Reunion Union

Another Sunday, another NY Times article. This time, music critic Ben Ratliff takes on the subject of this year's reunion-itis, citing reunion tours by The Police, Genesis, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins and Squeeze. He talks about how one problem with these reunions is that they can never capture the true experience of seeing these bands the first time around. The atmosphere, feelings and memories garnered from those experiences cannot be recreated, no matter how hard we try.

Or maybe something about these events feels broadly, even comically, illegitimate. Aren’t we supposed to form a community of taste around living culture, not afterlife culture? Isn’t a great band supposed to be more than just a band, but an embodiment of a particular age, a state of mind, a place? How do you identify, then, with an aging act whose members are well past their original states of mind, have mostly relocated to sunnier places, and whose prime motivation would appear to be making money through entertainment consortiums like AEG Live, which controls Goldenvoice, the concert promoter behind the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival in California, and the pathbreaker in the marketing of recent-past reunions? And aren’t, say, 15 years of inactivity required before a reunion can be considered desirable?

As he goes on to explore the more human aspect of bands, Ratliff also delves into the observation that fans need these reunions to remind them of a more fruitful period in music history.

It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had. That feeling people talked about during the Pixies shows a few years ago — the word “eerie” was used a great deal — seems similar to descriptions of the feeling generated in the Village Vanguard when Dexter Gordon played his comeback shows there in 1976, after living abroad. Since then, jazz has advanced into a culture of incessant re-experience, endless tributes. Actual reunions are barely noticed: a huge percentage of the music refers to great moments of the past. Yet that doesn’t mean that jazz can’t still be fantastic, even transformative. It is, all the time.

I'm not sure how much of this article I agree with, mostly because I am admittedly too young to have seen most of the aforementioned bands at their prime and therefore cannot relate to this nostalgic feeling. But it makes me wonder if, in 15-20 years, I will be feeling the same nostalgia for the bands that I currently love. Ratliff cites this as well, using Arcade Fire as an example. "He is not sure whether new bands — Arcade Fire, say — are striking deeply enough into the soul of the culture to necessitate their own reunions down the road. I think context will determine it."

Do you think that bands that are currently popular will stand the test of time? Maybe not physically, but certainly in our minds. Sure, there will always be bands that we like now but that we'll forget about, just like there's that song that occasionally plays on the radio that you know every word to but you can't for the life of you remember who sings it. But bands like Radiohead or Wilco or yes, Arcade Fire, represent something bigger, don't you think? And I'll be damned if I miss that Arcade Fire reunion in 20 years.