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Review
"Amazing." --Bruce Sterling, Wired.com
"Looking back over the last 25 years you'd be hard pressed to name a music journalist more adept at tracking and defining the zeitgeist." --Dave Haslam, "The Guardian"
"Simon Reynolds, one of our most thoughtful music writers, poses a stark question for anyone who cares about the future of pop . . . A devastating critique of the way music is now consumed." --Patrick Sawer, "The Daily Telegraph"
"Bracingly sharp. As a work of contemporary historiography, a thick description of the transformations in our relationship to time--as well as to place--"Retromania" deserves to be very widely read." --Sukhdev Sandhu, "The Observer" (London)
"A provocative and original inquiry into the past and future of popular music." --"Booklist" (starred review)
"[A] mix of canny erudition, critical theory, stylish prose, and vibrant evocations." --Publishers Weekly
'For a long time, Simon Reynolds has been pretty much the most intelligent and thoughtful commentator on pop music around. Here, with rare brilliance, he investigates why, as a culture, pop is becoming obsessed with the past ... an excellent book, and not just about pop music.' --Evening Standard
Review
“If I had to choose just one commentator to guide me through the last quarter-century of popular (and not so popular) music, it would have to be—on the basis of knowledge, range of reference, soundness of judgment, and fluency of style—Simon Reynolds.” —GEOFF DYER, author of "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi"
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Reynold's book explores an essential issue for anyone interested in popular music. In fact, it's an issue for our society in general; are we already living in the "future" and just endlessly recycling the past. Or maybe it's just that boring old farts like myself and Simon Reynolds see the last 10-15 years of music as lacking any direction and originality? This is a very interesting read but I resist giving it a 5 (or should that be 11?) for several reasons. Firstly he does tend to meander off into areas of music history that interest him, which at times distracts from the central issue of the book. Do we need quite so many examples of the way in which the musical past is being recycled to get the point. I like the idea that things started to go sour in the mid 1960s, but it could be said that the idea of endless novelty in music or any other art form is relatively recent. e.g. until the 20th century architects were quite happy to recycle Greek and Roman styles. Perhaps the novel and the cool cultures of the post WW2 era are just an anomaly? At the same time, pop music is not unique in recycling and reusing the past as a source for new movements and styles. If I were to get all Hegelian I'd say that all novelty is a synthesis of past ideas (theses): r and b, jazz and blues did not just drop from the sky, but were themselves syntheses of earlier styles/types of music.
These criticism's aside, I hope, as Bruce Sterling claims, that the era of atemporality is only temporary (?!). Reynold's book prompts me to wonder if the future might *have* a future after all, and hence it's well worth reading.
These criticism's aside, I hope, as Bruce Sterling claims, that the era of atemporality is only temporary (?!). Reynold's book prompts me to wonder if the future might *have* a future after all, and hence it's well worth reading.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Simon Reynolds' exhaustive overview of popular musics (and to an extent pop culture as a wholes) current obsession with reworking or recreating its recent past, 'Retromania' takes the form of hundreds of short essays on everything from 1950s trad jazz fashions to dubstep. It's never less than readable, but is occasionally repetitive and does tend to ramble into irrelevance.
Postmodernism in popular music is, of course, not a new theme. The first of many books on the idea (Jeremy J. Beadle's "Will Pop Eat Itself?") was published as far back as 1993, so no matter how in depth Mr. Reynolds' research, no matter how erudite his knowledge, no matter how insightful he is about music, its' difficult to escape the fact that it's all been said before: Most of 'Retromania's idea's will be already familiar to its target readership, especially as it becomes clear on completing the book that the author has no real thesis as such. Once he's followed every last thread to it's end, we're left with the standard middle-aged music fans complaint that pop music just isn't as exciting as it used to be back in our day, and where are the young people that will kick off the new punk?
One problem, I feel, is that the author generally fails to go outside the parameters of pop music production itself when looking for reasons for its' ongoing taste for nostalgia, whereas it seems to me that considering socioeconomic issues might provide a greater insight (One of the reasons might simply be that people tend to listen to pop music to a much later age than previous generations, so that they eventually delve into the past after consuming all of the current music to their taste: It might be that post-war youth cults were a historical blip, and that the most creative of the younger generation are no longer interested in producing music, etc) There's also, to me,an issue with Reynolds seeming assumption that all culture is of of equal importance within whats ultimately a marketplace, so that obscure postrock acts selling a few dozen homemade cassettes are as worthy of discussion as Phil Collins, etc.
Having said all that, I do still recommend the book: Along with Chuck Klostermann, Reynolds is by far the most insightful critic currently writing about popular music, and many of his thoughts on pop (The music of bands like the Black Eyed Peas being 'pre-degraded for MP3' for instance) are absolutely fascinating. Flawed but still worthwhile.
Postmodernism in popular music is, of course, not a new theme. The first of many books on the idea (Jeremy J. Beadle's "Will Pop Eat Itself?") was published as far back as 1993, so no matter how in depth Mr. Reynolds' research, no matter how erudite his knowledge, no matter how insightful he is about music, its' difficult to escape the fact that it's all been said before: Most of 'Retromania's idea's will be already familiar to its target readership, especially as it becomes clear on completing the book that the author has no real thesis as such. Once he's followed every last thread to it's end, we're left with the standard middle-aged music fans complaint that pop music just isn't as exciting as it used to be back in our day, and where are the young people that will kick off the new punk?
One problem, I feel, is that the author generally fails to go outside the parameters of pop music production itself when looking for reasons for its' ongoing taste for nostalgia, whereas it seems to me that considering socioeconomic issues might provide a greater insight (One of the reasons might simply be that people tend to listen to pop music to a much later age than previous generations, so that they eventually delve into the past after consuming all of the current music to their taste: It might be that post-war youth cults were a historical blip, and that the most creative of the younger generation are no longer interested in producing music, etc) There's also, to me,an issue with Reynolds seeming assumption that all culture is of of equal importance within whats ultimately a marketplace, so that obscure postrock acts selling a few dozen homemade cassettes are as worthy of discussion as Phil Collins, etc.
Having said all that, I do still recommend the book: Along with Chuck Klostermann, Reynolds is by far the most insightful critic currently writing about popular music, and many of his thoughts on pop (The music of bands like the Black Eyed Peas being 'pre-degraded for MP3' for instance) are absolutely fascinating. Flawed but still worthwhile.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dismissed in some quarters as a groan stemming from a mid-life crisis, Reynolds does in fact point out what others lack the courage to point out - that pop/rock has for some time failed to move forward and has become little more than a cannibaliser of its own history. Reynolds does this with considerable aplomb, trawling over a wide range of popular music forms while tipping his hat to a number of theorists. Having taken the view that pop/rock stopped progressing once punk came on the scene, Reynolds shows this not to have been the case. On this score alone, the book was of some benefit to me and I look forward to reading his earlier book on post-punk. One absence I noticed in the book was any sustained examination of music professionals - music writers, radio DJ's and so on - and their silence about Reynolds' core issue. It strikes me that vested interests prevent them from owning up to the obvious: that if someone's 'record of the week' sounds like it was recorded 40 years ago, we have a problem. Paul Jones continues to play blues records that show absolutely no development/extension of the form; Mojo and Uncut (mentioned briefly by Reynolds) function as curators rather than - as with the old NME - cutting edge promulgators of the new; and most reviews of 'new' music are unable to resist comparisons with other bands. Yet, no-one says bugger all about it, or not publicly. It's to Reynolds credit that he has. An important book and a compelling read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Will Pop Eat Itself?
If you can put aside this book as being a thesis and think of it more as a one-sided argument with some bloke (albeit a well informed, verbose and well educated bloke) in the pub,... Read more
Published 4 hours ago by Bluearmy
Simon Reynolds, why are you always so disappointing
I'd previously attempted to read Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, but abandoned it halfway through - I found Reynolds's writing an unsatisfying hodgepodge of ideas. Read more
Published 1 month ago by flahr
False thesis
What fatally undermines this turgid tome -- Mr Reynolds can do much, much better, as we all know -- is that it's based
on a false thesis. Read more
on a false thesis. Read more
Published 1 month ago by J. Patterson
Retro - fit! (ouch)
I came to this book after hearing a lot of criticism that in it Reynolds was making the argument that there's nothing new in music and that we're just eating our own past. Read more
Published 3 months ago by D. Dent
Take Your Protein Pills and Put your helmet on
I have a couple of years on Simon Reynolds....but seems like our minds are tuned in.
I remember the moon landing of '69...and have been I guess ever since a "Space Child".. Read more
I remember the moon landing of '69...and have been I guess ever since a "Space Child".. Read more
Published 3 months ago by T. Satchwell
Great read...when it's about the past
I like Simon Reynolds' books, but this one is a disappointment. Although his writing style is quality as always, he is this time not so much writing about music itself (groups,... Read more
Published 6 months ago by gonnemans
The best book about the state of pop culture in 2011, bar none.
There can be few journalists more cerebral (but also accesible) than Simon Reynolds. A former journalist in Melody Maker, at the time he would be championing more 'challenging'... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Nicholas Cendrowicz
Fine insights from a great music writer
The great jazz pianist Thelonious Monk is famous for having dismissed the very idea of music journalism and criticism with the remark "writing about music is like dancing about... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. W. J. Griffiths
great read
Fantastic and insightful read and although I dont agree with everything Simon has to say in this book I will certainly be looking up his other titles due to his style of writing... Read more
Published 9 months ago by mark broadbent
More ruminations than conclusions
Reynolds' central thesis is the legacy of recorded music and its impact on the development and 'progression' of contemporary music. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Curmudgeon
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