When you’re an aging fortysomething rocker, there is no narrative more tempting than “new music these days isn’t as good” or “the music industry is in decline”.
As someone who spent her teenage years listening to Mozart, Simon & Garfunkel, and Prairie Home Companion, there's a lot I can get behind in this. It took me years to appreciate some of what was hot and new when I was a teen. The idea seems to segue nicely into Mr Spotify's recent tweet about some music (excuse me, 'content') having staying power over decades, which was the cause of some amusement on the BBC's classical station this morning. Decades, eh? Gosh! Now here's some Vivaldi.
Another observation, and maybe this is more my circumstance than anything more absolute, but: Last weekend there was a beer festival at the pub across the street. They got a few local bands in to play. These were mostly late-middle-aged men playing what I think of as 'oldies,' mostly '50s and '60s tunes I guess. I realised, unavoidably listening to them through my single-glazed windows, that I used to hear these songs everywhere – there used to be whole radio stations that only played oldies – but I hadn't heard any of them in ages. Are they slipping out of the popular consciousness? Or are we becoming so siloed in our musical tastes and listening that we simply aren't exposed to anything we haven't personally chosen? Or which is anonymous enough, or ubiquitous enough, to put on in the background of places where you can't listen to it anyway? Techno may have roared out of the clubs in the 90s but now it's muzak at Urban Outfitters. Is that progress? Are there girl bands covering Taylor Swift in basements in the Midwest, or do they just watch her on their phones? Seems to me that for music to be truly folk, it has to be reproduced, in some form, by the folk – is DIY even a part of the wider culture now, as it would have been in the youth of the bands I was listening to? Putting a Spotify track on repeat is easy; learning to play the guitar is hard. Are people putting in the effort to perpetuate the music themselves?
Wonderful thoughts. I agree, I think you're right that communal reproduction/transmission is necessary to call something "folk". Maybe the pop-rock oldies of the 50s and 60s are fading but my guess is that a lot of it isn't; the odds of the Beatles being on heavy rotation in 75 years are extremely high, and this speaks to the folksiness of their music, the way it worms its way into lives and perspectives so that people want to reproduce it.
Another way to look at this is that when I was a teenager the Rolling Stones were "oldies". This was in 1995. Proportionately, that means that Nirvana should now be "oldies", too, but somehow it isn't. Maybe this means that the category is becoming meaningless, which is kind of what I was arguing for above: who cares how "Fresh" something is, if it gets reproduced in a relatively organic way?
Finally, I agree with your excellent idea that the true test of all of this is whether something is just consumed or if it actually gets reproduced. This can even be in Karaoke bars, where (so far as I can tell) a huge number what should be called "oldies" still have a dominant position in the hazy, drunken evenings. And techno has largely failed this test because it is designed to just be consumed (and created by an elite group of producers with sophisticated equipment). Time will tell on T. Swift. A lot of 13 year olds singing her in the shower. She is about as proportionately famous as the Beatles. Could happen...
As someone who spent her teenage years listening to Mozart, Simon & Garfunkel, and Prairie Home Companion, there's a lot I can get behind in this. It took me years to appreciate some of what was hot and new when I was a teen. The idea seems to segue nicely into Mr Spotify's recent tweet about some music (excuse me, 'content') having staying power over decades, which was the cause of some amusement on the BBC's classical station this morning. Decades, eh? Gosh! Now here's some Vivaldi.
Another observation, and maybe this is more my circumstance than anything more absolute, but: Last weekend there was a beer festival at the pub across the street. They got a few local bands in to play. These were mostly late-middle-aged men playing what I think of as 'oldies,' mostly '50s and '60s tunes I guess. I realised, unavoidably listening to them through my single-glazed windows, that I used to hear these songs everywhere – there used to be whole radio stations that only played oldies – but I hadn't heard any of them in ages. Are they slipping out of the popular consciousness? Or are we becoming so siloed in our musical tastes and listening that we simply aren't exposed to anything we haven't personally chosen? Or which is anonymous enough, or ubiquitous enough, to put on in the background of places where you can't listen to it anyway? Techno may have roared out of the clubs in the 90s but now it's muzak at Urban Outfitters. Is that progress? Are there girl bands covering Taylor Swift in basements in the Midwest, or do they just watch her on their phones? Seems to me that for music to be truly folk, it has to be reproduced, in some form, by the folk – is DIY even a part of the wider culture now, as it would have been in the youth of the bands I was listening to? Putting a Spotify track on repeat is easy; learning to play the guitar is hard. Are people putting in the effort to perpetuate the music themselves?
Wonderful thoughts. I agree, I think you're right that communal reproduction/transmission is necessary to call something "folk". Maybe the pop-rock oldies of the 50s and 60s are fading but my guess is that a lot of it isn't; the odds of the Beatles being on heavy rotation in 75 years are extremely high, and this speaks to the folksiness of their music, the way it worms its way into lives and perspectives so that people want to reproduce it.
Another way to look at this is that when I was a teenager the Rolling Stones were "oldies". This was in 1995. Proportionately, that means that Nirvana should now be "oldies", too, but somehow it isn't. Maybe this means that the category is becoming meaningless, which is kind of what I was arguing for above: who cares how "Fresh" something is, if it gets reproduced in a relatively organic way?
Finally, I agree with your excellent idea that the true test of all of this is whether something is just consumed or if it actually gets reproduced. This can even be in Karaoke bars, where (so far as I can tell) a huge number what should be called "oldies" still have a dominant position in the hazy, drunken evenings. And techno has largely failed this test because it is designed to just be consumed (and created by an elite group of producers with sophisticated equipment). Time will tell on T. Swift. A lot of 13 year olds singing her in the shower. She is about as proportionately famous as the Beatles. Could happen...