Cultural nostalgia is big business.
Every Tuesday, DVD distributors offer a raft of old movies and TV shows, and not far behind are vintage music performances. In 2005, DVD sales of TV shows alone amounted to more than $3 billion.
In just the past few weeks older shows released on DVD included the first season of “Hawaii Five-O,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Wild Wild West” and “The Streets of San Francisco.”
Much of this, of course, is aimed at baby boomers trying to recapture a whiff of youth, that sense of possibility you have in your teens and 20s that seems to evaporate in the headlong rush to 60 that so many of that generation are experiencing.
But watching old TV and listening to decades-old music demonstrates one thing: Not all nostalgia is created equal.
“The Streets of San Francisco,” for example, was one of my favorites. It ran from 1972 to 1977 and starred Karl Malden and Michael Douglas. There was plenty of star power – Malden already was an Oscar winner, and Michael
Douglas had one in his future.
The real star, of course, was the city. Watching the pilot episode the other night I marveled at how many times the director ensured that the shot was framed with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. I even have to confess that the show was one reason I moved to San Francisco not long after I got out of college. It just looked so appealing and romantic.
But this is a tricky business. Much as I fondly recalled “The Streets of San Francisco,” TV does not age nearly as well as wine or cheese.
Consider, for example, those horrible plaid jackets with the wide lapels on Douglas, or the creepy ‘do with little wisps of hair over the ears sported by guest star Robert Wagner. It’s hard to focus on what was a pretty solid police drama when those style train wrecks keep derailing your attention.
That dated, tired feel to old TV is in sharp contrast to another cultural artifact from the same era – Neil Young’s “Live at Massey Hall.” Young recently dipped into his archives and released the disc of a 1971 concert in Toronto.
Maybe because the CD does not involve watching Young when he was still a rail-thin youth, the album retains a remarkable freshness. (I avoided watching the companion DVD.)
But to hear his clean acoustic performances of “Old Man,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “See the Sky About to Rain” and “Ohio” provokes an emotional response just the opposite of watching old TV. Instead of chuckling at the outdated clothing and hairdos, we’re captured by a timeless sound and the craft of songwriting.
The other aspect, of course, is that in the early 1970s rock music was a culture unto itself, the anthems of that now-quaint phrase “the counterculture.” To hear Young perform “Ohio,” which had not yet appeared on a record in January 1971, brings back the images of dead kids at Kent State all too vividly.
And that, it seems, is the real difference. Old TV programs feel like dusty artifacts. At least some old music shines like a cultural touchstone.
Staff writer Edward P. Smith can be reached at 303-954-1767 or at esmith@denverpost.com.
