by Kieran Curran
“The Past Is The Present – Kiss My Ass”[1] : Retro Revivalism in ‘People Carrier’ Music Festivals[2] of 2013
In conversation with my girlfriend over breakfast recently, it became apparent that the marquee line-up of the Download festival – devoted mainly to the intertwined generic spaces of heavy rock/metal – represented, for both of us, a snapshot into (admittedly, slightly shameful) music tastes of the recent past. For me as a 14/15 year old, Queens Of The Stone Age, Alice In Chains and Korn were part of my regular listening; for her, Bullet For My Valentine, Papa Roach and Korn (again). She couldn’t rightly figure out if the line-up was legitimately for 2013 either – couldn’t this cavalcade of older acts have graced 2008, or 2010?
Despite the internet age moniker of the festival, it seemed that Download now is firmly in the business of replaying older, established acts to its consumer base, in common with most other big name festival draws in the U.K and Ireland. This inspired me to break down the key attractions of the four of the key players on the festival circuit on these islands this summer. As a disclaimer, I apologise in advance for omitting what may or may not be the “next big thing” as determined by the Quietus/the NME/P4K. I am ancient in the context of contemporary postmodern culture (28), and can’t help but feel as out of touch as I no doubt am.
At any rate, brace yourself for an onslaught of the past…
Britain & Ireland
Download
For a start, there’s the aforementioned Download, based at Donington Park in the east Midlands of England, and a key location for seminal/notorious metal “Monsters Of Rock” gigs in the past. The headliners/major acts of the festival (from June 14th to 16th) include Slipknot, Korn, Bullet For My Valentine, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Queens Of The Stone Age, Papa Roach, and Alice In Chains. Commercially viable and misunderstood (apparently) in equal measure, Bullet For My Valentine are the most sprightly of the bunch, having released their key record Scream Aim Fire in early 2008. The rest are of a more mature vintage. Papa Roach’s breakthrough album Infest came out in the year 2000, with subsequent releases ploughing the same angsty, rap-metal furrows to similar commercial success in 2002 (Lovehatetragedy) and 2004 (Getting Away With Murder). Slipknot’s pantomime nu/thrash metal crossover (featuring downtuned guitars, turntables, ‘disturbing’ face-masks and ample growling) was perfected on 2001’s Iowa.
Their progenitors Korn reached the peak of their critical acclaim (surely worth something…maybe) with their first three albums from 1994’s self-titled record to 1998’s rap-metal codifying (to the point of actually including a guest spot from a bonafide rapper in the form of Ice Cube) Follow The Leader. Slightly less generic perhaps than others on the bill, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Rated R (2000), Songs For The Deaf (2002) and Lullabies To Paralyze (2005) are rightly acclaimed for a savvy synthesis of hard rock and psychedelia, though the band are now seemingly in the business of cashing in on their earlier output after the (relative) commercial failure of band-leader Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions project.
It keeps getting progressively old school after this. Alice In Chains are (rightly) inextricably linked with early 90s grunge, with Dirt (1992) probably their strongest expression of their sludgy, semi-nihilistic, guitar-solo inflected aesthetic. Their current live shows – now without the presence of original lead vocalist Layne Staley (whose sad death due to heroin addiction occurred in 2002) – are largely devoted to rehashing/revising this era. Iron Maiden, of course, have continued making music in the noughties, and cannot be accused of taking a break from the business, only to return with an attempt at simply repeating past glories. Nonetheless, they did headline Donington many times during their (arguable) peak in the early to late 1980s, and classic histrionic rock from album sets like The Number Of The Beast (1982) and Seventh Son Of The Seventh Son (1988) are still key centrepieces of their show. Lastly, Motorhead are a paragon of the dictum that ‘heavy metal’s not dead’, ably peddling the grinding, somewhat melodic metallic thrash sound they perfected on Overkill (1979) and the perennial rock pub favourite ‘Ace of Spades’ (1980).
Glastonbury
Next up is the frankly awe-inspiringly massive line-up of what always seems like the festival for everyone – Glastonbury. An institution (at least historically) based on a hippy-ish indulgence of an “anything goes” approach (i.e we’ll have a wee bit of reggae and rap to whittle down the rockism), Glastonbury likes to see itself as a festival that you, your Dad and your truculent teenage niece can all enjoy together, in a familial embrace of muddy surroundings and middlebrow cultural capital. Except this year, it’s decidedly slanted towards you and your (presumably white) Dad. The Arctic Monkeys – an outfit who have, from day one, sought to package their sound and image as an average, Northern pop post-punk band from 1979 – are one of the more youthful features. Chic (in this incarnation, effectively just the immortal funk riff-monger that is Nile Rodgers) and Steve Winwood’s presence ensure that you can truly party like it’s 1982. Sinead O’Connor may or may not be playing cod-reggae songs are part of her set (if not – more’s the pity), but the ‘Glasto’ crowds can probably rely on some ‘incendiary’ between song patter, and a ‘get your IPhones out’ rendition of ‘Nothing Compares To You’. Public Enemy will no doubt entertain, though mainly through their appeal to an audience that thinks that hip-hop reached its apotheosis in 1988 with politicised rant lyrics and sampling ‘Angel of Death’ by Slayer. Public Image Limited – back on the post-punk revivalist gravy train, along with (better) bands from the era such as Gang Of Four and Scritti Politti – will inflict a strong sense of dread on the assembled bourgeoisie of Glastonbury, with a hearty dose of John Lydon’s neo-monetarist cynicism for good measure.
Yet the major draw – and the major reason for critiquing Glastonbury this year, of all years – is the choice of The Rolling Stones as a headlining act. The Rolling Stones – those arch-exponents of spectacular, overpriced codger rock. A band which reached its peak in the early 1970s, who are on a consistent, regurgitant tour/crawl around the globe, playing what are effectively cover versions of their old songs, is to be the marquee act of the U.K’s most iconic (for better or worse) festival. At least Bob Dylan messes up the sound and syntax of his words these days; though probably unintentionally. Expect to hear ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ with considerably less soul than delivered by a hard-bitten alcoholic at Saturday night pub karaoke.
Electric Picnic
Lamentably marketed as a ‘boutique festival’ on its inception as an alternative to the ostensibly more base pleasures of Oxegen in 2004, Ireland’s Electric Picnic is in a bit of a pickle as of late. In austerity Eireann, ‘boutique’ (keywords: less capacity, more expensive, chai tea proliferation) has less of an appeal. With this in mind, it’s no great surprise that Electric Picnic’s programmers have opted for a decidedly safe, big name, ‘serious music’ inspired retro line up.
Fatboy Slim – the popular house music monger who reached his tipping point in the year 2000 – is the main headline act, and this will satisfy all who wish to revisit the popular (club) culture of their youth with much more swampy conditions underfoot (it is Ireland, after all). Bjork is a nice selection, as she has always seemed to attempt to push the envelope with each album release post her early 90s debut as a solo artist, and will be one of the few chances Irish music fans will get to see her perform live (she rarely – if ever – performs in conventional indoor auditoria). My Bloody Valentine are on the festival circuit this summer (playing both Primaveras, as well as T In The Park/Oxegen), in the hope that their noise will travel well in the outdoors. David Byrne & St Vincent fuse the quite old and the quite new in their sets, yet the presence of Ocean Colour Scene, Johnny Marr, Black Uhuru and the ever unpredictable Wu Tang Clan offers a batch of safe names that will appeal to a core constituency of those craving ‘classic’ entertainment. The Knife are a bit of an unknown quantity – having reconfigured after a lengthy hiatus – and reports of their recent gigs suggest a degree of performance art elements trumping elements of actually performing music.
T In The Park (Oxegen)
After analysing these few festivals, potentially the most interesting of the lot is, surprisingly (to me) T In The Park/Oxegen (12th to the 14th of July). T In The Park (Scotland) has the same line-up (but on different days), and is organised by the same promotional conglomerate as Oxegen (Ireland), hence their grouping together here. Perhaps abiding memories of tents being set on fire and hard-drinking morons in the campsite of Oxegen 2004 have given me a predisposition to dislike this festival, alas…
Whilst some of the names are not so musically interesting to me, at least there is a surfeit of current acts on this line-up (as well as the obligatory ‘classic’ acts). Mumford & Sons – perhaps the musical embodiment of middle class Toryism in contemporary culture – are an undoubtedly successful act that are ‘of the times’, even if their act consists of execrable rehashes of elements of older, more ‘authentic’ forms of folk and indie culture. Calvin Harris is a young Scottish dj/producer who broke through to the mainstream with an electronic pop song (‘Acceptable In The 80s’, 2008) that neatly surfed on the waves of TopShop sponsored 1980s neo-nostalgia, aimed at children born in the 1990s. Ireland’s answer to Maroon 5 (ouch!) The Script are a hugely commercially successful band of vapid, airbrushed muzak technicians; they produce the sort of songs that only severe hypnotism/alcoholic self-abuse can remove from your brain, remaining firmly and insipidly embedded in your mind from the one, unfortunate and unintended half-listen you gave to them off the radio in your Mum’s kitchen. They are all in their 30s, and their breakthrough single – “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” (sadly, not a tribute to a human statue) – was later used as the theme song for an iconic American lingerie company’s fashion show in 2011; merely reinforcing the often decidedly un-erotic tendencies of those who purport to market ‘sexiness’.
Alt-J, winners of the 2012 Mercury Music Prize and exponents of a generically polyamorous sound, represent a decidedly more quirky form of the nebulous term ‘indie’ than some of the older mainstays of T In The Oxegen. Frank Ocean – a member of the hip hop collective/t-shirt selling phenomenon that is Odd Future – is a strong choice as an (ostensibly) r&b artist that is i) gay and ii) intelligent. Rihanna, another r&b star, is a far bigger name and – though I’m not so into her music – is certainly of the moment enough to warrant headlining a pop festival in 2013. As an aside, her predilection for showing up late to perform might clash with the rigid scheduling tendencies of music festivals (provided the fans aren’t too ossified to notice).
On the more overtly retro side of the line-up, the avant-rock futurists (of 1991) My Bloody Valentine are back, gamely attempting to make their wall of Marshall stacks and effects pedals count for a sonic something in a massive, open field. The ageless robots/sexagenarians of Kraftwerk at least package themselves as atemporal; they are sufficiently new-seeming to appeal to quasi-modernist dance fans, and sufficiently canonised to appeal to readers of Hot Press and Uncut. Lastly I will mention a triumvirate of moribund that will satisfy all those souls who wish to relive the turgid nature of late 1990s sub-Britpop: Travis (the quintessence of uncool formed at the Glasgow School Of Art, of all places), Beady Eye (the sound of Liam Gallagher’s retro-mod boots stamping on the face of humanity for all eternity), and the Stereophonics (the sound of overpriced denim and Lynx aftershave).
Despite obvious “grown up” choices, T In The Park/Oxegen at least seeks to engage a bit more meaningfully with contemporary pop culture as it is, certainly compared to the other major festivals discussed hitherto. This is in large part due to its broad-strokes approach in attempting to appeal to very broad constituencies and target markets. Crucially, however, I feel it is the festival’s identification as one of ‘pop’ rather than ‘rock’ that sets it apart; even in the much-maligned genre of metal, ‘rock’ demands that (at the very least) its fans take the music seriously – pop does not, hence the lower percentage overall of canonical acts at T In The Park/Oxegen, as well as the increased sense of a (comparatively) exciting eclecticism.
Reasons
Why is this domination by the present by past musics so preeminent now? For one – as amply demonstrated in his recent book Retromania – Simon Reynolds argues that, not only are the past art works of bands more easily available, but they are more easily marketed. Being part of a canon of “significant music”, acts as different in content as Public Image Limited and the Rolling Stones can trade on their reputation as having pioneered certain enduring forms of popular music (post-punk and blues-rock, respectively). Their albums are amply reissued, re-reviewed, replayed and re-sold by a broad network of media outlets – Mojo magazine, for instance, can be relied upon to produce at least one Rolling Stones feature article a year, presumably serving the dual purpose of massaging the egos of classic rock fans and ultimately funding a fresh ivory backscratcher for Mick Jagger. And with a slightly less baldly ‘classic rock’ approach, ATP’s Don’t Look Back series/ATP festivals as a whole frequently present older bands performing a whole album produced by their younger selves. ATP’s apparently ‘final’ holiday camp based festival in the U.K will be headlined this November by a band who reached their peak in 1977 – Television, performing Marquee Moon, in its entirety. The message is clear: the (slightly repackaged) past sells. The “popular music museum” approach is not only evident in the the appeal of such events, but in the construction of you, the “serious music fan”’s ever-so-eclectic vinyl record collection. Actual museums haven’t missed a trick with this cultural phenomenon, and – in a recent exhibition at the V&A on “Postmodernism” – an attendee had the privilege of gawking at assembled mass-produced artefacts, including Grandmaster Flash’s turntables (housed in a glass case), and David Byrne’s oversized white suit from Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (1984), expertly elevated so as to enhance the aura of its ostensibly ‘mystical’ pop-cultural capital.
Another element could be a taboo (to some) take on contemporary popular music culture, namely that everything new in pop is either substandard (or mediocre) nowadays. A trite point to make – and chiming with every popular cultural naysayer from the last 300 years (at least) – but it is worth considering in what sense this is valid. Everyone acknowledges that not every cultural-historical period is the same – who in their right mind would draw bald equivalencies between medieval life and modern life, for instance? Different socio-economic and political conditions were prevalent in each era, each continent, each nation even. It makes sense to consider the cultural background of what is – to put it bluntly – ‘good art’. Attempting to set subjectivity and aesthetics to one side for the moment, two examples I can think of are Anglo-Irish literature in the late 19th/early 20th century period, and punk rock in the U.S in the 1970s. In the first case, Anglo-Irish literature emerges not simply from the marked ‘genius’ of the Artist, but from the social and cultural upheavals of Irish society in this period: the breakdown of traditional land-owning class hegemony, the effects of post-Famine migration on Irish culture, the continuous influence and proliferation of Irish nationalist ideology, industrialisation and its effects on Irish rural life, the involvement of Irish troops in colonial exploits in South Africa, mainland Europe and beyond. Writers were certainly living in interesting times, but times in which alternative/oppositional ideologies and ‘ways of seeing’ (to borrow a term from John Berger) were possible and, indeed, palpable. It is out of this maelstrom of residual, emergent and dominant cultures (as cultural theorist/historian Raymond Williams would put it) that the resonant, imaginative expression of Synge, Yeats and Joyce (amongst many others) emerge.
In the second case, punk rock in the United States happens as the decline of the New Deal consensus of Roosevelt et al coincides with the nascent rumblings of neo-liberal ‘Reaganomics’. Post-OPEC stagnation, post-hippy cynicism (did the lived reality of most Americans chime with the coked up bliss of The Eagles/so-called ‘yacht rock’), and post-industrial washout (particularly in the Ohio cities which fostered bands like Devo and Rocket From The Tombs/Pere Ubu) all contribute to the turbulent conditions reflected in the angst, opposition and ‘year zero’ experimentation of punk. The rise in availability (and subsequent market dominance) of the long playing 33 and a third no doubt helped matters further, providing musical backdrops and influences at relatively low cost.
Following on from this, I would argue that certain eras simply do not match up in terms of the quality of artistic expression with others. My favoured example of this is the Restoration period in English literature. In an era of post Cromwellian consolidation, the literary work of what is considered ‘canonical’ in the Restoration era is fairly barren when compared to the output of the Renaissance/Elizabethan period or (even) the temporally much closer Civil War period. John Dryden is the stand-out in poetry, yet who would (sincerely) argue of his superiority over, say, John Milton? The more characteristic poetry of the time is perhaps Cavalier verse (e.g the Earl of Rochester) – pompous expressions of sexual/alcoholic excess, articulated by paid up members of the gentry; sound (without fury) signifying nothing much. Theatrical history in the Restoration period is notable more due to advances in staging technology (Aphra Behn’s The Rover [1677] is one such example) than advances in depicting the human condition.
Cultural theorists (primarily of a Marxist bent) have argued in the past that artistic production and cultural texts go hand in hand with the prevailing material conditions of capitalist production. Fredric Jameson, in perhaps his key text Postmodernism, Or The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism (1991), argues that the dominant mode of late capitalism (i.e our current epoch) is that of rehashing and repositioning old forms, employing the technique of ‘pastiche’ in order to present a straight-faced reinterpretation of old forms, packaged as ‘the new’. On this note, Star Wars (1977) is resolutely not a cutting-edge work of science-fiction, but rather a pastiche of much older (wild) Western narratives of good vs evil, and trekking into the wilderness to weed out the evil-doers (albeit with shiny spaceman outfits).
Another Marxist influenced thinker – Mark Fisher – identifies the root cause of contemporary artistic banality in the terminal state of late capitalism as it stands in 2013. I hereafter will touch on some of the ideas contained in his book Capitalist Realism (2009) and a guest lecture he gave entitled ‘The Slow Cancellation Of The Future’ in Edinburgh just a few months ago. After the banking crisis of 2008 – during which the supremacy and strength of neo-liberalism was obviously hamstrung – no alternatives emerged with which to depose this clearly failed ideology. Now, in the context of austerity ridden Europe, the rhetoric of ‘there is no alternative’ resounds. In the absence of new thoughts on moving beyond this stale period of Western culture, we are thus duty bound to repeat the past (and if the past formula sells, then all the better). There is also comfort in nostalgia, particularly at a point in human history where work has become more precarious and casualised than ever before, and the gap between the richest and the poorest is higher than ever.
The past – in music – is also comforting in the context of the sheer, mind-boggling amount of music available to us now in the Web 2.0 ‘utopia’ of Spotify, Youtube and the ubiquitous torrent of torrents. In the face of infinite choice, why not choose to fall back on old favourites from the pre Web 2.0 era, or – as a younger fan – to an era in which music was apparently not only ‘better’, but distributed via quaint cultural arcana such as word of mouth, the radio and record shops?
Finally, the fact of ever-ageing rock audiences is also a key factor in maintaining retro-domination. No longer is rock the business of distilling youthful expression – now, more than ever, there is a burgeoning market aimed at ageing post-punks (once, the most self-consciously iconoclastic sensibility in popular music history) dusting off their (now) ill-fitting band t-shirts and turfing it down to see Public Image Limited play one or two songs from Metal Box at the Roundhouse. In an economy which seeks to omni-market everything, it seems that your past can be accessed, through a £30 ticket and numerous pints of ale…
Conclusion?
Rather than come across as somewhat aloof, I have to admit guilty complicity in this whole process of past elevation. As I write this, I am listening to (on vinyl, of course) a reissue of the Velvet Underground’s self-titled third album, originally released in 1969. It is enjoyable – I’m not listening to Metal Machine Music, after all – yet certainly elements of its repackaging irk me. The ‘perfect’ simulation of the album cover and credits, the ever-so-exact reproduction of the original MGM labelling in the centre of the record (“Long-Playing – Micro-Groove – Unbreakable”), yet combined with the giveaway clue of the heavier vinyl)…this object wants me to forget, as much as possible, that I’m listening to something whose very existence and re-release is predicted on the assumption of nostalgia for a past era I never knew.
Oh well, whatever, Nevermind… I just know that, if a people-carrier festival beckons for me this summer (admittedly, this is unlikely), I’d prefer it to be T In The Park. At least there I could wallow in both the present and the past, whilst praying that my tent will remain immune to fire damage.
[1] I make no apologies about quoting Kanye West so prominently here; for further brilliant/ridiculous lyrical references of Mr West’s, see the source text: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
[2] To coin a phrase – the festivals discussed in this article aim at a fairly wide audience, as opposed to much smaller, niche affairs such as All Tomorrow’s Parties and the twee/indie pop festival Indietracks
Artricle 