Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. I'm thrilled today to

have with me, Simon Reynolds. He's, to my mind, the consummate rock and roll

critic. I've been reading him since his first book, Blist Out. Now he's published Retromania,

and rather than summarize myself, I've asked him to read from his introduction.

We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration.

Band reformations and reunion tours, tribute albums and box sets,

anniversary festivals and live performances of classic albums.

Each new year is better than the last one for music from yesteryear.

Could it be that the greatest danger to the future of our music culture is, it's past?

Maybe that sounds unnecessarily apocalyptic, but the scenario I'm imagining isn't a cataclysm

so much as a gradual wind down. This is the way that pop ends, not with a bang, but with a box set whose fourth disc you

never get around to playing, and an overpriced ticket to the track-by-track restaging of the

Pixies or Pavement album you played to death in your first year at college.

Once upon a time, Pop's metabolism buzzed with dynamic energy,

creating the surging into the future feel of periods like the psychedelic 60s,

...