Though it was beloved by a generation, cassettes were quickly dumped by Gen-Xers. But unlike vinyl, this medium is not coming back.
The vinyl revival is one of the more welcome nostalgic movements in popular music. For all the talk about how younger generations do not appreciate the physical medium of music, it’s heartwarming to see kids in their early 20s fishing through the vinyl sections of their rapidly-vanishing local record stores. So what if some are doing it for no other reason than hipster cred? It’s good to see a physical medium for music thrive.
It took a little less than a decade after the decline of vinyl for a nostalgia movement to arise. In the mid-‘90s, some bands would even have the top of their CD design take the form of an album or a 45. Almost 15 years later, we still have vinyl lovers, but we are slowly starting to experience a bit of CD nostalgia as well. Even though CDs are still very much present and available, people have started to stubbornly cling to them just like albums.
Part of the reason for this sort of “pre-death” nostalgia can be attributed to some savvy marketing by record companies. In the past two years, nearly every iconic album from the ‘90s, from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic to Radiohead’s OK Computer, have been re-released in deluxe packaging CDs. They come with a great deal of liner notes, some sweet packaging (check out Pavement’s reissues), and a ton of b-sides. For a Gen-Xer with more disposable income now than they had while they were in college, these offers are hard as hell to turn down. While this accounts for a tiny fraction of CD sales, these reissues prove there is still a need for some people to possess the physical product. A second reason for this “pre-death” nostalgia relates to a grass-roots desire for many people to want to see their local record stores stay in business. Yes, you could buy the new Phoenix album online, but like shopping at the farmer’s market, you just feel better making the trek to a local store and making the purchase.
Image by Andy Hepburn
If the boomers grew up on the album and the Gen-Yers grew up on the CD, Gen-X certainly was weaned on the cassette. And while it’s evident that there is certainly a market for vinyl, and there is a pretty good chance that the CD will experience a similar, if nowhere nearly as intense revival when it eventually goes away, one thing is certain: there is no such nostalgic feeling for cassettes.
Though cassettes were very much part of the music scene in the ‘70s, they took off in the ‘80s, finally outselling albums in 1983 at the height of Michael Jackson mania. But while the album enjoyed a four decade-plus run as being the preferred medium for popular music, cassettes only enjoyed an eight-year run before CDs overtook them in sales in 1991. Though its reign was relatively short, cassettes were the primary listening medium for virtually all of Gen-X. But upon its death in record stores, the mourning period for Gen-X and Gen-Y for this medium was about as fast as a Family Guy flashback. Hell, even the kitsch factor of 8-tracks gave that medium a longer mourning period.
The lack of mourning for the passing of the cassette is curious, but not entirely surprising. As a canvas, the cassette just didn’t have the majesty of records. Somehow the covers of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band just don’t seem as iconic when they’re condensed into a space that’s slightly larger than a pack of smokes. Hauling them around was usually a pain in the ass. And finally, the general sound quality wasn’t the reason why most people opted for cassettes. It was for their portability.
If there is a movement for nostalgia for cassettes, it’s not the medium, but for the concept of freedom it offered listeners. For those who thought junior high and high school were exercises in purgatory, a Walkman finally offered some minor refuge. The medium also offered the masses an exercise in freedom with the ability to create their own playlists from blank tapes.
Nick Hornby and Rob Sheffield have both written moving accounts of creating great mix tapes for loved ones with High Fidelity and Love Is a Mix Tape, respectively. Both authors tell about the arduous process of not only making sure the songs could adequately fill each side of the tape, but of having to listen to the entire tack, then pushing “Pause” just at the right time for the next song to be recorded. Then came the mix-CD, cutting this process down from 90 minutes to a mere five. Now, with playlists, this process can be done in seconds. The gesture is the same, but it’s the equivalent of taking your significant other out to dinner instead of going through the painstaking task of fixing a meal for them at home.
Like DAT’s, some mediums are just meant to die and never experience a revival. Cassettes seem destined to fall into this category. When I was packing for my fifth move in about 7 years, I finally decided to pour all the cassettes that got me through junior high and high school in a plastic sack (save three or four for sentimentality). I chucked them into a dumpster and didn’t feel the slightest bit of longing or loss. As essential as they were to growing up, it seems like cassettes were just the training wheels for what was to come later on.
The 2010 nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been announced. The ballot includes KISS, the Stooges, Genesis, LL Cool J, ABBA, Jimmy Cliff, the Chantels, Darlene Love, Donna Summer, Laura Nyro, the Hollies, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Of these 12, five will be chosen for induction into the Hall early next year. That’s a pretty diverse selection.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has long suffered from two main flaws when it comes to choosing artists for induction. First, the Hall subscribes to the Rolling Stone definition of rock music: basically, all popular music since the late 1950s that isn’t country. In particular, what is favored is the music the baby bomber generation grew up on and loved. This makes perfect sense as the Hall was co-founded by Rolling Stone creator Jann Wenner, and features several contributors to the magazine on its nomination committee and in its voting pool. More problematic is that there is no hard metric to help decide an artist’s merit for induction. Unlike with sports hall of fames, artists are not measured by figures or performance statistics in order to ascertain their worthiness to join the Rock Hall. The only hard criterion is that an artist is only eligible for induction 25 years after they have released their first recording. Aside from this one rule, the 30-member nomination committee weighs concepts like influence and longevity in choosing artists for the ballot in lieu of more concrete measurements like record sales or number of awards won. Additionally, members of the nomination committee can easily exert their own personal prejudices, leading to the active lobbying of induction for some artists and the active dismissal of others held in low critical regard, regardless of that artist’s impact or influence. These factors combined explain why Percy Sledge, Miles Davis, and Madonna are in the Hall, and why Deep Purple, Genesis, and the Cure aren’t.
The Rock Hall of Fame has made some strides in addressing common criticisms of its induction process. For starters, the number of artists on the nomination ballot has been increased from nine to 12 artists this year. Additionally, the Hall’s Chief Curator Jim Henke has explained that the nominating committee has created three subcommittees to suggest nominations in particular genres (“one on progressive rock and heavy metal, one on hip-hop and one on early rock and rollers and rhythm & blues”), which inspires confidence that the Hall is aiming to reach outside the baby boomer music canon. Those considerations have resulted in a pretty intriguing ballot; while there are still head-scratchers (really, Laura Nyro?), there are a fair number of artists who definitely have earned their places in the history of modern music. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
Music writers have tried to correlate the death of the CD with the release of the remastered albums from the Beatles. But as long as we like having a physical copy of a special album, hard copy formats will not disappear anytime soon.
For music journalists, it would be easy to declare the release of the remastered versions of the Beatles albums as the end of the CD era. Bloggers and music writers, most notably NPR’s “All Songs Considered” host Bob Boilen said the new Beatles remastered CDs will likely be the last CDs many people will buy.
It would be a fitting epitaph for the format: Born: 1984 with Born in the U.S.A the first CD massive produced in the United States. Died: September 9, 2009 with the Beatles boxed set. Where I live, there is even some serious circumstantial evidence to back up this claim: the same month The Beatles released their remastered albums, Homers Music & Gifts, the largest independent music distributor in Nebraska will close two of its four locations.
Unfortunately, the end of CD purchasing just isn’t true. Yes, downloads are eclipsing CDs in terms of how people get their music, but what will keep the CD alive is not lower prices or even the quality of the product, but our insatiable desire to display stuff.
It’s a huge release week, one of the most packed of the year. Fall is indeed here in force. Pearl Jam self-releases, but partners with retail behemoth Target, while indie rock unloads a treasure trove of new music, and British pop stages an invasion of sorts with the return of Mika, Richard Hawley and David Gray.
Pearl Jam - Backspacer: This is a giant release and marks the former grunge band’s embrace of pop, so perhaps it’s fitting that the normally anti-corporate Eddie Vedder and co. steered the exclusive big box store release to Target. The band is going it alone here with a self-release, something only the world’s biggest artists like them and Radiohead can really do and still move major units. The result has been near universal critical acclaim for the band’s new musical direction.
Basement Jaxx - Scars: The South London house duo release their first record since 2006’s Crazy Itch Radio. While nothing here trumps the sublime beats of 2003’s Kish Kash,Scars does offer an engaging selection of collaborations, including turns with Santigold, Amp Fiddler, and Yoko Ono.
The reaction to rapper Kanye West’s interruption of singer Taylor Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech had snowballed in interesting ways. Even the President of the United States has called West a “jackass” for taking away Swift’s microphone to praise Beyonce Knowles’ “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video. Scores of celebrities have criticized his behavior, largely on Twitter. Meanwhile, a whole Internet meme has sprung up around West’s recent behavior. NME.com has assembled a gallery featuring choice samples of Photoshopped images where West inappropriately interrupts several pop culture figures (my personal favorite is the one where he interrupts Super Mario 64). Hell, when I checked Facebook the other day, I noticed a new quiz titled “Where will Kanye interrupt you?”
Now, it’s quite clear to anyone with a basic grasp of manners that West was indeed acting like a jackass, and he quite rightly has since apologized for the incident. Additionally, West’s behavior is a surprise to no one familiar with the rapper. West has become well-known for his attention-grabbing remarks over the years, ranging from stating “George Bush hates black people” during a 2005 benefit concert to support Hurricane Katrina victims, to exclaiming he was “done” with MTV after not winning a single award at the 2007 Video Music Awards, to repeated exaltation of his own genius. Still, this event has exploded into a cultural phenomenon because it illustrates how ridiculous West’s acts of idiocracy have become, and how much of it people will tolerate. You would think he’d stop acting like an idiot by now, but no, there he goes again. And do we really have to put up with this?
The latest entry in the popular Guitar Hero video game series has now hit store shelves, but there has been some public discontent over the game’s playable avatar of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. On September 11th, surviving Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl issued a joint statement expressing that they were “dismayed and very disappointed” that the Cobain avatar could be used to play any song in Guitar Hero 5, not just Nirvana tunes. Meanwhile, Cobain’s widow Courtney Love has been raging on Twitter over the guitarist being included in the game to begin with, claiming Cobain would have loathed the game and that she would sue video game maker Activision over his image use.
Okay, let’s put aside the fact that both Love and Grohl had to give permission for Activision to use Cobain’s image and Nirvana’s music in the first place (making Love’s assertion that she never approved the likeness very odd). More importantly, let’s also push aside the cultural and historical baggage. Yes, Nirvana was the most important rock band of the 1990s, largely due to how it was resolutely spat in the face of rock music convention. Nirvana was at the center of the alternative rock revolution, which by its nature denounced commercial opportunism and despised the corporate music industry machine. Despite his well-documented drug problems, Cobain’s 1994 suicide is often interpreted by rock scholars as the ultimate act of defiance in the face of unwanted stardom. Nirvana does hold a hallowed place in rock history, but the group shouldn’t be treated as a sacred cow, never meant to mingle with the sort of artists they mocked and despised in a blockbuster media product. As a huge Nirvana fan myself, I too am certain that Cobain would have intensely hated his image appearing in the game. Then again, Cobain hated a lot of things, chief among them cleaning his apartment. The inclusion of a playable Kurt Cobain avatar in Guitar Hero 5 is definitely ill-advised, but it’s not because it devalues everything Nirvana stood for, as Love in particular suggests. It’s ill-advised because it looks utterly stupid.
