Taking Sides: The Present vs. The Past

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The Past --

Pros: Has stood the test of time (har har). Loads of other people can explain it to you in various ingenious ways. Home of Original Old School Flavor.

Cons: Over. Old people love it. Mostly not true.

The Present --

Pros: Happening right now. Seems real. Totally X-treem.

Cons: Could turn out to be crap any minute. Nobody really understands it. Young people love it.

― fritz, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The present because at this very moment I am listening to the Timbaland remix of Turn Out The Light by Nelly Furtado, feat. Missy Elliot.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

inspirational quips:

"If you love the fifties so much why don't you go live there?" - The Mummies to a Rockabilly heckler.

"You can never go home anymore (and that's called 'sad')" - The Shangri La's.

― fritz, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the mummies rock.

― Samantha, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The past sucks. It's all plague and ignorance and bad gas mileage and you can't get a decent DSL hookup or the new Jim O'Rourke record no matter how hard you try. The only unfortunate thing about the world getting continually better is that one day everyone will look back at us and wonder how we possibly lived in such appalling conditions.

― Nitsuh, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why must we put everything into nice little packages? Take a little of both. Without the Sonics and The Seeds and the Chocalate Watchband and Captain Beefheart and The Music Machine, you wouldn't have great bands like the Fuzztones, The Mummies, Thee Headcoats, Thee Mighty Ceasars, which obviously emulate these bands of the past, but add thier own elements of what you might call the present. As far as any present that buries itself in the present and future (I E electronica and most things digital, unless joyfully experimental and caveman like, I am completely out on. That is for mathemeticians and whiteboys with no soul and no sense of rhythm.

― Hank, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

maths = older even than caves

― mark s, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The existence of garage rock revival bands is a very odd defense of the present, much as I enjoy some of 'em.

― fritz, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tsk tsk, Hank. Without wanting to restart some of the ILM wars here ;-) the implication is that you're saying that unless electronic music specifically holds to a 'primitive' style, for lack of a better word, it has no value or in this particular case has no sense of roots and time to draw on. But this assumption is as inaccurate as saying that Billy Childish never liked Link Wray. The perceived 'futurism,' however defined, of electronic music is in fact a constantly growing and now decades-old continuum, one which draws on outside sources as much as on itself. The canard about how Derrick May was equally inspired by George Clinton and Kraftwerk is almost run into the ground right now, but is still one (not necessarily *the*, but one) key example of how acts look to past, present and future all at once.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

plus, the FuXXt0nes suX0r.

― duane, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Now how was it decided that this was meant to be about music?

― Nitsuh, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is the silliest question I've ever seen.

― Ally C, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Now how was it decided that this was meant to be about music?

Free thought! Randomness! The gold standard! Typhus! There, four equally fine reasons. Er.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know that it is going to get much better than this. That is, probably not for a very long while at least - after some sort of new dark age. Indications are out there that we're reaching some sort of summit - like we're all on a metaphorical rollercoaster car ratcheting up, up, and up; but then the rollercoater idea kind of falls apart since we've no vision of what comes next (just that it's downhill) unless we're talking about human culture being like your first time on Space Mountain, in which case, life *is* a rollercoaster.

― Kim, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

why is it that i always look on things that happened in my past as just fab-yoo-luss, and think that my present is always mundane? its dumb, cos if i look back on now in two years time, i will be like "oh weren't those the days?"

― di, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Um, at the moment, I'd go with the present. I've had this really weird feeling recently, I think I'm happy so yes, the present (I take it THE FUTURE isn't an option)

― jamesmichaelward, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I consciously left out THE FUTURE on the grounds that it is essentially unknowable in a way that the present and the past aren't, but I guess that's debatable.

Yes, it is very silly.

― fritz, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But Kim, hasn't pretty much everyone in the history of the world said that, and been proven wrong? With the possible expection of the collapse of the Roman Empire, which was still, if you really think about it, a pretty exciting time to be a Visigoth?

― Nitsuh, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The past had Falco, so the past.

― Ally, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is there any way the term "whiteboy" could be excised from music talk?

― Tom, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

we could lobby to have it replaced with "mathematician"

― mark s, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I consciously left out THE FUTURE on the grounds that it is essentially unknowable in a way that the present and the past aren't, but I guess that's debatable

Um, yes it is debatable (past and FUTURE are both mythical places - doesn't Eno say something about how history is just as much about creating imaginary scenarios as THE FUTURE)

― jamesmichaelward, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The past because its got so much time on us .

― anthony, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

here's the score as I see it:

Present - 5

Past - 3

Little of both - 1

Mummies Rock - 1

Fuzztones Suck - 1

― fritz, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The present because if you're IN the past it's not as much fun but if it's now and you're thinking OF the past it's really exciting and interesting. Like, if I was a Victorian or a Roman I would have hated Victorians or Romans, but now that I'm not, I'm fascinated.

― Maria, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I posted this in the past.

― james, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is there any way the term "whiteboy" could be excised from music talk?

Shut up, whiteboy.

― Nick, Friday, 23 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

back to the future

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 9 August 2003 14:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I like my reasoning on this thread. Falco is dead, ergo all is dead. Nice!

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 9 August 2003 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

The past was horrible.

The present is improving.

Things have GOT to be better in the future.

― Just Deanna (Dee the Lurker), Saturday, 9 August 2003 16:28 (twenty-two years ago)

(Note: I'm talking about things on a purely personal level. On a pop culture level, I'm drawn to the past more than I am the present, though if in the future there's a huge AM Gold revival and it actually becomes cool to listen to things such as Atlanta Rhythm Section's "So Into You", I would again have to go with the future.)

― Just Deanna (Dee the Lurker), Saturday, 9 August 2003 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

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