on 6/10/03, Skip Heller wrote:
That punk rock has become the new corpo-nostalgia means only that those records sold better than any of us were told.
More accurately, no-one told us that those records were going to sell to a lot of kids who were going to grow up to become employees (and owners) of businesses whose job it is to create advertising. I'm not really convinced that using Ramones or Clash songs evokes any real consumer nostalgia (outside of people who frequent lists like this one, let's say); it's way more likely that some hipster promo or ad producer found some track (or had, in turn, some even-more-hip subcontracting agency find it) that he or she loved, wanted to use, and managed to sell through to the client as "cool" (Thomas Frank outlines the mechanics of how some of this works in "The Conquest of Cool"). Least that's the way it works 'round these parts ... Phil @ TNT PS: May I feel free to use the term "copro-nostalgia" instead?
on 6/10/03 10:38 AM, Oppenheim, Phil at Phil.Oppenheim@turner.com wrote: on 6/10/03, Skip Heller wrote:
More accurately, no-one told us that those records were going to sell to a lot of kids who were going to grow up to become employees (and owners) of businesses whose job it is to create advertising. I'm not really convinced that using Ramones or Clash songs evokes any real consumer nostalgia (outside of people who frequent lists like this one, let's say); it's way more likely that some hipster promo or ad producer found some track (or had, in turn, some even-more-hip subcontracting agency find it) that he or she loved, wanted to use, and managed to sell through to the client as "cool" (Thomas Frank outlines the mechanics of how some of this works in "The Conquest of Cool").
One from Column A, one from Column B. Hipster cache -- big-ass factor. And you nailed the process (IE "hire someone with the right hair to tell us what to use to sell this product"). I've met some of the guys with the hair. One of the big things that motivates them is the thought that they can work with a hero of their youth and be the guy who got them paid big, and BECOME KNOWN FOR IT. It's the same show-biz schmooze as before, just with Pete Shelley instead of George Burns. In addition -- those records sold better than you might think at the time of their release (there was no soundscan, so numbers were often nebulous), and many of those records tended to have a longer shelflife than their hit counterparts like Kim Wilde or whomever. Also, the audience for the revival of old punk is pretty considerable. Look at the venues the reunited Circle Jerks played and largely filled -- literally 10 times the size of the venues they played when they were "hot". It's now far from underground. When Joey Ramone passed, VH1 aired a special about him in prime time literally next to JOURNEY: BEHIND THE MUSIC. That wouldn't happen if there weren't some sales to back up that programming choice. sh
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Oppenheim, Phil -
skip Heller