It's better to burn out than to fade away.
-Neil Young
Too bad that America's insatiable appetite for retro styles hasn't extended much to music. There's a lot of good music in the world already that isn't getting played anywhere, overlooked in our mania for things new and fresh. Forgotten old songs only get into any significant rotation when redone by a modern group (think Pearl Jam's cover of "Last Kiss") - and it's not always a great song that gets remade, anyway.You see the same trend in all other types of consumer art, too: movies, books, you name it. Planet of the Apes and Psycho were great before their remakes, but no one can be bothered unless it's new. Maybe you read Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full. Good for you, but why not pick up The Bonfire of the Vanities? Or something even older by someone even older - have you read Gulliver's Travels? Beowulf?
I'm not trying to portray our country as a collection of ignorant, rootless fools. I'm just wondering why being "new" makes something better. In fact, I'm going so far as to say that it doesn't at all.
Observe the time span covered by oldies radio as it slowly slides towards the present, leaving older music to drop off the brink of the national consciousness. What even qualifies as an oldies station anymore? Major cities might have one FM channel that features music from the '50s, and even that gives way to the '60s more and more. Any station broadcasting older music is probably a jazz station - and those lump the whole century of jazz together onto a single channel.
Today's '60s and '70s stations have met great success (and who determines the "greatest hits of the '60s and '70s" for 105.7, anyway?), but if you're paying any attention to their playlists, you'll notice that most of those channels now throw in the '80s, too. How long before the early '90s join the ranks of nostalgia? Are grunge and the beginnings of rap next up on that timeline?
It's the information age. We could have dozens of stations for all kinds of genres. Why is there only one "classical" station? It may sound ridiculous, but you could have a baroque station somewhere, too. Surely there are more than two types of music from the '50s that merit radio stations.
Just as significant as our ever-updated and condensed definition of an oldie is the quantity of old material that gets flat-out ignored. The playlists on oldies stations are starkly delineated; listen to oldies for a week and you'll hear everything that the radio's ever likely to play. Most people's knowledge of classic American rock and roll extends about as far as the Forrest Gump soundtrack. A "knowledgeable" listener might - if you're lucky - own a few greatest hits albums.
Ask people who grew up during the '50s whether the songs on the radio represent the era accurately, and they'll tell you, "Sure, I know all of this music, but there's a lot more that they don't play."
And let me tell you: the stations aren't ignoring it because it's bad. They're ignoring it because you don't care and don't know the difference.
Consumerism is bad enough in clothes, electronics, cars, and the entire world, but why the exclusive insistence on new art? New material is great - being mired in the past is as bad as being blinded to it - but why waste time and effort trying to keep up with the cutting edge when you haven't delved into what's already available? There's nothing wrong with appreciating the newest stuff out there - I haven't given up on modern music, books, or film - but there's no need to give it your sole attention.
The same even applies to your own collection of books, movies, or music. Don't go out and buy yourself yet another CD that you need to have. Instead, pull out one that you needed five years ago and see if you actually got everything out of it in the first place.
You want to rent a movie? Don't get America's Sweethearts; get Breakfast at Tiffany's (or, if you must have John Cusack, get Say Anything). You want a book? Don't go buy Danielle Steele's latest; go to the library and find something worthwhile that you could have read anytime.
It's not as though there aren't opportunities. The Brattle Theater shows films that date back to the beginning of cinema every week. Tisch Library's million-plus volumes include a lot of literature you've never touched. Old jazz and rock and roll records get remastered onto CD all the time. You don't need to go back too deep to find something worthwhile. Try 1950. I guarantee that a lot of good things happened in 1950.
Maybe you love modern music, movies, and the like, and you think that everything before 1996 was worthless. Why should you care to take even the slightest look back?
Here's why: if you don't bother to appreciate the people who came before you, no one's going to bother to appreciate you in 30 or 40 years either. Don't fool yourself: there isn't going to be a hip-hop oldies station and a heavy metal oldies station and a pop oldies station. Our music will be just as condensed as our parents' was.
Imagine how angry you're going to be in 2025 when no one cares about your music, and when the techno and hip-hop that you loved in college gets lumped together with Marilyn Manson, the Barenaked Ladies, and Britney Spears on 105.7, "The Greatest Hits of the '90s and the 2000s." Maybe they won't bother to put your favorite band on the playlist. After all, there are a whole lot of decades out there to cover...
...and it's not as though anybody listens to that old music anyway, right?
