Music Banter - View Single Post - The Saturday 6-Pack

jadis · 11-20-2022, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by innerspaceboy

1. The moment (a song, a video, an event) you knew you were out of touch with pop culture cause you've grown old. Like what The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show would be to you if you were a Sinatra guy born in 1927, that kind of thing.

I recall firmly raising my eyebrows when I saw Spice Girls' "Wannabe" on MTV in 1996. That was when I decisively tuned out of broadcast media and pop culture forever. Haven't heard much of anything new since.

I love what John Lydon had to say about them

Quote:

Predictably, Lydon is just as dismissive of modern rock music, in particular Oasis. "I like them as chaps, but I loathe their music," he says. "My mum and dad used to play that Sixties s**t and it drove me mad then. The Sex Pistols opened a lot of doors 20 years ago, now I have to sit back and watch the likes of Oasis close them. They're so naff."

The Spice Girls, on the other hand, get a Lydon seal of approval. "I like the Spice Girls because they don't pretend to be anything they're not," he explains. "They're just good fun and they make kids' lives a bit less miserable. The Spice Girls are music hall in the same way that the Pistols were," Lydon grins. "They are so English, they could not come from anywhere but this country." He cackles. "In fact, I like them so much I bought the dolls."

Quote:

Originally Posted by innerspaceboy

This reminds me of a relevant excerpt from the book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past by Simon Reynolds. On pg 201 he writes:

Remember the Pop Boutique store in central London with its slogan 'Don't follow fashion. Buy something that's already out of date'? Just as vintage can have an undercurrent of recalcitrance towards fashion, similarly it is possible for rock nostalgia to contain dissident potential. If Time has become annexed by capitalism's cynical cycles of product shifting, one way to resist that is to reject temporality altogether. The revivalist does this by fixating on one era and saying: 'Here I make my stand.' By fixing identity to the absolute and abiding supremacy of one sound and one style, the revivalist says, ' This is me.'

Sounds like something Mark Fisher would write.