Sixties and Oldies (fwd)

[Brian Siano]

Forwarded message:
> From: Paul Mackin <mackin at allware.com>
> To: pynchon-l at sfu.ca
> Subject: Sixties and Oldies
> 
> I have been thinking about this possility in connection with the pop
> music of the sixties and ever after.  Seems to me there were
> two important innovations--1) the political content of the commercial
> songs we listen to, and 2) the concept of the "Oldy".
> 
> First, the oldy. Often, here on the P-list, reference is made to 
> particular pieces of pop music originating at widely spaced points in 
> time decades apart. To someone in _my_ age group (Big Band Era) this is 
> slightly incredible. Younger listers may find it hard to believe, but this
> dredging up of old pop music is a relatively new possibility for the
> great majority of people. Before the sixties (and even into the early 
> seventies), once a song was heard or a movie seen for a few weeks,
> for all practical purposes that was pretty much it. The radio or movie 
> theatres would never have thought of playing the old stuff again and
> again as is done now. The assumption was nobody would want it. And as
> far as content is concerned, this was almost understandable.  

	This is an extremely good point, but I think it can be
generalized to the culture as a whole. Movies were once as disposable
as popular songs (the studios were cranking a new one out every week),
and until the 1950s or so, revivals of older films were pretty much
unheard of. 
	There's a book by Drew and Josh Alan Friedman titled _Any
Resemblance to Persons living of Dead is Strictly Coincidental_, and
much of their work focused (at the time) on old vaudeville comedians
whose careers extended into the early television era. One of the two
or three forewords/liner notes to the book points out that in
vaudeville, anyone could get on stage, good or bad, and since their
performances just went off into the aether, nobody cared that much.
But about halfway through this Recorded Century, someone realized that
this aether was now _retrievable_, and since television (especially)
needed to be filled 24 hours a day, a lot of these genuinely awful
comics got a kind of second (Thanatoid?) life. Sure, we got to see
such greats as Abbott and Costello, or the Three Stooges... but we got
a lot of grotesques, too.

	Drawing this back to music, I think the best illustration of
the "oldies" influence came up relatively recently. This year, one of
the biggest seling albums is the Beatles' _Anthology_. Thirty years
before, the Beatles were the biggest entertainment phenomenon
existing. Thirty years before _that_, swing was still a glimmer in
Benny Goodman's eye. I don't feel prepared to make any guesses as to
what this means (the enduring value of the Beatles, or the stagnation
of post-1950's culture, or the inability of modern american culture to
look further back than the rock and roll era).
	But this "oldies" stuff applies equally well to television,
with warped notions of "classic" TV, to the development of cinema
history and revival showings and the like... in fact, the whole term
"postmodern" has ever meant anything more profound than the ability to
recognize and somewhat imitate styles and methods of the past. I like
to think of it using Pynchon's metaphor of "cultural bandwidth" that
Slothrop feels evaporating as he stands in that giant concrete bowl
about halfway through _GR_-- where someone whose mind can range over
1950's kitsch, 1920's Art Deco, 1930's delta blues music, 19th-century
novels, 1960's hippie culture...

> Does any of this make sense, and can the different elements be
> tied together? I'm hoping some cultural historian (or whoever) out there 
> who has paid closer attention to the music scene that I have will come to 
> the rescue. One possibility is that the political content of music has 
> made _interest_ in it more lasting than previously. The problem with _that_ 
> hypothesis is that changing technology as usual is likely to swamp any 
> other effects we would like to examine. There is ample reason to fill the 
> airwaves with whatever can be found, old and new. The need for filler
> between demands that we consume is inexhaustable.

	Like I said: you've made a good point here.


Brian Siano - siano at cceb.med.upenn.edu