h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the 60s, was there more nostalgia in popular music for the music of (what was then) the past? If so, why?

Difficult to say - I was very young in the Sixties.

Some musical styles like Rock & Roll have been nostalgically revived throughout the Sixties (Beatles), Seventies (Showaddywaddy) and Eighties (Shakin' Stevens). I think it's waned a bit since.

Not in the UK. The whole 60s ethic here was based on instant disposability, especially in the music industry. I remember reading an interview in Melody Maker probably in 1968 with a musician just back from touring the US who was astonished at being able to go into a record shop and buy records from 1967. Sha Na Na caused a big sensation at Woodstock with their nostalgic rock'n'roll show; no one else was doing that sort of thing (the Bonzos did a lot of 30s and rock'n'roll stuff but as satire rather than nostalgia). It wasn't until the 70s that the idea of 60s hits as golden oldies started becoming popular.

The general attitude to music in the 60s was that modern was good and anything from the 50s or earlier was old-fashioned and should be discarded. At least that's what the young people thought. The older people couldn't stand the new music and loved the old swing and crooner music.

This was all part of the infamous "generation gap" where the young really couldn't talk to the old. This generation gap never happened at any other time in history as far as I know.

If anyone had wanted to be nostalgic about rock music in 1948, they wouldn't have been in luck. The earliest rock recordings were done in 1949.

In the 1960s, what a lot of people *were* nostalgic about was show tunes. This partly derives from the massive success of Hollywood musicals from 1927 through the mid-50s, after which the genre began tapering off, finally crashing [ironically] with Julie Andrews' "Star" and "Darling Lili" at the end of the 1960s. More irony: musicals themselves began to adopt the style of rock music, most notably "Hair."

Still more irony: Judy garland, that mainstay of Hollywood musicals of the Golden Age, had a daughter named Lorna Luft, who was unsuccessfully recruited to be in "Hair" when it opened on Broadway. At least, that's what Lorna says in her memoir "Me and my Shadow."

Some people are *still* nostalgic about those golden-age pop songs. Harry Connick, Jr., for instance, whose jazz albums still feature riffs from music of that era. Kenny G., the saxophonist who is mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records for holding one note forn 45 minutes, has done cover songs such as the Sinatra hit "All the way" ["Paradise," 2002], but selling 50 million copies of one's albums [as Kenny is believed to have done] requires coming up with new material, so he has also written some material of his own. But "Classics in the key of G" [1999] has a lot of those older songs.

In closing, I'd like to apologize if I've hijacked anyone's journal. I do get caried away, you know.

It sounds as if the situation in America was very different from the UK and urban Ireland. Here there was no nostalgia whatsoever.

It constantly amazes me that my children now listen to the same music that I listened to when I was a teenager. Back then, anybody who listened to anything more than a few years old would have been subjected to ridicule and bullying.

Are you saying that "Whistling Gypsy" and other traditional Irish songs were unknown then? Here in the States, I remember my sister giving me an LP of "The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem" for a birthday present in the early 1960s. I also remember numerous Civil War songs ["Tramp, tramp tramp" and "tenting tonight" among them] being taught in grammar school in the 1950s.

I said urban Ireland. Rural Ireland was a very different scene. The 60s and 70s were the heyday of the "showbands" which were basically cover bands for every type of music: swing, rock and roll, country and western and more. Showbands wore elaborate Elvis-type costumes and played in dance halls around the countryside. City people wouldn't have been seen dead at a showband gig.

>>the Bonzos did a lot of 30s and rock'n'roll stuff but as satire rather than nostalgia

Perhaps, but the New Vaudeville band did 20s stuff without any irony, presumably on the back of the trad jazz revival which was (I'm told) big in the UK.
Then there's the whole blues explosion, which looked back to the 30s.

The New Vaudeville Band would, I think be termed 'retro' now rather than nostalgic; it was very much part of the contemporary psychedelic culture. People like Chris Barber, Alexis Korner, John Mayall who were introducing blues and jazz to Britain in the late 50s, early 60s were not in any way nostalgic; they were very aware that they were creating a new, white middle-class music.

"Showbands wore elaborate Elvis-type costumes and played in dance halls around the countryside. City people wouldn't have been seen dead at a showband gig" [Gnomon]

Gnomon, I agree completely. I remember a conversation with Irving Washington(?) some years ago about his liking for the Beatles, who stop recording 20 years before he was born.

Not in my family unless you count my grandfathers love of opera..

I think that opera would count. can be forgiven for being nostalgic about what they loved in their youth.

I don't think there was any need for nostalgia in the 1960s. The media and society in general were on the cusp of the start of pop and rock and roll, and the music of the 40s and 50s was still quite present, due to the fact that people of my parents' generation would have been the ones buying the records and calling the tunes. (And writing to Family Favourites and Forces Choice with their requests).

I find the present-day nostalgia of baby-boomers for the music of the 60s uncomfortable - even embarrassing. Most of it was rubbish, but I (embarrassingly) know all the words.

Ditto

British radio in the early 1960s was still dictated by Music Union regulations restrictions that meant that needletime – the broadcast of a record – was limited, meaning musicians, such as a light orchestra, needed to be hired for live performances. (Before 1964, needletime was restricted to 27 hours in a 280-hour radio week. It then increased to 75 hours in a 374-hour week).

I've an entry in Peer Review at the moment about music in the 1960s over at: A87852432 if anyone is interested...?

<BB<

As you say: "As far as the BBC was concerned, rock music would almost certainly prove a passing phase." And I think the vast majority of the musicians involved in playing it felt the same way; the fifty year careers were entirely unexpected. Pop music at that time was seen as ephemeral entertainment.

"Most of it was rubbish, but I (embarrassingly) know all the words."
[TC[

Most of *any* genre is/was rubbish. There are vast quantities of Baroque-era pieces that have never been recorded, and would not deserve to be recorded. Someone found 20,000 scores in Bolivia from the 15th and 16th centuries, all written by European composers who went to the New World to provide liturgical music for Catholic services. Only the tiniest fraction is worth listening to. Granted, there is enough good stuff [notably from archives in Mexico City] for a few concerts, and I've even sung some of it.
http://www.sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/series/classical-connections/latin-american-baroque

19th century romanticism? Ever hear of Louis Spohr? No? He was one of the best-known composers of his day, but nowadays you're lucky if you've even heard of his clarinet concertos...

As Theodore Sturgeon said, '90% of anything is crud'.

<BB<