Against Eighties Music

(See follow-up post here.)

There is a bind in which not every generation has found itself, though the one I know best certainly has: one is, in respect of music, caught between the Scylla of trying too hard to stay with it, and the Charybdis of ridiculous nostalgia for that period of life when one did not have to try at all.

How much longer will we have to listen to the cries of melancholy longing of those now pushing 40: a longing for a more authentic time, in which something we now call 'eighties music' held us all together, forged us, made us better than the current crop of manipulated stooges with their ephemeral junk? The problem with this way of remembering things is that it wasn't 'eighties music' at the time, and it didn't hold us together. It was mostly garbage, just like today; and just like today it had, seen from the inside, internal contours and divisions that made it entirely impossible to think of it all as belonging to the same decadal genus.

That is a first point: that you are simply misremembering when you hear The Cure in some public place, perhaps on a Lite FM station while waiting at the dentist's office, and you announce: I love '80s music! A second point is that no one cares, and, worse, you're embarrassing yourself. To say 'I love '80s music' might have a different semantics than 'I'm pushing 40', but out of your mouth, dear coeval, it is pragmatically exactly the same. 

What is the alternative? Well, you can try to stay au courant. You can do the 2010 equivalent of what Houellebecq's protagonist did in Le plateforme, just seven or eight years ago, when he stretched a Radiohead t-shirt, having never listened to Radiohead, over his 40-year-old gut. Hell, if you are really unconcerned with maintaining credibility you can just try it with a Radiohead shirt today and see what happens. You can try to get tips from your younger coworkers or from your students about local bands or about obscure imports. As if anything had to be 'imported' anymore! You can try your best to overlook the fact that you will always remain rooted in a now defunct system, in which music was an object that could be collected, owned, and traded, rather than something whose tokens might be gleaned as desired out of the universal storehouse of the Internet.

Until about 2002 or 2003, I remained intent on keeping abreast of things. I knew that such-and-such record label was based in Berlin, such-and-such other somewhere else. I knew that such-and-such subgenre of techno had spawned such-and-such subsubgenres. I read a print magazine (!) called Wire or The Wire, not to be confused with similarly titled tech magazine, band, or TV show, which served as a sort of cheat-sheet for the memorization of in-group shibboleths. What I took at that time for a sudden, rapid increase in connoisseurship was in fact only a death throe: a final, desperate, farcical attempt to remain with it.

Don't tell me you haven't had a similar moment, observing either yourself or your aging friends, when you stop and you think to yourself: this can't go on. I remember getting into the car of a somewhat older German friend, circa 1995. He put in a cassette of the Stereo MCs: you remember, that English bald guy and his entourage who proposed to 'take you higher'. I thought: well, this is fine, fitting music for a car trip. I visited him again, five years later. We got into his car and he asked: "Do you know the Stereo MCs?" as he, to his mind smoothly, popped in exactly the same cassette (the year was now 2000!). I saw him again in 2003, and again the same thing. We have not seen each other since (as I am learning, the neural and/or hormonal need for enduring friendship dulls right along with the one for musical discovery), but I suspect that he is either still lazily putting on the Stereo MCs to entertain the occasional visitor, or that he is dead. His was a particularly severe case of the general syndrome I am discussing, even if his symptoms were in some sense the opposite of mine: the aging music listener who is simply too uninspired to make any new discoveries, and so places a particular moment, associated in his imagination with his early twenties, on perpetual repeat.

So I can neither freeze a moment in time and cling to it, nor can I move along with the flow of time. What then is left? There is only one thing to do, and that is to go back in time. You cannot accuse me of clinging to my past if I listen to a compilation of Appalachian jug-and-washboard music from the 1920s. I'm clinging to the past in general, and it's a past that belongs just as much to someone born in 1990 as it does to someone born in 1970, even if the junior heir is not yet aware of this. When he becomes aware, I will know vastly more than he does, and I will, if supplicated, consent to initiate him.

There is something slightly pathetic and awkward about this strategy, too: something misanthropic and cranky in an R. Crumb sort of way. Something that, just like the other two options, no doubt is going to make the young people cringe. One is by definition out of step with one's era in caring about the past at all: this much I know all too well from my interest, in my professional life, in things people said and cared about in the 17th century.

Recording technology stretches back only to the late 19th century, so here there is an absolute limit to how far back one can go in one's depersonalized encyclopedic approach to music connoisseurship. Towards this limit is where I choose to linger, seeking out popular music set down by recording technology between 1895 and 1972, and the older the better. As an aesthetic, this is a sort of primitivism: what is prized is low-fidelity, zero production value, recordings of people who do not know they are being recorded, or who don't really understand what recording is.

Following upon one of my recent, categorical denunciations of sports, some readers got the idea that, if I am not a sports fan, the only other possibility is that I am in every respect a snob, which, they believed, must include a passion for classical music. They could not be more mistaken. Other than Lieder, which already straddle the boundary, I am entirely on the side of what some German sociologist helpfully called U-Kultur, that is, Unterhaltungskultur or 'entertainment culture', in contrast with E-Kultur, Ernstkultur or 'real culture'. What this distinction misses however is the fundamental difference between the encyclopedist's or the archaeologist's approach to the totality of U-Kultur's past, on the one hand, and the idolater's approach to some tiny sliver of this past on the other, a sliver that happens to coincide with his or her adolescence, and which he or she ignorantly takes to be a singular moment of greatness in a past that is otherwise unworthy of attention.

I maintain that only an encyclopedic-archaeological turn can save an aging person's attachment to popular culture from descending into ridiculousness. Though far better, of course, would be to simply not age at all, and to continue to be able to listen to music with immediacy.

Comments

[Ashli Romeyn]

My 17 year old son seems to be clinging to my past listening to Depeche Mode and Erasure throughout the summer day.. At times I feel nostalgic and other times I just want to scream! I cannot, for the life of me, listen to the out of date synthesized ear jabs of "New Life" any more!! Thank goodness HE is not stuck in a genre as I was. I often hear the likes of Kronos Quartet or The Decemberists coming from his playlist as well. As music evolves and with the help of Pandora guiding youths with "If you like Siouxie and the Banshees you might also like Billie Holiday or Lou Reed" the idea of a "musical decade" is in itself of the past.. IMO. He will, I'm certain, attempt to cling to something else of his past when he is pushing 40 and hopefully it's not, "Have you ever played Halo II?"

[Feggy]

I have tried to present myself as an elitist, picking up the cream of each decade. However, as I recently went through my Rate your music-list, I noticed that the '80s music is leading by a narrow marginal to everything else. I always thought that I was a sixties-fan and a punk-fan. Oh well, I guess whatever decade is your lot when you are in your twenties, that's what leaves a permanent mark on you.

[tomslee]

Clothes pose a similar problem. There is no solution in either case.

[Carter]

I suspect your German friend only plays that cassette when you are in the car. Think about it.

[shale]

My sense is that what you're doing, which you think might not be popular, is actually the next big thing. Furthermore, I'm not sure that it actually necessitates an interest in history, anymore than buying African art requires an interest in Africa.

I started listening to music from before my parents generation to escape the latest fad when I was 17; I assume that some are starting even younger now, and digging even further back. (I'm probably about 10-20 years younger than you.)

[Mandel]

There are other alternatives. One is simply to chat about music with friends here and there and get recommendations as they come. You discover new things, bond with friends, and if your base of friends is broad, you'll get a smattering of things from many genres and eras.

The other is to listen to something like Pandora and jot things you really like down for later purchase. Pandora runs on the Music Genome Project data, and isn't designed to market whatever the music critics are tryign to push down our throats at any given moment. Again, you'll get new music that is neither biased to the new nor to the old but only to what you think sounds good...

[Cameron]

I agree with the your characterization of the dilemma, but I'm not sure about the method to get by it. First, there does seem to be something personal in the encyclopedic approach as set out here, namely the limitation of interest to pre-1972 recordings. Of course, this wouldn't be an absolute limit, but would not a genuine encyclopedic impulse compel one to take in, say, more recent works that are somehow evocative of that earlier aesthetic? If yes, then you veer dangerously toward Scylla.

Second, the distinction between U-Kultur and E-Kultur seems of little value for an encyclopedic approach, especially if it's motivated in defense against charges of snobbery. (About this accusation: first, it assumes that there is 'a cohesive, stable, and unitary thing' called "classical music", which there isn't, at least not in the intended sense. Second, one can discover, have access to, and enjoy classical music no differently than hip-hop, punk, etc. There are certainly snobs on the classical scene, just as there are snobs at your local Indy record shop.... The point is that the charge of elitism is unfounded and so one needn't defend against it.) Besides missing the difference between the encyclopedist and the idolater, the distinction seems to reinforce unwarranted over-generalizations such as would identify Lieder as firmly "classical". Consider, for example, the mass of Toscanini's broadcasts and recordings for NBC: these are in a way paradigmatic of 20th century entertainment culture, and yet fit for the sobriquet 'real culture' too. Many are also superb examples of the prized “primitive” aesthetic, what with the poor recording quality and Toscanini’s howling from the rostrum. Such cases – the Hot 5/7 recordings from the 1920’s, a good example too - really problematize the encyclopedist’s use of a real vs. entertainment culture distinction.

I would suggest that in addition to the encyclopedic-archaeological method one can maintain a general (more or less passive) openness to the present: maybe you discover a new classical composer through a film she scored, or you hear something you like being played in a café and ask for the identifying information (and you download that one song without bothering about where the record label is located). This methodological addendum – what we might call ‘casual eclectic’ – mediates between an unnecessarily fenced-off historicism and the ridiculous scrambling to remain au courant.

[Scott Perkins]

I read a column (aka 'blogpost' for those more 'with it' than I) about a British gentleman who felt it worth the torture to hand his eleven year old son a Walkman and a cassette tape just to see what happened. It was excruciating reading as I aged with each word toward the inexorable conclusion that my time had passed. As the young whippersnapper explained that he didn't realize he couldn't skip songs or flip over the cassette, I felt an overwhelming urge for a pair of sansabelt slacks and wondered who might drive me to Sears for some dark socks to go with my Bermuda shorts and sandals ere I retired gracefully to park bench sitting. There are pigeons to be fed!

Sigh.

Regarding your German friend, I'm put in mind of a character in a Neil Gaiman novel who has a glovebox in his car in which any cassette will be transformed into 'Best of Queen' no matter what it contained before it was tossed in there.

[Dwight]

Have to agree with the encylopedists like Cameron. As a jazz oriented musician (mostly because I play reeds and there are limits as to what and with whom to play) and having been born at the tail end of the 40s I find that almost any form can become hidebound and stale to my ears. Love bop but seldom listen to it, or want to play it much. Too easy to fall into dull dull dull, argeggiating museum work; favoring instead players like Bill Frisell and Don Byron, who've long since climbed out of easy genre classifications. It's just easier to stay fresh as an improvising musician to listen to "not-my" music, whether that's Mickie Katz, Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road, Congolese guitar jams, Cora music from Mali or wacky Cambodian pop. So many places to find freshness and free thinking performance, whether from Trombone Shorty from NO, Cubans like Paquito or LA Mex eclectics like Los Lobos, who give and get things from New Orleans, Tex Mex and country music. Go where the musicians go to find inspiration, and you'll never be bored with what amounts to culture heroics, whose agendas are nearly never about the pleasure of listening or discovering something else.

[Z]

I listen to music that I like. Call me crazy.

[Dan Queef]

Psst!. rock n roll is only 53 years old. It's a young art form. You think you're generation invented the Iphone but your didn't. And we sure as hell know you didn't invent good music because you guys music blows serious ass. Why make an effort to learn an instrument when we all know Wall St. is where it's at. So keep on sucking the banker dick.And keep reaching for that thesaurus to act ever so writer-esque. Your conservative view point is more geriatric than the oldsters you attack.

[The Worst of Perth]

I feel I need to say "Dude!" but have no idea why.

[Justin Smith]

Ashli-- Surely your son's refined tastes have something to do with the example you've set.

Cameron-- Good advice. I try to remain open to the present, but somehow I end up feeling like it's the one that's ignoring me.

Worst of Perth-- Go ahead and say it!

[Theworstofperth]

Dude! Yes that does feel better.

"I maintain that only an encyclopedic-archaeological turn can save an aging person's attachment to popular culture from descending into ridiculousness."

I think there's a better approach. I like to use brutal irony, coupled with an appreciation or rejection of music that youthful pretentiousness may have been unable to properly judge. It doesn't have to be historical, (although I have chosen to listen to some banjo Bluegrass for some of the same reasons as your Hillybilly jug sojourn) but it does mean you can listen to Duran Duran's Rio with pleasure, as well as the appreciation of it's spectacular awfulness. You can still wear a Radiohead shirt with a sneer, with or without Johnny Rotten style tshirt graffiti. You can admit to yourself that New Order were actually pretty bad and still play Blue Monday right after Merle Haggard doing Muleskinnner Blues. You can (if you can hold your mouth just right) even extend this stance into current music.

It works.

[Rafa]

This post would more accurately, if less provocatively, be titled "Against Nostalgic Listening," since you don't engage with "Eighties Music" (whatever that is) at all. It could as easily be grunge or doo-wop or afrobeat for the sake of your argument. If I may counter that argument, or what I understand of it: there is value in pop music beyond the "encyclopedic-archaeological;" value independent of whether one's particular taste in pop music is "au courant." Music can move and incite and reveal. A committed listener keeps her ears peeled lest her biases prevent her from hearing any sound that unlocks that special tingle.

[Rafa]

And I can't get enough of "Close to Me," though I wasn't even alive when The Cure released it, and most of my friends from high school would have just stared blankly at me if they heard it in my car.