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Well, by it's very definition, Nostalgia is looking back and warmly remembering a past in an unreasonable fashion. So, if you look back fondly to a time when things were actually better, at whatever level, that's (possibly) okay- but it isn't nostalgia. Also, that "(possibly)" means that even when the past was actually better perhaps it is best not to dwell on it/try and recreate it.
Of course, all the above assumes that it's possible for "the past" to have been "better", or indeed that it is possible to objectively prove it. I guess you could be nostalgic for, specifically, a nice music scene that used to exist somewhere, or a time when a given musician was around: this is what I mean by "at whatever level", because, like, that scene in the early 60s might have been great, but what was going in the bigger picture? Do you really want to make everything like it was in the 60s? And is today really so bad, and, as Thom would have us beleive, not as good/authentic/real/poetic/revolutionary blah blah blah? Of course not.
I think Flyboy pretty much said it with (I paraphrase) "Music from the past should be loved and bent into all sorts of new shapes but not revered as a gold standard". So, recalling a good idea that existed earlier is no crime, but don't pretend it was the only good thing that ever happened.
I guess that means you should be seeing the old greats as a kind of pallette, mixing old and new, making old new again. E.g., Dandi Wind seems to be doing this- though I haven't really heard enough of her stuff, she's got a voice that sounds kind of Siouxsie, kind of music hall, and then beats that sound like Bangra or hip-hop. Outkast, too- they have a bit of an old-time vibe, a bit of a Funkadelic flavour, but it's all space-age. Also Goldfrapp: there's plenty of your glam-rock cool in there but again, it's all been manipulated into some alien love-scream from another planet. Which, of course, is exactly what's supposed to be happening, and what made those sources- music hall, Siouxsie, Funkadelic, glam- good in the first place.
Whereas- well, why should I spend hard-cadged creds on a Razorlight gig or record when they're doing nothing beyond sounding a little bit like a bad copy of Patti Smith? Or, notice how Orange Juice sound infintely more interesting than The Killers or The Bravery, simply because there's a sense of "Why not?" in OJ's music that isn't there in the latter two.
From talking to people who are into this stuff, a large part of the appeal actually seems to be about being able to "rate" a band on how well they can recreate a given "golden" period- which of course they are fighting to defend against "evil modern mainstream music" like Lady Sov. It could be described as "scholarly", but then scholars are supposed to look for new interpretations in the text. The image that really comes to mind is an Airfix model-making contest. |
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