Nostalgia

I heard on tv yesterday that a remake of the 1984 movie Footloose is being released in a couple of weeks. And I ask, why? I can’t really remember if I saw the movie or not. I think I did when it has been aired on tv. However, that I don’t remember tells me it didn’t really make a big impact on me. Generally, I’m not much into dancing movies. Didn’t watch Dirty Dancing either. Although I appreciate music, and there are some musicals I have enjoyed, I’m just not much into movies about dancing. I know there is a deeper plot about religious “law” for the supposed protection of society, but still. All that is just not enough to entice me to watch it the first time, let alone a remake.

I do know a lot of the music from Footloose because of my first job out of college. In 1985, I worked for the summer as the sound engineer for one of the live shows at Canada’s Wonderland, a theme park just north of Toronto. The show had singing and dancing with a 12-member cast and they did arrangements of a number of hits from the previous year. By the time the 400th show came by, I was pretty sick of the Footloose music.

There have been so many movies over the past 20 years or so that are remakes of earlier movies. And many times, the originals are better. And there are always remakes of popular songs too. Very few of them, in my opinion, measure up to the original. Maybe I’m a music snob, but pop music is generally so simple, there isn’t much you can do to the arrangement to make it fresh for a second kick at the can. I am a fan of Jazz, and I would say there is a higher percentage of remakes that work. I attribute that to the higher complexity of the music, giving the artist a greater palette from which to draw. However, in any genre, movie or music, there are those “classics” that can stand the remake and still shine. I just don’t think Footloose is a classic.

To me, the remake of Footloose is about nostalgia, as is the case with a lot of music and movies. And, I must admit, I don’t understand nostalgia. My dictionary has two definitions for the word. The first is “homesickness,” and the second is “a yearning for something in the past.” Maybe that’s why I don’t understand it. Many people my age, including the hubby, listen almost exclusively to 70s music because they were in their teens during that decade. I had such a terrible time in my teens, I have absolutely no desire to try to recapture anything about it. From a technological perspective, the 70s is my least favourite decade. It was the beginning of multi-track recording and people didn’t know how to standardize the settings on these new machines. There were so many such recordings that needed massive fixing for re-release on CD, it sustained a specialty remastering company for years – in fact, they’re still operational. Additionally, with the rampant drug culture at the time, instrument tuning was extremely lax – a particular irritant to me. There is very little you can do after the fact to fix tuning issues.

“Homesickness” for me implies the future. The house where I was raised is long gone. It was pretty run down when we lived there, and the new owners wanted better, so they razed our house and built a new one in a different place on the property. They even dug up the foundation – there is NOTHING left of it. But that’s OK with me. I had no desire to go back. My real home is heaven, and I can’t wait to get there! I know in my eternal home, I will never have to leave. I will never again feel pain or sorrow. There will be no anxiety or loss. It will be continually bright and beautiful beyond compare. Knowing these characteristics makes me homesick for that place where I have not yet been.

Until next time, take good care of one another…