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Here's my latest mantra: "I will not fall prey to yuppie nostalgia!" OK, I don't really have a mantra, and I can't be a proper yuppie because I drive a car made in Detroit rather than Düsseldorf (and it's not a sport utility vehicle). But the cultural winds are trying to sweep me, you and anyone else who cares about music into something more menacing than a time machine--it's a dastardly new invention called the vacuum of reminiscence. During his witty performance at the Aladdin Theater three weeks ago, Robyn Hitchcock--a fortysomething himself, but one with a young or at least sarcastic-as-hell fan base--joked about this trend: "I see Roger McGuinn will be here next month," Hitchcock said, pausing for effect. "Are we going forward in time or back?" Hitchcock probably hasn't heard McGuinn's last album, Live from Mars (Hollywood), a concert recording filled with spoken and sung remembrances of things past--from his work as a songwriter in the Brill Building to the late-'60s heyday of his band the Byrds. The songs and stories are divided into separate tracks: The 24th track features McGuinn recalling how he and Gene Clark wrote "Eight Miles High" while flying back from England, having just met the Beatles and the Stones; applause follows; track 25 is McGuinn performing the song. McGuinn, who turns 56 a few days prior to his Aladdin show, joins a growing field of aging stars of the past who've reemerged after a decades-long post-'60s haze to feed off of yuppie nostalgia. The problem is, it's dragging people like me in. The only reason I know where I was when Woodstock took place is because I must've been in a crib. One of the main culprits behind this vacuum of reminiscence is a great man, a supreme and overlooked songwriter named Ray Davies. The former Kinks singer and guitarist borrowed from the literary trend of memoirs and penned X-Ray in 1996, which he then adapted for a stage show called The Storyteller. He started with a few concerts in major cities, and very quickly it became evident that the eloquent Davies had stumbled on a brilliant idea: Turn the youthful misdeeds of the '60s and early '70s into comedic fodder, mix the anecdotes with live acoustic versions of the songs that came out of said misdeeds, and voilà, the crowds come flocking like geese to a freshly fertilized field. The cable music channel VH-1 noticed Davies' triumph and turned the concept into a series called Storytellers, which began by inviting performers like Eric Clapton in for a trip down memory lane. But the show has recently skewed frighteningly into instant nostalgia--a recent episode featured Hanson. What Davies, McGuinn and others are doing isn't wrong or evil; in fact, it's often quite entertaining. We needn't feel threatened by nostalgia, but we should exercise caution in patronizing any artist who perches on a barstool, peers meaningfully into the stage lights and begins a sentence with the words "I remember." I may sit in the audience at the Aladdin and laugh along with the yuppies trying to recapture their youth, but only because McGuinn's songs still influence today's songwriters. As an after-show readaptation to our current culture, I'll listen not to the Byrds but to the Beastie Boys. I will not fall prey to yuppie nostalgia. The NXNW Apologist: This week's WW features an alphabetical list of the 375 acts invited to perform at North by Northwest '98, a list that will undoubtedly cause joy for some and misery for others. Those who made the cut are among an elite group; of the 1,700 applicants for this year's festival, 114 from Portland were accepted. More than 300 local bands and singer-songwriters were rejected. Festival coordinator Charlie Llewellin had this to say: "We were swamped with tapes from Portland bands, and we couldn't find room for all of them. Unfortunately, a lot of very good bands didn't get in. "Around a third of the acts that will play are from Portland," Llewellin added. "That being said, from the beginning the conference has always been about the whole West Coast scene and now has expanded to include more international and national acts. We feel strongly that this is vital for the long-term health of NXNW. We'll never be able to include everybody, and we try to get a decent amount of turnover in showcasing artists to keep the event fresh." |
