Nostalgia: It ain't what it used to be

By Dan Burke, Website Editor

So, The Specials have finally dragged their weathered, bloated carcasses back from the abyss for a partially reformed comeback tour.

There’s little wrong with this, their shows thus far have been gratefully received – the public’s got what the public wanted after all – but it’s a sorry indication of the current musical climate that so many are seeking solace in a band that are years beyond their time.

Reforms and comebacks are hardly remarkable. The obvious one would be The Sex Pistols' disastrous mid-nineties comeback tour, perhaps bettered only by their subsequent and equally cringe-worthy latest reunion. Of course, tickets for the shows sold like proverbial hot cakes, but it does little to hide the fact that there was something inherently tragic about the whole affair.

The promoters of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival in California have a lot to answer for. In recent years, their vastly audacious sums of money have ‘inspired’ reformations from the likes of Iggy & The Stooges, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Rage Against The Machine. We’re told, of course, that it isn’t about the money, and maybe that’s true in some cases, but cynics will rightly argue that it does more good than harm.

One of the most notable comebacks in recent times came when Magazine ended their 30-year hiatus with two shows at the Manchester Academy and went a long way towards proving that the past is best left where it is. Then there are the likes of The Who and The Rolling Stones, who appear to have made several comebacks, but never really went away in the first place, refusing to accept that any credibility evaporated a long time ago and trotting out wave upon wave of trite, inane new material in the process.

Reunions function on two levels – for those fortunate
enough to see the artists in their prime, the gigs
provide welcome nostalgia, whereas a younger
audience are offered an insight into something which
biology had previously prevented them from
experiencing. The problem is that this experience
has been so far removed from its origin by the cruelty
of time that it now resembles little more than glorified
karaoke.

This is surely the case where The Specials are
concerned. For reasons unstated, Jerry Dammers
has respectably refused to participate meaning that
(like The Jam without Paul Weller) the shows are
watered-down before they’ve even begun.

However, the big issue here is not with comebacks per se, but more the fact that their increasing popularity points to a depressingly obvious deficit of great, new art.

To get within 1,000 miles of seeing anything remotely resembling The Specials at their peak nowadays you’d have to turn to the likes of the vulgar Kid British (a band who Lynval Golding himself nauseatingly endorsed recently) or similar. Thanks to Razorlight’s single-handed destruction of the garage indie model favoured earlier this decade, you’d be hard-pressed to find a band with the energy and appetite to really burn down any house, meaning that the current trend of twee, faux-folk and ghastly electro will continue to soundtrack modern life for the forseeable future.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but until someone comes along and produces something to wipe the blank expressions from the faces of a blank generation, we will continually be forced to look to the past for inspiration. Those were the days...