Research on the effects of Nostalgia has found that the triggering of happy memories from days gone by can be positive. Memories associated with music seem to be particularly powerful. (University of Southhampton)

Its interesting in that nostalgia has long been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined in the 17th centuary. In the 18th and 19th centuries it has been referred to as a "immigrant psychosis"; "meloncholia" and " mentally repressive compulsive disorder"

But the University of Southhampton begs to differ. Dr Sedikides says nostalgia can counteract things such as lonliness, boredom and anxiety. She admits it isa bittersweet emotion but in effect it makes life more meaningful.

Studies were done on fans of Fleetwood Mac and Springsteen, but would also apply to us here whos memories include paisley sounds and pirate stations.

Not that everyone on this board is as old as us who can make use of this feel good stimulant. The young ones here probably find other reasons to groove to the tunes of yesteryear.


Speaking of Pirate stations I note that New Zealand TV is planning to show a documentary on the local pirate stations such as Radio Hauraki in the coming season. Interesting stuff for us in NZ. That would amount to two of us visitors to this board - maybe?

Academic research was so much better in the good old days!

Heh heh. Nostalgia aint what it used to be

I have not seen the Uni of Southampton report, but I have written on nostalgia in my co-edited book (with Hilda Kean) The 'Public History Reader' (Routledge, 2013) and I used to teach classes on it. Attitudes towards nostalgia are a lot different than the old Freudian approach of it being a malady or pathology as it was once regarded as.

One important book is Svetlana Boym’s 'The Future of Nostalgia'. She’s not a fan of it but divides it into two important elements 1) restorative nostalgia 2) reflective nostalgia. Restorative nostalgia is the wish to go back to or restore a perceived lost way of things that used to be. Given memory is highly selective and edits out the inconvenient bits, ‘what used to be’ will only ever be partially true at best. It is also a dangerous form of nostalgia as at its extreme it is that which leads to movements like the Nazis, restoring a (fictive / invented) sense of a lost great past etc.

Reflective nostalgia however, is probably what the Southampton study is focussing on. In this scenario, the individual reflects on their past, not least, because it is a means by which they can take stock of where they have been, to re-charge their batteries and consider where they are going. In his book 'Retromania: pop culture’s addiction to its own past', Simon Reynolds argues that this is nothing more than sentimental wallowing. I would disagree and argue it is a very positive thing, a means by which people can re-orientate themselves in the present to better tackle the future; essentially, to revalidate themselves in the present based on their past experiences and knowledge at a time when many are constantly being told they are too slow or reluctant to adapt to change (just consider any public service and the government’s bullying attitude towards it, teaching, the health service, fire brigade retirement ages etc etc).

So there’s this kind of superficial sense of what nostalgia is that is fed musically by golden oldies radio stations, top 20 hits of the 60s/70s/80s type comp CDs etc. Then there is the deeper and more mentally healing kind of nostalgia which is more to do with a positive re-capping of our past to draw strength and self-confidence from rather than a dewy-eyed longing to revisit it. That musically, would represent the music we here at least have a far stronger and deeper relationship with and what the Southampton study is probably looking at. Just thought I’d throw that in anyway.

PM

As an adjunct for a further paper presentation I will be doing next month, could I ask readers what they think about nostalgia and music so:

1. Are you happy with the term 'nostalgia' to describe your interest in 60s-70s etc. music? if so or if not why?

2. How would you describe you relationship with 60s-70s etc music if not the above?

Post replies here or email me if you prefer. All responses will be rendered anonymous if used. Thanks very much in advance.

PM

Hi Paul,i dont look upon my love for 60s and 70s music as nostalgia,i was born in 1968 and so i never lived my youth at that time,i look upon nostalgia as a time where you can look upon those times of your youth(or any other age) as nostalgic,nostalgia for me would be the 80s and 90s and in particular the music of madness and the whole 2 tone ska thing,as when i hear those sounds it always transports me back to those times in my mind and sometimes i do hark back to those days with fine times which in my mind makes it a nostalgic time,having the skinhead wearing the clothes etc,and of course the friends i had back then.60s and 70s music for me carries none of those things as far as im concerned its mostly new music to me as a lot of what i buy i have never heard before,so no memories or pangs of nostalgia enter my mind.But thats just me mate,to others even folks not born in the 60s and 70s look upon that time as nostaldgic as they may feel it was the time they wished they did live,particularly the people who dress in the 60s gear like the mods etc,but visualwise when i see footage of the 60s and early 70s in particular i can feel nostalgia as it seems a time lost forever,and in my mind would be a better place and era to have grown up in,i find it strange that in pictures i can be nostalgic but not music......is that unusual??I hope this makes sense Paul.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Stuart, that's interesting. I suppose you might not relate the visual side of the 70s with the musical one neccessarily, hence the music can sound new, and I agree with you that's what the discovery of it is in the present and the pictures look older. I was born in 1959 so the 70s were my childhood and adolesence. As a kid I remember them as simpler times but that's from a kids / teenager's perspective. There were power cuts, 3 day weeks no 24 hour TV, only TOTP or Whistle Test for music etc and the food was horrible! Plus our council house had no central heating so there was always 1/4" of frost on the inside of my bedoroom window in Winter (now I sound like a Monty Python sketch!). But I had the good fortune to be just 17 when punk kicked in so I have a real good memory about those times and real right of passage subculture, thos are my 70s. Loved ska and two-tone, still do.

So we must then say that nostalgia can strictly only be for a time that you have lived through. If it's for a previous age then it is something else, historical fascisnation, a subliminal search for a lost meaning perhaps, although the Buzzcocks famously sang 'nostalgia for an age yet to come'!

PM

I'm not sure about the term nostalgia either Paul.
I don't just listen to 60s and 70s bands although this is my favorite era. When you listen to music from different eras can you be nostalgic for all of them?
Early 70s is the music I grew up with, so if I was nostalgic I wouldn't have got into 60s UK psych as I didn't know it at the time. It's just something that struck a chord with me when I first came across Perfumed Garden #1.
I think you'd find that anyone who didn't listen to mainstream radio would have a type of music they follow and collect. Perhaps like movies.
Don't know if this is of any help.

Thanks Greg, yes, I think it's not nostalgia neccessarily that people feel when listening to music, it can be an array of emotional responses because music (like smell - aromatherapy for instance) has the ability to push various buttons that trigger all sorts of feelings. It's too easy just to blanket all that under the banner of nostlagia.

PM

Similar story here Paul, born in '64 and was music mad from an early age, Rod Stewart, Sweet and, ahem...Bay City Rollers! While in high school I earned a few quid working for the local milkman to pay for the latest 45's by the Jam, Clash, Buzzcocks et al. So it was only in the 80's when the new wave and mod revival scenes started to give way to what I considered to be the lame trends of white boy funk / new romantic / synth pop ( hated it then & hate it now ), that I started looking to the past for good sounds. A mate of mine's brother was about 10 years older than us and had a big collection of 60's Lp's, for a year, he was my library and I was soon immersed in Piper, Forever Changes, Ogdens etc and thinking it was the best ever. So I was only a baby in the 60's and my love for 60's music can't be considered nostalgia.
What would I call it then? Well for me it has all the elements that I love..in spades. Snappy beat songs with great harmonies, great guitars with great guitarists playing em in all their string scraping, toggle switching feedback glory.
Great drummers playing Ludwig and Gretsch kits...drummers knew how to TUNE their drums in those days with tight snares and jazzy sounding toms, the styles of Moon, Kenny Jones is very much a 60's signature. Mash up freakbeat feedback mid sections, reverb to the max, stereo panning, eastern influences, 12 strings, tambourines, hammond organ, mellotron, phasing and great songs. Some of these bands exhibited more talent and fire power on one B side than some do in a lifetime for me anyway. Beatles, I think it may have been candlestick park, but I may be mistaken, anyway...3 of them on one mic, all playing guitar / bass and singing flawless 3 part harmonies on Nowhere Man - NO fold back monitors to hear themselves, with screams that rival an aircraft...phew! Even holding the strings down to make a chord on those weighty big Gretsch semi acoustics with the heavy gauge strings is a full time job. Aye lad, bands were bands in them days. All this was done without ( Thank God ) Autotune, synthesisers, drum machines,big momma backing singers and all the clinical, over bottom - heavy production that has gone on since.
I'm not saying I don't have faves that are not from this era, most notably for me Weller, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Stone Roses, Kula Shaker and more recently the amazing Beachwood Sparks but those artists have listened to and distilled the essence of a lot of the great tunes of yesteryear.
Sorry to be late in replying Paul but I thought I'd give it some thought before posting and sorry if it seems a little indulgent!

Hi Painterman,
Thanks for taking the time to respond in some detail. Yes, I think a similar story would resonate with a lot of people here. Although 'old' music, it is 'new' to your ears when you first hear it so doesn't feel like you're listening to the past necessarily, just good tunes. I went through the same process, I was a '77 era punk and bought all the new picture sleeved 45s of the genre at the time as well. Hearing 60s 45s like Small Faces, Creation etc was not so much like hearing the past as more of the same that I was already into of the present but with differing stylistic nuances etc. There's a great book just out 'The Singles Cover Art of Punk' edited by John savage 400pp. It's a weighty tome but is currently almost half-price on Amazon post free reduced to £13 from £25 and well worth getting if you're into that era.

PM

To quote Lester Bangs: "But preferring Hank Williams or Charlie Parker or the Sun Sessions or the Velvet Underground to Squeeze and Rickie Lee Jones and the Go-Go's and the Psychedelic Furs is not nostalgia. It's good taste."

It's totally irrelevant as to how old the music is. All music is new when you're hearing it for the first time. I do think a big reason why those of on this forum spend so much of our time listening to older music is that we sense certain intrinsic qualities and values in that older music that seem to be lacking in so much contemporary music.

Yes I agree, though I'm always reminded of the guy with the immaculate 78rpm collection (the documentary they made about him was called 'Desparate Man Blues') of blues, old timey, jazz, etc but hated anything made after 1940. For him that was when music ended!I guess Robert Crumb might feel the same. Anyway, I think everyone has their own internal framework for likes/ dislikes. They might be open to listening to other stuff and finding they like it, often this is self-referred to as a 'guilty pleasure' even though to others there is not anything they can hear to be guilty about! I don't think this is nostalgia either. It's just how music speaks to or moves you.
Though I draw a line at Mr Blooby!

PM

I was born in 1954 so heard a lot of great music in the sixties as it was released. I don't think of it as nostalgia as I love hearing new music from that era. [if that makes sense].

Yes it does. I think that it's the internet age, we can all hear a great deal more 60s music now than anyone in the 60s could have a) because we can hear the 60s in retrospect as a whole or any given year we like, not as it happened in lived time and b) because there's just so much more of it than anyone ever knew and we have access to it, so old music sounds new.

PM