Between musicals like Hair and Rock of Ages, the popularity of video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and the black hole that is reality TV's Rock of Love, there appears to be an awful lot of nostalgia for the sounds of classic rock. But not so fast - the musicals are definitely aimed at aging rock fans, who are now, despite the economy, in allegedly their prime earning years and have the discretionary income to buy Broadway tickets. But the video games? Those are not exercises in nostalgia for the kids playing them... although maybe they are for their parents, and perhaps that's helped spur sales (after all, these games aren't cheap). And the target audience for Rock of Love seems not to be the people who grew up listening to Bret Michaels fronting the hair-metal band Poison - but their kids. Ditto for the classic rock songs that dot the sonic landscape of every film coming from Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks studios these days.
So why is all this happening? Is it simply a wave of nostalgia on the part of the people who produce these musicals, TV shows, films, and video games? It's a thorny issue, because those of us who grew up on rock saw ourselves as tough kids, living in tough times, with no room for sentimentality. Our music didn't pine for the good old days - that's what our parents' music was for. Rock was about kicking out the old and creating something new, built on the sturdy foundation of sex and alcohol and drugs and anger and alienation. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, nostalgia happens to the best of us, I guess. Check out our Soundcheck program on music and memory - the brain just automatically responds to music in certain ways that trigger memories, whether we ask for them or not. Like certain smells, certain songs can be powerful stimulants to the brain, almost instinctively re-creating the scenes where we first heard them. From there it's a short slide into nostalgia.
But our rock generation, priding itself on still being so Badass even at an advancing age, has found a way to use that nostalgia. If there's money to be made, then you package those memory-triggers and sell them to theatergoers, gamers, and your contemporaries' kids. I know that sounds cynical (okay, so I'm cynical), but it doesn't mean that what results can't be good. I haven't seen this incarnation of Hair, but there's a reason why this potential period-piece ain't dead yet. It embraces ideas that are bigger than the 60s, bigger than rock - ideas about youth and adulthood and community. Like any wave, this current wave of nostalgia will eventually recede, and what's left behind will be the cool things that beachcombers find and bring home to display to their families. Hair might well be one of them; heck, it might be the only one from this lot.
Tell us: are you nostalgic for rock of the 60s, 70s, 80s? Is it hard to come to grips with the idea of this music as "oldies"?
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John Schaefer has hosted Soundcheck since the show’s inception in 2002. He has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 (“The No. 1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard) and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986.
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