Digging through pop’s dusty archives for gems

I recently finished reading “Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past” by English rock critic Simon Reynolds. It left me both enlightened and incredibly frustrated.

I was frustrated partly because what Reynolds writes throughout the 450-page tome is true — the 2000s were largely infertile for radically new forms of music, and the scenes with the most overlap between critical acclaim and commercial appeal (the garage rock of the White Stripes and the indie folk of Fleet Foxes) were inherently backward looking — but also because it never seemed like Reynolds really settled on what he thinks about the state of music today.

More frustrating still — I don’t think I have, either.

In “Retromania,” Reynolds ostensibly rails against a pop world obsessed with what’s already been done that seeks at every turn to recreate it, but he also describes certain retro movements in almost sexual tones. He knows the rush of digging through used record stores to find that elusive, out-of-print LP and the chills that run up one’s spine when a hauntology producer samples some nearly-forgotten radio advertisement or public service announcement. He isn’t above nostalgia, but he’s still worried that it’s put music in a state of suspended animation.

All things considered, I suppose I feel mostly the same. 2011 is a great time to be a music fan. YouTube, iTunes, SoundCloud and Spotify have changed the business in a way that’s uniformly beneficial to the consumer. But they’ve also given unprecedented access to a seemingly limitless back catalogue of music, which has in turn created a generation of musicians obsessed with the sounds of the past. The notion “there is nothing new under the sun” dates back to biblical times, but rock ‘n’ roll always seemed to be the one enterprise that defied it. Today, that exceptionalism feels threatened.

This biweekly column, then, might come off as a bit enabling. In it, I’ll be unearthing and extolling the virtues of music that hasn’t received the exposure it deserves. This will, indeed, sometimes mean digging through pop’s dusty archives. I’ve come to terms with this, even if I still can’t make heads or tails of where music will go from here.

Like Reynolds, I don’t think the past is valueless. I merely hope the future doesn’t succumb to complacency because the past does offer so much. That doesn’t stop me, as an enthusiast, from wanting to suck the marrow from every last bone of musical history.

That’s basically what this column will be about. There are plenty of diamonds in the rough of pop history, and now it’s time to find them, give them a good polishing and show them off.

There will be only one prerequisite, and I think a lyric from Pulp’s “Party Hard” sums it up best: “Before you enter the Palace of Wisdom, you have to decide: Are you ready to rock?”