Some thoughts on band reunions from the NY Times (by way of Salon.com):
In "In Defense of Nostalgia," published in the May 6 issue, Sanneh explains that the sentimentality that makes us yearn for rock reunions is really what drives all concerts:
"In fact, if it weren't for sentiment, if it weren't for our strong but ultimately inexplicable desire to be in the same room as people making music, we might not bother to go to concerts at all. In that sense, a reunion show is the ultimate rock 'n' roll concert: a sensory experience overwhelmed by an imaginary one; a musical event that is merely a pretext for a social one. Those people onstage are old friends, in a sense; they have been living in our heads for years or decades. (That's why substitutions are so irritating: what's the point of being reunited with someone you've never met?) At a reunion show, those figments turn back into real people for a few hours."
Ratliff's piece, published in late April and called "Not Reunions, Reinventions (Back and Better. Really.), contends that the music's what matters most -- and that there's no reason to believe it isn't better now than it was then:
"We have to allow for the possibility that Rage Against the Machine -- or the Police, or the Jesus and Mary Chain -- could be as good as it ever was, if perhaps a little more wizened, a little more skeptical. (It will depend on their practicing of course.) If you're still looking for something sacred, it probably can't be found in their values or politics or cult significance. It's in you: It is your own reaction to how they sound."
--from Salon's audiophile: http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/?last_story=/ent/audiofile/2007/05/07/rock_reunions/
8 comments:
What is that picture? Is that a band? Geezer and the uglies? The Handsome Brits?
And who's the young guy, and why is he holding a pair of pants?
Have the Jesus and Mary Chain not murdered each other yet? That's a surprise. And the Meat Puppets have evidently buried the hatchet (and not in each other's backs) long enough to do some recording, I hear.
See what ya'll started, Jay?
And if they promised not to play anything recorded / written after Abacab (okay, 'Three Sides Live'), I might go see Genesis. If I won tickets or something.
What, am I the only one here?
Jay and I are too busy reuniting bands to comment.
I think the pic is from Motorhead's last reunion, but not positive.
I'm pretty sure that's Lemmy in the gray suit.
Another good observation from one of the articles:
"It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had. That feeling people talked about during the Pixies shows a few years ago — the word “eerie” was used a great deal — seems similar to descriptions of the feeling generated in the Village Vanguard when Dexter Gordon played his comeback shows there in 1976, after living abroad. Since then, jazz has advanced into a culture of incessant re-experience, endless tributes. Actual reunions are barely noticed: a huge percentage of the music refers to great moments of the past. Yet that doesn’t mean that jazz can’t still be fantastic, even transformative. It is, all the time."
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