One thing that often comes up in conversations about interests in resurgences and retro items has to do with whether or not younger people are getting into it too. For us not young folks, seeing young people getting into the things we liked in our day is at least the most apparent argument against the “It’s just nostalgia” debates likely still raging across uncountable message boards and video posts. Even if you’re not engaging in such drivel, seeing young people play with your toys might feel rather affirming while such negative dialogues still permeate the public consciousness. And I believe in being very fair about it. Not everything can stand on its own, but I have to believe that some things can.
Watch this short and interesting video about why people are getting back into CDs. I had no idea that digital rereleases of old tunes were being doctored. It is rather staggering. But I do think that perhaps the only reason to feel bad about this information is that we live in a world where there is now no limit to how much power technology can give to corporations or other groups who have a pointed interest in doctoring the past. Unlike the fellow in this video, my concern is not that young people won’t appreciate the human quality of undoctored music, but rather that they will. Not everyone will, of course, but I don’t think anyone who grew up when I did would dare to put much hope in something good being popular. No, my concern is that the trend in question, of doctoring old music, points to the bigger trend of (post)modern attempts to burn the past. In the case of media, the most obvious explanation has to do with simple greed. But erasing the past also gives one an authoritative monopoly on repackaging and reselling its contents, and that is a powerful thing. Ironically, this is exactly the kind of thing that the early purveyors of postmodern thought wanted to prevent. That might seem like a heavy place to go when talking about paid music streaming, but human reliance on the digital pipeline has only increased since its inception, and I wonder how many more bait and switch routines we’ll see in the coming years.
But as for young people, I’m not too worried. About as many people care about good music now as they did when I was young. The fact is that there is probably always going to be a group of people out there who enjoy experimenting with different sounds. That really has nothing to do with trends, but it does have something to do with the wild souls of human beings that feel drawn to certain variations of sounds. In some way, the trendsetters, even when digital augmentation was unavailable, always seemed to hold up technical precision as a rather lofty ideal. But those few who, for whatever reason, deign to take just a few more steps deeper into the world of music are probably going to be bucking the trends anyway. They will find their own way, just as they always have. But I do hope that the digital world does not make doing so that much harder than it needs to be for the sake of making a few extra dollars.
Additionally, the news presented in this video really does nothing for us who have always had to defend electronic music as a true artistic endeavor. Ironically, I always felt that the real trick to making electronic music that wasn’t just for dance clubs was in what the artist had to do to put the human element back into the music. In many ways, that is the “art” of electronic music – freeing it from its reductive roots and surpassing the stereotypes. I once saw a video of Portishead, and a guy was playing the digital drums live. He didn’t need to, right? Or maybe he really did.
