Borrowed Nostalgia for the Unremembered 2010s
A few weeks ago, I found myself needing to move my body without leaving the house. I think it was because of the foster kittens. So I decided to throw on a DJ mix that I recorded at some point in 2017. I know the year because I cleverly titled it “For Your Party 2017.” This was towards the end of my first entrepreneurial phase where I was inches away from a burnout so intense that even as I type this today, eight(ish) years later, my body is instinctively attempting to find the fetal position. Another story for another time.
As I was listening to “For Your Party 2017,” dancing and feeling pretty good about my beat matching skills, I was struck by how perfectly it summed up how I actually spent my time between the ages of 25 to 35. In 2011, I quit my restaurant job to go full freelance: walking dogs by day, DJ-ing by night. Overnight shifts at KCRW (which is primarily what I did during my 2009-2019 run as a DJ there) were paid in exposure until 2015, when they kindly upped the rate to $25 an hour (+ exposure). My other regular gig at the time was a couple spots a month at Wurstküche* for $40 an hour. Eventually there were weddings and other big deal event gigs where I could make upwards of $150 an hour. All on on a 1099, of course, always on a 1099.
Days that were light on dog walking were spent trawling free mp3 blogs for fresh remixes of songs that had a very specific foothold in the zeitgeist, not obvious “hits,” but nothing too obscure either. Polished beats for PR professionals and their adjacently employed peers. “For Your Party 2017” is riddled with these. Think: The Knocks remixing “Elevate” by St. Lucia, Miami Horror remixing Phantogram, Toro y Moi’s “Still Sound (Xinobi Remix)," a Leo Zero edit here, a Robyn feature there. And (naturally) the pièce de résistance was Afrobeta's remix of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere.” Does it lean a little too heavy into the after-after party glitch + bass-forward rinse that was the style back then? I still can’t answer that one decisively! It is, however, the most decisively 2010s artifact of “For Your Party 2017.”** Being performatively into Fleetwood Mac is so 2010s. Or it was if you were in any way involved with LA nightlife.
Gen Z is apparently (and unsurprisingly) becoming nostalgic for the 2010s. Google it if you want to feel sad. Though also apparently (and also unsurprisingly) it’s kinda muddling itself into a neon-golden slurry of “Y2K,” “Indie Sleaze” and “Millennial Optimism,” epitomized by wishing that you were in your early twenties when work/life balance meant making $30K a year writing listicles for a digital media startup by day, and going out to small venue rock shows and Brooklyn warehouse parties with Hannah Horvath every night. I’d quibble with them about some very clear distinctions and differences, but then I remember that this song and this song were released by the same guy less than 10 years apart from each other and… well, yeah, they got our ass. But also! To my point last week about how I need to know that high school jazz vocalists are still learning Gershwin in order to maintain a healthy blood pressure reading, it turns out I feel exactly the same way about college juniors tracing the origins of the word “hipster” back to the 1940s to make the point of their trend piece land. I guess I'll just need to read a similar piece from a bright-eyed + bushy-tailed Gen Alpha 10 years from now before I can officially call it a right of passage.
I wonder if part of my inspiration to write this all down this week is stemming from my Tuesday afternoon visit to the AMC Burbank 16 for a screening of Merrily We Roll Along? It was my first time seeing the show in it’s entirety and I was fine with the filmmaking style — this was not the case for everyone in my audience, especially the woman who decided to be theatrically mad about it as we all made our way out following the credits. Presentation aside, the story is undeniable. And so my personal reflection of bittersweet ambition above feels eerily similar to the midpoint of that cautionary tale told in reverse. But if I was telling the full story of my artistic life so far in reverse, my descriptions of who I was and what I did during the decade prior to the 2010s would be a hell of a lot more romantic: going to local band showcases every week night, getting up early ahead of my lunch shift to review those shows on Blogspot, and spending every weekend buried in a KCRW edit booth working on version upon version of my demo. The details are modernized, but the beats are the same. It's not exactly the same as a critical mass of Gen Z longing to be their current age amid last decades cultural landmarks... but it's not not that. Something, something “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” amirite??
Post-scripts:
* Are Gen Zs also gonna run back the whole fancy sausage, elevated beer hall 2010s moment? Because believe me, it was a moment. In 2013 I met up with a friend in Atlanta at a restaurant that was basically Wurstküche, but owned and operated by Richard from Top Chef! Also, what if they did get really into fancy sausage and beer after coming so hard for our burgers?? My bemused chuckles would never cease.
** Best for last! While the ultra-glitchy Fleetwood Mac of it all might have been the most 2010s artifact of my aforementioned mix, the forgotten treasure was the DJ Koze remix of Låspley’s “Operator.” Phew, what a gem. Queue it up and treat yo self!