Tweet of the Day: Star Trek and Nostalgia
Synthwave, what we thought the future would sound like back in the 80s, but wait…it is the far away future of 2017!
I am confused. Amused? Yes, but also confused. If you remember the 80s (like old geezer me does) you remember the soft saxophones, the electronic beeps of early home/personal computers, and the ever present beats of a million Yamaha synthesizers. It was also the decade of Reaganomics, Red Scares, Cyberpunk ™ (by CD Projekt Red), war in the Middle East, and the last bloody hurrah of the Cold War. But like any retro-inspired movement, it not quite the 80s, just an above average imitation of the era. What sounded cutting edge back then now is quaint. Some of the sounds of the 80s were due more to the limitations of the technology as well as the colliding social trends that a deliberate attempt to create a genre. And as synthesizers plus electric guitars infused pop culture, there was a backlash that led directly to alternative rock music scene of the late 80s which then exploded in the first half of the 1990s.
But the reality is that like many rethreaded concepts of the not so distant past, it is people like me, who remember our childhoods as we pass through our collective mid-lives, that power such genres and those who are hearing them for the first time and sounds fresh to them. With so many other icons of the decade such as Aliens, Ghostbusters, Transformers, and Star Wars coming back a second time around, it is no wonder that memories of the music that served as a score for the decade also linger on.
