Stories

Nostalgia is essential to Western pop culture. Connected to a sentimental longing and yearning for the return of an idealized and "mythical past," as Svetlana Boym describes in The Future of Nostalgia, nostalgia trickles through every cultural media—from movies, tv-series, fashion, and music.

And the 1980s have been the principal source of reference in the past decades—primarily kicked off by the Miami Vice-inspired video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, published in 2002. A wave of 80s-driven media followed with reboots like Tron: Legacy or Blade Runner 2049 and new outputs such as the movie Drive or the popular Netflix series Stranger Things.

Alongside the cinematic resurrection of the era, a whole stylized universe began to form; a world in blue and pink. And naturally, the world needed a soundtrack. Introducing: Synthwave.

Lately, I've been listening to The Friendship Onion, the podcast by Dom Monaghan and Billy Boyd. Yes, Merri and Pippin from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Besides being hilarious, they often talk about music and which records they're listening to while being prepped for the shoot.

I realized once again how dramatically the way we listen to music has changed in the last 20 years. And it made me a bit sad.

The Downfall of the Album

I was born in 1990 when the music business was still flourishing. Everybody threw out their vinyl collections and bought everything on these shiny new compact discs. What a time to be alive.

Albums still made a lot of money and defined the listening experience. I've described in a previous episode how certain records like Eric Clapton's Unplugged or Paul Simon's stunning Graceland somewhat coined my taste and personality.

Here in Switzerland, concerts are finally just a glimpse away.

The music itself is powerful for us as individuals. However, the collective experience of a fantastic concert might never be reproduced. It‘s a unique, shared moment. You had to be there to know. You belong to an exclusive club.

Although live recordings cannot catch the total ecstasy of physically enjoying the overwhelming power, there are exceptional clips out there. I‘ve collected five of them, hoping they would lift your spirits on this beautiful Sunday morning.