orbis quintus

Jammin’ the Blues is a 1944 short film in which several prominent jazz musicians got together for a rare filmed jam session. It featured Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant, Archie Savage and Garland Finney. Barney Kessel is the only white performer in the film. He was seated in the shadows to shade his skin, and for closeups, his hands were stained with berry juice. The movie was directed by Gjon Mili. Producer Gordon Hollingshead was nominated for an Academy Award for this footage in the category of Best Short Subject, One-reel. In 1995, Jammin’ the Blues was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

This Slate article about the meaning of Pavement’s nostalgia circuit tour meaning the end of baby boomer cultural hegemony is pretty much nonsense. Indie, indie indie…. oh, for fuck’s sake…. do they even really remember the ’90s?

The article cites a bunch of music from ’00s that’s labeled as indie and now used in commercials to sell stuff as proof that Generation X has prevailed over the Baby Boomers. Have you heard Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Helium, the original Elephant 6 bands, Yo La Tengo, or dozens of others used to sell shit yet? No, you damned well have not.¹ Have you heard them used in movies to evoke nostalgia for the era? No fucking way.²

Think of the movie The Big Chill, which ushered in the constant nostalgia for Baby Boomer culture. Did it use a lot of music from the ’80s vaguely influenced by old school Motown, or did it take the opportunity to strengthen a canon that reinterpreted the ’60s using actual songs of that era? Think of the commercials of the ’80s and ’90s. Remember the mix of joy and outrage when songs by the Rollings Stones, the Who, ect. were used in commercials? Again, these were songs from that era.

Vampire Weekend? Justice? Phoenix? Arcade Fire? Grizzly Bear? Not from the ’90s. Don’t be perverse. They don’t even sound like ’90s bands.

More importantly, Generation X is not and was not indie. The author of the Slate article has confused his point. It’s Generation Y that has cultural hegemony here. Bands more representative to the ’90s never stopped touring, and went directly to nostalgia without missing a beat. in America, Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers are the ’90s. That lame bastard Perry Farrell was having reunions before the ’90s were even over. That was Gen X’s sad, little fulcrum of cultural hegemony, when nostalgia caught up to the present. See Footnote One.³

Pass the torch. Generation X’s time has already come and gone.

Pavement is more of a very implausible What If than a widely recognized touchstone of my generation.

What did Pavement mean to me? That’s another post. What does the current reunion tour mean for me? Not much really. I still won’t get to see them, as i sure as hell cannot afford to fly whereever they’re playing, buying overpriced tickets.

1. Well, maybe Yo La Tengo. Come to think of it, remember when Volkswagen was using Spiritualized and the Orb to sell cars? [↩]
2. I’m bluffing. Has “Slack Motherfucker” been used in a recent period film set in the ’90s? I couldn’t find documentation. The retro ’90s movies are probably only a few years away, with Hot Tub Time Machine in theaters today. [↩]
3. And another thing… wasn’t Pavement supposed to make an appearance on Beverly Hills 90210 back in the day, but wound up being replaced by the Flaming Lips instead? The Flaming Lips, another band that never retired, has been used for quite a few commercials and movies, but unlike RHCP and Perry fucking Farrell, still have some respectability… [↩]