As for ‘Stranger Things,’ I’ll leave the old stuff to the kids, thank you
How old is cultural nostalgia? In the 1960s, the 1920s were hot. In the 1970s, it was the 50s. In the late 80s, there was (yet another of several) 1960s revivals. My only nostalgia is for a time when we weren’t intoxicated with nostalgia, and that’s seldom occurred in my lifetime.
So while I’m glad that Kate Bush is getting lots of recognition for a song from 1985 because of a TikTok tie-in and “Stranger Things,” I wish there was something far stranger on TV.
Bush has always been an innovative musical artist, and if you’re not familiar, yeah, cool—check her out. Why not? She never did get the love she deserved, but neither did many artists on college radio back in the day.
I doubt that Kate Bush love ever penetrated Hellertown when she was something of a trendy underground sort of figure in a few patchouli-scented corners of America in the early 80s.
As always, correct me if I’m wrong if you were a Bushinista in Saucon Valley in 1985.
I myself was real excited about her for about a week in late 1983, in Ohio. I loved 1978’s “The Kick Inside” because it was the law for brooding pre-English majors in that era, and “Wuthering Heights” was pure literary candy floss.
I have watched a “Stranger Things” for about 10 minutes, and I just found it insufferably boring, and I’m way past, “Bill, you need to look at it again.” No, I don’t.
Apart from pop-cult window dressing, “Stranger Thingas” feels completely unconnected to my memories or experiences of the 1980s. For me, it’s a strictly 21st century TV confection, mostly for young people projecting something onto an era the way I did the same with the 60s, of which I basically understood nothing.
I myself would rather listen to new music today—stuff from 2022 like KOKOKO or Cola.
I’ll gladly leave the old stuff to the young. I’m both too old for 80s nostalgia, and not old enough.
Now 70s nostalgia, well, OK, I can handle a little. Hard not to love the punk spirit of Amyl and the Sniffers or American bands like Turnstile, but they themselves are crazily nostalgic and derivative when it comes right down to it.
“Oh, Bill, everything’s derivative.” Nothing new under the sun blah blah blah …
Maybe. Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Til Death Do Us Part, Mary Gaitskill?
All searingly original. I’ve truly never heard or read anyone ever claiming anything about any of those that was even glancingly derivative.
Kate Bush in 1978. Photo credit: slydogmania, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons