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Post Info TOPIC: Anybody read Retromania by Simon Reynolds?


Loudmouth

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Anybody read Retromania by Simon Reynolds?
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Anyone looking for a really good music read this Christmas could do no worse than getting hold of a copy of Retromania, by music journalist Simon Reynolds. It's certainly the best book about the current malaise in the music industry I've read.

One really interesting chapter covers the naughties, when music stopped going forward, and started just sounding retro. All those Strokes, Franz Ferdinands, libertines, always just sounding like the were threading water, and not really defining a modern sound.Amy Winehouse was just so retro in the naughties.

Some brilliant chapters about the decline of cd sales, and how too much choice and easy of access to music is maybe not such a good thing. Amazing insights about the way the Internet has made us all creatures of very short attention spans, always chopping and changing and never sticking or settling with anything, but being caught up in a digital never never land.

Anyone 'worried' about the way technology has impacted on the traditional way of 'consuming' music would really appreciate this book. Reynolds poses lots of really interesting questions about the influence of punk, the birth of the musical curator, how old music and band reformations make more money than any new acts, and about something which I had not thought about too much, how there is almost no distinguishable sound of now.

I'm not really doing the book justice with my review, but Reynolds as a music fan of a certain age, no Luddite, articulates so well what many of us feel- and the book covers many interesting by ways on the interface between technology, music consumption and plain old articulating the inarticulate about how the musical  past has had such a strong influence on the present.



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In the Long Grass

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Saw this over summer (sure it was in an HMV) and was vaguely tempted then. Sounds like one for the Christmas list so thanks for the glowing review.

Perversely I think there is a sound of now, but not one I can easily describe. Buy Now 83 when it comes out in a fortnight and listen back to back, and I'm sure the commonality will surface on a good 50% of tracks. 

ps. Would have replied earlier but only got to third paragraph and got distracted biggrin



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