ideas in current vernacular music. Reynolds is an astute thinker with astonishing rock and roll erudition and a terrific prose style - he manages a tone that successfully combines academic respectability and hipster elan. I told a friend I was reading R...more
Mar 23, 2012
Steven
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
art,
biography,
business,
computers-technology,
criticism,
economics,
fashion,
history,
journalism,
language,
movies,
music,
mythology,
philosophy,
photography,
politics,
psychology,
reference,
television,
travel
Music journalist Simon Reynolds examines mainstream pop music's seemingly relentless revivals and revisitations of past eras. Like many other critics, he wonders, and worries about, whether or not America and Britain are stuck on repeat. Is it possible to innovate when the past and the near-past are ever present, especially with the easy accessibility to the obscure and the well-known that the Internet affords us? How can we be nostalgic for a decade that just ended? Reynolds also looks at diffe...more
Though the subtitle of this book refers to "pop culture's addiction to its own past," it's really about 95% about music. Mileage may vary depending on how interested in music the reader is, but I would recommend this without hesitation to anyone with even a general interest in the arts or culture (everyone, probably?). The one caveat would be to skip section two, which essentially catalogs selected musical genres/styles and the various retro tendencies of same, and which was slow going even for...more
A pretty great book. Thought provoking. Exhaustive (exhausting) in it's play after play of historical breakdown of who has copied who and what's really new and what wasn't. Read it and be ready for a serious download of retro/revival/etc movements of the last 80 years.
Great coverage of some of the current awesomeness.
Great thoughts on record collecting and downloading etc.
I think where the book gets pretty shiny is where he starts connecting with Gibson, Sterling, Lanier and starts looking at c...more
Great coverage of some of the current awesomeness.
Great thoughts on record collecting and downloading etc.
I think where the book gets pretty shiny is where he starts connecting with Gibson, Sterling, Lanier and starts looking at c...more
Very timely book tackling some big issues in culture, technology and society today. In fact, it is as much a book about the technology as it is about pop music. The questions of medium / message pops up very heavily and illustrates some of the discussions in the likes of Carr or Lanier.
The second half of the book slacks somewhat. Partly because it loses bit of a balance. Good thing is that he comes up with an interesting critique of sample-based music. But you feel that he just pours too much sc...more
The second half of the book slacks somewhat. Partly because it loses bit of a balance. Good thing is that he comes up with an interesting critique of sample-based music. But you feel that he just pours too much sc...more
The main thesis of this book is that the decade of the 2000s was significant for essentially recycling trends from the 1960s onward, without having any discernible original (music) movement of its own. I have also thought about how my generation has never really witnessed some "new thing" in music...it's like we have been treading water waiting for something exciting to break through. On the other hand, I like a lot of this "recycled" music and really don't see a huge difference in the amount of...more
The irony is not lost that I lay in bed and read the last 100 pages of this while listening to The Best of Abba, and after a night out to see one of my favorite musicians, whose support band paid dutiful deference to their headliner... well, I have argued for years that music really hasn't evolved in the 1990's or 2000's that just about everything reference's the past, and here we have a weighty tome that argues just that. Initially my thoughts were, how can he take 500 pages to argue this, but...more
After Energy Flash and the wondrous Rip It Up and Start Again , a book that inspired me to overhaul my record collection and plug its gaps with an assortment of post punk and new wave highlights, Simon Reynolds calls upon a bevy of sociocultural theorists to analyze pop’s obsession with its past.
A very strong introduction looks at the retromania phenomenon across a range of media and even Prêt à Manger’s retro prawn sandwich gets a mention. The rest of the volume doesn’t quite live up to th...more
A very strong introduction looks at the retromania phenomenon across a range of media and even Prêt à Manger’s retro prawn sandwich gets a mention. The rest of the volume doesn’t quite live up to th...more
Reynolds is one of the best music critics around and this time he's looking at nostalgia in pop culture and debating whether it's a paralysing force in it's development. As usual there's a lot of the sociological theorising thats common with Reynolds he drops ideas, opinions and conclusions throughout the book like someone discarding sweet wrappers as they walk. This book takes a while to read and longer to think through.
It's split into 3 parts 'Now' 'Then' and 'Tommorrow'. As these section tit...more
It's split into 3 parts 'Now' 'Then' and 'Tommorrow'. As these section tit...more
Thought provoking and trivia-studded exploration of retro culture from Simon Reynolds, who I'd count as one of the most intelligent and considered music writers. I mean intelligent without descending into the florid, convoluted self-indulgence that makes some music writers borderline unintelligible. Naming no names (PAUL MORLEY cough cough).
Occasionally this was very smart, but it peaked with the prologue and intro and was a bit conflicted thereafter. This End Of Dayz mentality that assumes no-...more
Occasionally this was very smart, but it peaked with the prologue and intro and was a bit conflicted thereafter. This End Of Dayz mentality that assumes no-...more
Simon Reynolds defines his modernist aesthetic as a "belief that art has some kind of evolutionary destiny, a teleology that manifests itself through genius artists and masterpieces that are monuments to the future." For me, that simultaneously asks too much and too little from pop, but Reynolds' previous books, where he's argued for the importance of that aesthetic in driving post-punk and electronic music forward, have encouraged me to pay attention to music that I may under-appreciate.
Here, t...more
Here, t...more
Clear eyed, depressing overview of the current situation in popular music and pop culture altogether. I had to read this book because I've been thinking and feeling that pop culture is in the doldrums for years now, so I was very interested to get Simon Reynolds take on it. I thought Rip it up and Start Again was superb and this book confirms Reynolds as my favourite music writer since Lester Bangs. He points to phenomena such as endless re-issues, classic bands reforming and the wholesale recyc...more
Modern music is increasingly rubbish. Or rather everything that's going to happen in pop has happened already and we're left shuffling our ipods and staring at youtube. Discuss.
Simon Reynolds takes a look at pop's past and tries to predict its future. Are we just generationally past it, or has the last decade brought nothing new in music, except how we listen to it? What genre defines the "noughties"? Where is the next musical explosion as radical as punk, hip-hop or techno going to come from? O...more
Simon Reynolds takes a look at pop's past and tries to predict its future. Are we just generationally past it, or has the last decade brought nothing new in music, except how we listen to it? What genre defines the "noughties"? Where is the next musical explosion as radical as punk, hip-hop or techno going to come from? O...more
Ich habe gefühlt noch nie so lange an einem Buch herumgekaut, wie an diesem. Nach über einem Monat habe ich das Namedrop-Dauertrommelfeuer des Hrn. Reynolds nun überstanden.
Wirklich gefallen und angesprochen hat mich dabei eigentlich nur der Teil 3 "Morgen" und da insbesondere Kapitel 10 "Die Geister der vergangenen Zukunft - Sampling, Hauntology und Mashups". In diesem Kapitel arbeitet er recht gut den Begriff "Hauntology" auf und geht auf aktuelle Strömungen wie Chillwave ein.
Besonders genervt...more
Wirklich gefallen und angesprochen hat mich dabei eigentlich nur der Teil 3 "Morgen" und da insbesondere Kapitel 10 "Die Geister der vergangenen Zukunft - Sampling, Hauntology und Mashups". In diesem Kapitel arbeitet er recht gut den Begriff "Hauntology" auf und geht auf aktuelle Strömungen wie Chillwave ein.
Besonders genervt...more
I'm about half way through this, and two main things stand out so far. One is how there is finally a book-length take from a major publishing house on the types of conversations music lovers have been having on blogs/message boards and face to face with increasing frequency over the past decade. It's somewhat peculiar reading sentences I swear I've read, heard, said or at least thought to myself before. Not accusing Reynolds of plagiarism or even laziness, just surprised it took so long for this...more
Sep 06, 2011
Matte Sideburns
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
music fans
I'd recommend Retromania to anybody who considers themselves to care about music. In fact , I'd even call it essential.
It's easy to take the old man's attitude and complain that pop music ain't what it used to be, but this book positions pop within the greater scope of culture past and present to consider the hows and whys of modern music. In his attempts to find answers to his own questions about the relationship of music's past and present, the author explores even bigger questions of progress...more
It's easy to take the old man's attitude and complain that pop music ain't what it used to be, but this book positions pop within the greater scope of culture past and present to consider the hows and whys of modern music. In his attempts to find answers to his own questions about the relationship of music's past and present, the author explores even bigger questions of progress...more
Interesting and smart take on pop culture (primarily music) and the recycling of the recent past. Didn't always agree with his perspective (hey, I happen to *like* Girl Talk!), but it gave me a lot to think about.
Felt like it could have been more tightly edited. At times it seemed more like a collection of articles than a cohesive book, which knocked it down to 3.5-4 stars. Also, even as a semi-anglophile, many of the UK subcultures and music genres Reynolds discusses weren't familiar to me, an...more
Felt like it could have been more tightly edited. At times it seemed more like a collection of articles than a cohesive book, which knocked it down to 3.5-4 stars. Also, even as a semi-anglophile, many of the UK subcultures and music genres Reynolds discusses weren't familiar to me, an...more
Any possibly review on this has been ruined because I finished it a few days ago on the way to Florida, and thanks to my holiday all thoughts on it have kind of disappeared. It's basically a good read for anyone who likes research and reason when looking at music, rather than just opinion. Reynolds factors in his own stories and opinions throughout, but there's a real thread of history, from known artists to more obscure (to my knowledge, anyway). It's just an interesting reading; I particularly...more
Given its subject matter, there was never really going to be a strong through-line to this book, unlike Reynolds' earlier (and strongly recommended) works of music criticism. This shouldn't, though be taken as a negative - what's here is an interesting, stimulating set of reflections from that hall of mirrors identified by the author as "retromania". Reynolds' style is expansive without being rambling, and scholarly without being impenetrable: he's engaging, well informed, and he writes about mu...more
Even if I didn't agree with the author all the time, this book was fun to engage with. There are a lot of interesting points brought up regarding the evolution of modern music and the changes in the way we consume it (and how this feeds back into the music itself.) Part of what makes this book work so well is that Simon Reynolds is so knowledgeable. Knowing his writing mainly from his excellent earlier book, Rip It Up And Start Again, about the late 70s early 80s post punk scene, I wasn't expect...more
This book is so meticulously detailed that it could ironically reignite interests in some of the previous retro-phases it covers. I was having a hard time reading it in the order it is arranged, so I started with the the intro and the first two chapters of the "now" section, then I read the middle two chapters of the "tomorrow" section, and concluded with the remainder of the "now" section, the entirety of the then section, then the beginning of the tomorrow section, followed by the conclusion....more
I'm glad I read it now. If I had read it a few years hence especially the first part would have been out of date. It is for me 3 books stichedc together - a run through modern music's malaise, the precursors of many genres of music and the different notions of what the future may hold. I found the secon par far and away the most interesting. wha happened for me is that as I went through the book I thought that the writer eroded away his own blokey "Youngsters, they don't know what what music the...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| iShuffle vs listening to the LP | 1 | 6 | Nov 06, 2012 05:05am |
Simon Reynolds is one of the most respected music journalists working today, and his writing is both influential and polarizing. He draws on an impressive range of knowledge, and writes with a fluid, engaging style. His books Rip it Up and Start Again and Generation Ecstasy are well-regarded works about their respective genres, and RETROMANIA may be his most broadly appealing book yet. It makes an...more
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“The avant-garde is now an arrière-garde.”
—
5 people liked it
“Time wounds all wholes. To exist in Time is to suffer through an endless exile, a successive severing from those precious few moments of feeling at home in the world.”
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Sep 17, 2011 02:47pm