uTopianTurtleTop

studying the nostalgias


Simon Reynolds is discussing with John Darnielle the ubiquity of the nostalgia industry, what that says to us about our senses of time and aesthetic progress, and what historical antecedents of the nostalgia industry may be.

A few reactions, not in disagreement with Simon or John, just riffing:

Item. Oldies radio has badly skewed our sense of the past. People have forgotten that Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Perry Como had big hits throughout the ‘60s. What we think of as pop nostalgia for that era is not nostalgia for the pop moment, but for the generational moment, or for a generational divide as it played out in that pop moment.

Item. I agree with Simon that the idea of “development” or “progress” in an artist’s career, or in a pop style, seems to have waned. It seems to have flourished for maybe 25 years, from the mid-‘60s to the late-‘80s; from, say, “Rubber Soul” to U2’s late ‘80s stuff (by which time I had lost the thread of pop music, so my dates may be way off here). What’s interesting to me is that pop music criticism has had next to no musical vocabulary with which to discuss musical changes within the scope of a style or a single musician’s career, or between styles either. Critics have been cognizant of the changes, but have had to talk about them in impressionistic ways, or by focusing on the lyrics. For me, the constant contrast is with jazz criticism, which has had a well-developed musical vocabulary to celebrate the changes in jazz style over time, and a strong narrative to tell the story. (And note: jazz critics were doing this already back in the ‘30s, when jazz was a mainstream popular style and not a specialized, small sub-market; critics might carp about a Benny Goodman record, say, because it “broke no new ground,” already in the ‘30s.) Jazz critics have emphasized rhythm and harmony to tell the story of the changes of style in jazz over time. This emphasis misses fascinating developments, such as Mingus’s brilliant extensions of jazz compositional form in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The story of the changes in rock styles would have to emphasize songform and timbre more than jazz historical criticism has, though rhythmic changes from Girl Group to Funk to Techno are important to the story as well.

Item. Simon asks about historical antecedents to the nostalgia industry. I don’t think he’d disagree that a sense of nostalgia imbues some of the earliest recorded human stories. The story of Eve & Adam’s expulsion from Eden evinces a nostalgia for a better past. Urban fantasies of a happy bucolic past go back to pre-Christian Greece; 3rd century BCE urban sophisticate Theocritus founded the pastoral poem of how happy the shepherds must be without our urban stresses, which in our era survived in cowboy movies and songs (a friend once said to me, “There have always been more socialists than cowboys in America”), and on down to trucker songs. This is a different question than the industry to promote past art. Currier & Ives may be a precursor.

Item. Popular verse of the 19th century stayed popular for decades. For example, Samuel Woodworth included the massively nostalgic poem “The Old Oaken Bucket” in his Poems, Odes, Songs, and Other Metrical Effusions of 1818. According to Martin Gardner in his anthology Best Remembered Poems, it “was reprinted over and over again in newspapers, magazines, school readers, anthologies and in illustrated books containing only that one poem. Currier and Ives honored the bucket with two colored lithographs.” I found a copy of one of those illustrated books containing only this one poem on the bookshelf of the family cottage my great-grandparents built in 1917 or 1918. I don’t know how many decades it had been since anybody had looked at this book; nor do I know how or why which great-great-ancestor acquired it; it’s inscribed as a Christmas gift of 1893 “To Dear Lizzie,” and I’m not aware of any Lizzies on that branch of the family tree. In this edition, the poem’s 30 lines receive 15 illustrations. The book is copyrighted 1881, 62 years after the poem’s first appearance in book form. (Copyright law was different then; Woodworth and his estate got no money from all the reprints.) “I Want to Hold Your Hand” still has a ways to go before it gives “The Old Oaken Bucket” a run for its money. Someone set the bucket to music, but I’ve never heard the song. (Note: Gardner’s book has an indefensible title and forthrightly idiosyncratic editing standards, but I still highly recommend it, especially in conjunction with his even better follow-up, Famous Poems from Bygone Days, which doesn’t have the burden of pretending that anybody remembers the poems any more.)

Item. The music of Glenn Miller has never gone out of style. Miller died in 1944; the still existing Glenn Miller Orchestra was formed in 1956, and there are now Glenn Miller Orchestras in England and Germany too (scroll down).



That all said, I still agree with Simon that the present ubiquity of Boomer music still feels different, but I’m not sure if that wouldn’t be because the Boomer generation is simply wealthier, collectively and individually, than past (or subsequent) generations. About 10 years ago I was bicycling through Seattle’s University district and accidentally found myself on Fraternity Row. At the doorstep of some big old house with large Greek letters in front, a pile of female students were singing a song about their sorority to the tune of “Down on the Corner.” It occurred to me that none of them had even been born when Creedence recorded the song. I’m not sure exactly how that’s different than women my mom’s age singing pre-swing tunes in their sorority singing group in the late ‘50s, but I tend to agree with Simon: I felt significantly less of a sense that “this is old-fashioned music” coming from the ‘90s sisters than I’d bet my mom’s generation had about “Sweet Adeline.”


I was just about to finish this post when the phone rang. It was my mom. She had gone to see a friend tap dance in a tribute to Irving Berlin today. We talked about whether my son & I should come home for Christmas; my wife can’t come because of her job, and I hate the idea of Christmas without her, but the dispensers of prognoses say that my dad’s illness makes the odds likely that this will be his last Christmas. Dad’s responding well so far to treatment, and he could live for years, but the average with his diagnosis is more a matter of months than years. If you can’t imagine how such a conversation could bring up many powerful emotions, including a powerful sense of personal nostalgia, you will have no interest in “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

And here it is:

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollections present them to view!
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hung in the well.

That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when return'd from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing!
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips!
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hangs in the well.

Among other things, nostalgia is a hopeless defense against mortality.