Twentieth Century Revival Party

“It's something you learn after your second theme party: It's All Been Done Before.” - Prior Walter, Angels In America

We used to have parties, lots of parties. Post-show parties, theme parties. My first 1980s Revival Party was in 1989. Once upon a time that would have seemed cutting-edge, but seriously. We’re talking about parties.

I had a premonition of dread regarding NYE 2000, which had as much to do with my personal brain chemistry as it did with politics, culture, and the residual fear that Christ was returning and that we were all totally fucked.

We saw the Canadian art-house film Last Night at the Cedar-Lee in December 1999, an apocalyptic comedy with a mean streak of melancholy (speaking of which, Lars Von Trier entirely cribbed the premise for this movie for his Melancholia only eliminating any trace of humor) which left me feeling refreshed, and positive. The world might end, but it’s going to do that, anyway. At least we have had love.

The USO Hall

I looked forward into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of hope. And we all know how well that’s worked out.

To celebrate the end of the Millennium, on December 31, 1999 (numerologists be damned) we invited our friends to decorate our house for a Twentieth Century Revival Party, assigning a different decade to each room.

A salute to Spiritualism was featured in my office, a Roaring 20s speakeasy in the bathroom. There was a Depression-era soup kitchen in the dining room, in the living room a WWII USO party. Cold War martinis and Hawaiian appetizers in the kitchen, the basement was a psychedelic Sixties happening with brownies, both leaded and unleaded.

The password is "swordfish."

In the hallway upstairs I erected a stack of television screens which played a six-hour curated VHS video of 80s MTV clips. Remember when MTV played music videos? Of course you don’t, no one does.

And the wife’s office included computers featuring newfangled "webcams" of New Year’s Eves in New Orleans, New York and elsewhere, and guests recorded messages for a time capsule we will open on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

We gathered in the USO Hall for the countdown to the new century (numerologists, shut up) and the best prank which did not happen was when Brian thought of going into the basement and killing the power exactly at midnight, only he didn’t and just told me about it later.

Video Killed the Radio Star

Practically everyone I knew at the time was there. Certainly, almost everyone engaged in our work with Bad Epitaph and Dobama's Night Kitchen. New Year's Eve is fun, but I don't think anyone wanted to be caught without something special to do that night and I am glad so many chose to come to our party, to be with us.

But that was it. Whether an effect of growing up, losing a child, or having living children, we stopped throwing parties at our house. We looked inward. Certainly, my wife and I continued to be social animals, but turning our home into the site of such loud, animated festivities became a thing of the past.

But who knows. We have teenagers now, and they may come up with their own ideas. After all, we are on the threshold of the "New Roaring Twenties."

Happy New Year!

Guardians of the Galaxy (film)

The most interesting aspect of the new Marvel Comics summer blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy is, of course, The Awesome Mix Vol.1. Our main protagonist ... well, our main protagonist is Rocket, but the guy we follow from the beginning of the film, the one human in the company, is Peter Quill, was abducted from Earth in 1988, when he was about ten years-old. 

His most treasured possessions are a late-80s model Walkman, and more importantly a cassette tape given to him by his mother while she was dying from cancer. On it are songs she thought he needed to know and love as she did.

All well and good, when a Baby Boomer aged parent believes they are acting to hold back the onslaught of rap music and hair metal which would otherwise poison a boy's love of real music. I could go on about Baby Boomers and their arrogant insinuations that the music of their childhood was the last great pop music, but in the past ten years I have heard enough members of my generation saying the same thing about the 80s and 90s. It's an American thing.

However, as the music on The Awesome Mix is almost entirely from the 1970s, it should be noted what a peculiar time in music history that was. The Baby Boomers, as always the dominant force in taste and culture, shaped the pop charts for a longer period than any other generation in history. So as the "Me" Decade stretched on, with Boomers aging into their late twenties, the pop charts became more adult, introspective, and maudlin.

The number one song of Summer 2014 was Fancy by Iggy Azalea. That is a song for teenagers. The number one song of Summer 1978 was the Doobie Brothers' Minute By Minute, a song which has the sonic medicinal qualities of warm milk. That is a song for shut-ins.

Peter Quill's mother apparently thought it was vitally important he be lulled into an early sense of self-involved torpor by including I'm Not In Love by 10cc. I mean, I had to listen to that song on the radio ten times a day when it was current, and it made me the solipsistic man I am today. Why on earth would anyone intentionally subject a child to that kind of abuse?

Throughout the film, I was also painfully aware of how each of these songs were chosen as a marketing device, to satisfy the parents in the audience who were accompanying their children to this big, loud, superhero flick. I mean, I wanted to be there, too, I am not pretending I didn't, but I also felt I was being pandered to. It's not like these are deep-catalog cuts, they are entirely ultra-familiar songs, most of them having been featured prominently in numerous previous films.

Hooked On A Feeling? Isn't that one of K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies?

However, let us at last take the premise of this mixtape gift from dying mother to son sincerely, and at face value. As our favorite songs from our youth remind us of who we are, so does the gift of our favorite music say, this is who I am. Remember me. 

 
I am reminded of the Canadian film Last Night (fans of Slings & Arrows take note, it stars and was written and directed by Don McKellar - deal with that) and takes place on the final evening before the world ends. Why the world ends isn't important. I mean, it really isn't, we never learn why or how it is everyone knows this is the case. It's just a dark comedy about what everyone might do if the end of the world were certain, and known. I love this movie.

From time to time, we hear a DJ on the radio spinning the "Greatest 500 Songs Of All Time". The thing is, they are obviously not the greatest songs of all time, they include such non-hits as Jimmy Loves Mary-Ann (from the same clowns who recorded Brandy, You're a Fine Girl) and Heartbeat It's a Love Beat by the DeFranco Family.

The man says, "We've reached number twelve on the top 500 of all time, according to ... me, all right? So don't bother calling in. This time, it's my choice." 

And that's awesome. 

See also: Time of Marvel