The Return of Return to Forever: Going Nowhere?

by Anthony Medici in Celebrity News, Industry News, Musician Reviews, Opinion Posts, Uncategorized

“FUSION LIVES!” trumpets the cover of August 2008 Jazz Times.  “They’re Back!” screams the August 2008 cover of Downbeat.  Two cover stories in the same month in the main jazz monthlies.  What’s going on here?  Well, for one thing, the hype machine is in Full Hot Air Mode.  For another, the PR-driven, editorially compromised character of the primary jazz mags stands nakedly revealed.  The Big Sell is on.  Are you buying?

30+ years after their period of success, RTF is getting back together and taking it on the road.  Is this the answer to a question no one asked?  With the help of the jazz press, RTF is this summer’s “hottest ticket” according to JT.  This is really what’s it’s about:  selling.  Selling the past.  Selling the hype.  JT and db now love nothing more than to jump on (or create) a bandwagon guided by an army of flacks and suits.   

TRORTF is all about selling a few more records while the getting is good.  It reminds me of those PBS shows put on during fund-raising week, which bring back not-so-gently aged rockers from the glory days of the British Invasion, to reprise their hit songs for an audience of Baby Boomers with deep pockets.  It’s nostalgia, folks.  And it sells. 

Despite protestations to the contrary, the RORTF surely is an exercise in nostalgia and commercialism.   These revivals are usually motivated by depleted artistic and fiscal accounts.  Has Al DiMeola made a record worth listening to in the last decade?  I know Stanley Clarke has not.  Lenny White is a good sideman; that’s it.  Chick Corea is all over the map, which might indicate a loss of direction.   

Apparently, going back to the future is the solution for them.  It’s a shame really.  Miles and Trane knew better than to go backwards.  They knew that to stop innovating and carrying themusic forward was artistic death.  But that was a time when innovation and the state of the art meant something.  The RORTF might be telling us that those days are in fact over.