The Old Musical Express

New Musical Express on the 1983 reissue of Charlie Gillett's 1971 book The Sound of the City. Reviewer Paul Du Noyer notes that "interest in old music has never been higher", with NME's own series of cassette compilations of vintage soul, jazz, reggae, etc, given as proof. He says the timely reissue of Gillett's classic tome can nourish the evident appetite for history out there. 1983 figures here as a lull, a flagging of energy, with a wide range of listeners and musicians looking to replenish the era's empty reservoir of inspiration by drawing from the aquifer of the archives.But as the review reveals, the early '70s - when the book first came out - similarly were also a moment of "re-cycling, self-consciousness and nostalgia" taking over "from spontaneous forward momentum" . Indeed Gillett cites Don McLean's "American Pie" as the terminus of his narrative for precisely that reason.As so often, the Rift of Retro recedes ever deeper into the past...Gillett's column in Record Mirror -…

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