“Your taste in music is very
retro, I’m impressed!” my father
said as we drove our way across
the East Coast of the United
States on a 10-day long road trip
two summers ago. I had assumed
control over the aux, queuing an
endless number of songs by iconic
’70s rock band Fleetwood Mac.
Little did my dad know that the
new fixation I had developed with
classic ’70s rock had emerged after
I had partaken the challenge of
reading 10 books during our road
trip and had stumbled upon Taylor
Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & The
Six.”
I’d been breezing through most
of the books I was reading on the
trip, not because I was particularly
enjoying them all, but because I
wanted to advance on my yearly
Goodreads goal. That vicious
cycle suddenly came to a halt
when I picked up “Daisy Jones &
The Six.” The novel recounts the
story of fictional legendary ’70s
rock band Daisy Jones & The Six.
It tells readers how they came to
be, details the highs and lows of
their musical career and how their
rise to fame led to their inevitable
break-up. The novel is written in
interview format, which makes it
interesting yet simple to read. It’s
also categorized as a historical
fiction novel, given that the band
is loosely inspired on Fleetwood
Mac’s history, both musically and
personally.
When I started reading the
novel, I had no idea that it had
taken inspiration from Fleetwood
Mac. I initially bought a copy
because I had just read another
novel by Reid and was enamored
by her writing style and the unique
stories she creates for her readers.
But as I read on, I felt like the
fictional band’s story echoed that
of another iconic band that was
known for its outstanding musical
career as well as its tumultuous
personal
relationships.
After
lengthy and profound analysis, I
concluded that Fleetwood Mac
had inspired Reid while writing
“Daisy Jones & The Six,” and once
I searched for a confirmation to
my theories, I discovered that I
was correct.
Now, two years after reading
the novel for the first time, the
songs that comprise the fictional
band’s hit album Aurora have
been released, anticipating the
upcoming
TV
adaptation.
I
have thus begun establishing
comparisons
between
the
released songs and some of my
favorite Fleetwood Mac tunes.
As time presses on, the
definition of “newness” begins
to blur: What is the distinction
between art that is truly new
and art that has not yet been
experienced by a particular
observer? In the 21st century,
it sometimes feels like there is
no distinction at all. Thanks
to the internet, there is more
art available at the click of a
button than any human could
experience in a single lifetime;
there will always be something
out there that is new to you.
Art is, by nature, derivative,
built on the trends that came
before it, meaning that the
evolution of art often happens
too slowly to truly recognize.
But,
despite
the
seemingly
limitless
amount
of
new
and old art, and despite the
persistence of artistic trends
which obfuscate the age of a
work of art, there’s something
special about old art that has
somehow withstood the test of
time and still has its presence
widely felt in modern times:
retro art. We can’t go back in
time and engage directly with
the past, but we can engage
with the art that previous
generations left behind for us.
The Retro B-Side is a place to
celebrate that art: the classics
that stand and hold years and
decades later, the hidden gems
buried by the sands of time, the
art we lovingly accept from our
parents and their art we less-
lovingly reject outright.
In 1977, punk rock was on the
verge of an explosion in popular-
ity in the United States. The music
industry took note, already in a
position to capitalize on the pas-
sion behind punk despite not fully
understanding it. But even if indus-
try executives thought the punk
movement could be a huge money-
maker, they prepared for punk to
fail. As music critic Robert Christ-
gau for The Village Voice wrote of
music industry executives, “they
know … that the rock audience is as
put off by the rough, the extreme,
and the unfamiliar as they are. This
rock audience is the one the execs
created — more passive and cau-
tious than that of a decade ago not
just because kids have changed,
although they have, but because it
is now dominated statistically by
different, and more passive, kids.”
If this new, harsher, riskier music
was going to fail — and it did about
as quickly as it came to be in the late
’70s — it was not the listeners who
were to blame, it was the big-money
interests in the industry who had
trained listeners not to engage with
art outside of their comfort zone.
Listeners were no longer trained
to view this music as art at all, but
rather as a product to be consumed.
And so punk failed, for a number
of reasons, but not least of which
was that it was an art form posi-
tioning itself politically as anti-con-
sumerist as possible.
It’s no surprise that the lifes-
pan of punk rock coincided with
the moment the American left had
an opportunity to push back and
reclaim the power it gained in the
1960s. Coming out of the Nixon/
Watergate era of conservatism,
a struggling American economy
meant that the door was open for
the country’s left wing to cement
itself as the leading political fac-
tion. But Jimmy Carter’s admin-
istration did little to stymie the
country’s economic distress, and
America shifted even further
to the right with the election of
Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Rea-
gan Revolution sparked a wave of
individualism and consumerism
that, coupled with an eventually
recovering economy, meant that
there was more money to be made
and more money to be spent by
the average American, and people
wanted more. “Greed is good,” as
Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas,
“Ant-Man”) says in “Wall Street.”
This was American culture in the
1980s: one obsessed with money
and products over all else.
This is a culture that does not
lend itself to the creation of great
art. Great art takes risks, it tries
to push its medium forward, tries
to do something new and bold.
Sometimes great art does become
incredibly financially successful
— e.g. the music of The Beatles,
the films of Steven Spielberg —
but these works are not typically
radical. They do new things while
playing into popular sensibilities.
JACK MOESER
Senior Arts Editor
MITCHEL GREEN
Daily Arts Writer
GRACIELA BATLLE CESTERO
Daily Arts Writer
Let the ’80s die
Design by Emily Schwartz
‘Daisy Jones & The Six’: a
retrospective ode to Fleetwood Mac
Design by Emily Schwartz
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
— 5
Design by Francie Ahrens
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