I was jamming to The Selecter this morning and it got me thinking…

Bands from the 80’s and earlier are a different breed than the pop stars of today. One obvious thing is the whole debate between analog vs digital recordings, vinyl vs cd’s and other digital formats.

I think some of the difference between then and now is philosophical.

Take Pink Floyd’s Dogs for example - they use an analog synth to mimic the sound of a dog barking and howling in different parts of the song. It doesn’t sound much like a real dog, but realism isn’t what makes it cool to listen to; it was just one instance of this unique new universe of sounds. Same thing in Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, only with car sounds instead of animals.

They could’ve just pasted some audio clips in there for some weird sound effects. They didn’t need to create a dog inside of a synth, but it was cool. Today, we could easily synthesize a hyper-realistic engine sound, or the bark of a specific breed and size of dog and you’d never know it was generated by 0’s and 1’s.

It’s the same with all forms of media and entertainment really; from mobile games to the highest production value movies, it seems like everything is synthetically made to be as lifelike as possible nowadays.

I mean shit, it’s not even limited to media - they’re literally making synthetic THC from hemp plants, converting non-psychoactive compounds into slightly different forms of THC that’ll get you just as stoned.

We’re a species obsessed with creating real stuff in completely unnatural ways.

Call me a hipster, but there’s something I like about retro analog synths recorded on magnetic tape, and cheesy 80’s movies where the monster is clearly a puppet or a guy in a suit. I prefer the oversaturated, pixelated style of the Super Nintendo over the dull color pallets of lifelike war simulators on the PlayStation 5.

I like having to use a little bit of imagination sometimes, and to see how someone made the most of their creativity to create wild art from unlikely building blocks. Making do with what they had and absolutely crushing it.

I like technology. I have weird conversations with chatbots, I’m sitting here typing on my iPhone with an Apple Watch strapped to my wrist while my laptop running the latest Linux kernel is playing a YouTube video in the background. I obsess over tech news pretty much constantly.

But there’s still a part of me that thinks we’re moving too fast and abandoning a lot of cool old stuff for cool new stuff. I do like that a lot of indie devs are embracing retro game vibes and there will always be musicians who prefer analog, or use older techniques for writing and recording. There will always be hipsters and people too broke to spend thousands of dollars on equipment and the latest digital audio and video workstations.

I mean look at bands like Days n Daze. Their bass player literally plays a broomstick with a piece of paracord on an old fashioned wash tub thing and they have a dedicated washboard player too. They recorded most of their albums in a bedroom.

I guess my big take here is that pop culture is really accelerating towards the bleeding edge day after day while there’s still so much value in older, less techie things.

Luckily, we’re fortunate enough to have so much of this stuff archived over the years that there’s almost infinite possibilities for discovering new things that came out decades ago. So many hidden gems out there.

I think I’m gonna go listen to some more 80s ska now.