23rd December, Band on the Wall the Venue in God's Country (aka Manchester) to see an 11 piece ska outfit, Baked a la ska the name, trying their damnest to comically go back to the Two Tone era, with a lead singer trying to be terry hall and suggs at the same time, with his Rasta sidekick shaking a maraca litterally to his own beat, because it certainly wasn't to the drummers.
That rinsing was inspired by a mock review I've done for that band in a media project, but does make me wonder about the obession about going back to the past when it comes to music, a golden era.
Rock and its various sub-genres (yes I'm including metal, folk etc, anything that has been inspired by the original Blues and rock n' roll) have usually been the worst for it. After the 1960s heyday of woodstock, and prog rock taking over, there's been this constant battle to make rock what it used to be in its various forms. Some are simple carbon copies of the music, such as the 1970s mod scene, and really add nothing to the revival beyond people living a musical world away from where they are at. Others, such as punk and Two Tone, looked to the past but put their own edge, punk at its best going back to the 1950s 3 chord pop song but with attitude, while two tone took punks energy and social message of the time to speed up Jamaican ska.
That is perhaps my biggest problem with revivals, the lack of social message. Most revivals, or flogging a dying scene, have no connection to the mainstream social situation. Part of the reason for the success of Two Tone and punk is that it was a reaction to the problems of the time. Racial violence was at its height in 1979, a racially mixed movement in Two Tone, from the West Midlands no less, was more powerful than say, an all white band playing ska in its original format.
When you have people nowadays still trying to live the Northern Soul life, it rings hollow when it is little more than pure escapism, rather than its own movement, particularly when people who weren't even alive in its heyday want to live the life.
So far its rock types and implicitly whites I seem to have had a go at. Electronica is not always guilt free by far. Jungle, a genre I'm very fond of (and no, I was too young for it's heyday) has its revival from North America, reggae over fast beats. The point is missed two fold, first of all it wasn't just reggae over fast beats, there was a proper fusion of hip hop, dancehall, and the music of mainland Europe. Of course North Americans struggle to grasp the special relationship England has with Jamaica which the original jungalists knew how to implement. North America absorbs Jamaicans into Black America so quickly the 2nd generation just act like any Black person in the area, only the first generation of blacks have any attention paid to them.
The second point again is that Jungle came out of the rave movement, which was powerful in Britain, and Tory Britain which had a huge affect in the inner cities, again born in the here and now. The attempts to get reggae singers on board sound hollow in comparison. Fact is nobody will stop looking to the past, there is forever something romantic about old styles because they are out of fashion. The thing is to avoid relying on the past too much, instead keep pushing forward with new sounds and things to talk about. Try a new trick on the guitar, make a new sound out of the sampler. Instead of shanking on the streets, or sloganeering, talk about something else and do it different. We shouldn't have to rely on the past for so much inspiration.
