by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
If you’re my age, you grew up with vinyl records and cassettes, upgraded to CDs and now maybe you’re strictly digital. The technological advances have been great for everyone. It’s mind-blowing and a little scary to me that you can carry your entire record collection on a little digital device.
But despite the space-age modernizations, there’s another movement afoot, a return to vinyl. I recently bought a turntable because some of my favorite bands have been putting out vinyl-only editions, and also because I wanted to revisit some of the albums from my childhood. The other day I threw on REO Speedwagon’s “Wheels Are Turnin’” and Hall & Oates’ “Big Bam Boom.” These were a few of my favorites as a kid, and I was curious to see how they held up.
The answer is surprisingly well. The REO record is straight-ahead heartland rock, which never goes out of style. And the Hall & Oates record was surprisingly innovative for its time. There are elements of dance music and even rap, but it doesn’t come off as trend chasing.
REO will perform Friday night at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain, and Philadelphia boys Hall & Oates will be at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs on July 30. Both bands’ heydays were more than 20 years ago, but listening to them gave me a fresh perspective. Specifically, I got to thinking that nostalgia might not be the only reason bands like these and Poison, Def Leppard, Cheap Trick and Motley Crue are still playing to millions of fans. Sure, there’s a kitsch factor — the idea of getting plastered with your friends and going to see a ridiculously out-of-style but entertaining band like Poison — but maybe many of these bands’ material has actually held up pretty well over the years.
A few months ago I complained that the season at Montage this summer was a bit boring, with hardly any current, relevant acts. Well, Live Nation booked Coldplay to play there, and we know how that turned out. Do mass amounts of people really care about any band that has come out in the past 15 years or so? Besides Radiohead, Phish, and most recently, Kings of Leon, are any bands that emerged anytime after 1989 — besides Pearl Jam — knocking people out, year after year, album after album and tour after tour? Wilco, maybe, but that band is still only headlining theaters.
If you want to know what America is all about, don’t go to New York or Los Angeles. Go to the Midwest, go to areas like our own, where, for lack of a better adjective, “regular” people are going to work — if they’re fortunate enough — having a few beers and listening to what makes them happy. Van Halen, Madonna, Pearl Jam, whichever it may be. Yes, buzz bands like Vampire Weekend get lots of notice in the press and on the Web, but outside of Brooklyn and some college towns, do people really care?
If Vampire Weekend came to Northeastern Pennsylvania, could the band even sell out a club? I don’t think there are enough hipsters here to answer yes to that question.
Part of the reason, I think, that bands from the ’70s and ’80s are still thriving is because the music continues to connect with generations of fans. Yes, there’s dated, then-trendy stuff that never had much soul in the first place, like Flock of Seagulls or Rick Astley, which can only really be enjoyed on a novelty level today. But much of the music that came from those decades has a direct, legitimate emotional impact on people. I don’t think the same can be said for many of the modern indie-rock bands, who have limited themselves to reaching niche audiences in more sophisticated, younger markets. This is not a slam on the indie genre; I enjoy listening to many, many of those bands. But 20 years from now, will teenagers be listening to Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear? Or will they be digging into Foreigner, Queen and The Police?
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