Time Has Come Today: Go Retro Launches!

Sunday, July 08, 2007
When I listen to a favorite song or watch a favorite performer from a previous era, I feel some sort of tangible ache in my heart that can't be easily defined. It's not regret, because it's not like I was born in time to have had the chance to experience seeing the performer live in the first place, or walk into a record store (remember those?) to purchase the recording on vinyl.

Maybe it's a former life of mine feeling the regret? Who knows, but this feeling compels me to replace my old blog, The Daily Female, with Go Retro! - a loving tribute to all those people, places, and things that had an impact on pop culture from the 40s or so through the 80s. No one wants to hear the bitter gripings of yet another frustrated single woman out there on the World Wide Web, anyway. A blog's got to be specific. Want to know whatever happened to a once famous or obscure person on the music scene in the 80s? How to decorate your home in the mid-century modern style? Want to hear about people from today whose style is definetely time wharp inspired? Wonder what the watusi was? I hope Go Retro will be the blog to go to for these fun answers and more.

Why the 1989 cutoff date? Coming of age in the 80s, I believe that it was the last era that retained any kind of innocence. Actually, it was 1985...because I remember hearing Madonna's Like A Virgin in 1986 and thinking that the end of civilization as we knew it was on its way to its destructive course. It's no secret to those that know me that I grow more disgruntled with today's world by the day. I long for a time when cell phones weren't glued to everyone's heads, when everyone wasn't in a mad SUV-induced rush to get somewhere, where men and women coupled up at dance halls where the big bands used to come and play (as The Kinks used to sing) and where kids knew that being in a library meant you had to talk in a quiet voice. You have entered a zone devoid of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and any other bimbo or manbo who dares call themselves a "celebrity." They'll be no news about the iPhone on this blog. Instead, I want to tell people about companies that are still producing vinyl records (yes, they do exist!)

So...welcome to Go Retro, and let the reminiscing begin!

3 comments:

  1. Go Retro Girl Go! Looking forward to the new posts.

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  2. Just found your site today, and, as is my habit, I decided to start at the beginning.

    I think about this question of when the optimism shifted to cynicism a lot, and I think 1985 is waaaaaaayy late for the end of American innocence. More like ten years earlier: the counterculture had failed to stop the Vietnam War (and we had lost it militarily), the Kennedys and MLK had been murdered, Watergate had shattered any remaining belief in the integrity of institutions, and between the energy crisis and the horrible economy, we just gave up the ghost.

    In fact, that was the moment when we started to be nostalgia-crazed, and we have been ever since: beginning with "American Graffiti", we've been looking backward with fond regret--instead of forward, as previously, to a bright future of flying cars and vacations on the Moon--ever since.

    Anyway, something to think about. Love your site.

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