Guitare Sèche Le Mag numéro 62

We sometimes wonder why we have this tendency to look back to the past? There's nostalgia, of course, all the more present when it evokes a golden age, real or imagined. It's true, especially when it comes to music (though less so than with the sense of smell or taste), that this allows a fairly immediate connection with events experienced without going through the intellect.
We can sometimes get annoyed when this reassuring "already listened to" aspect leads broadcasters (radio stations, streaming platform algorithms...) to favor established stars, but also tribute bands and, in general, anything that reassures the listener or customer with the aim of making a profit. This phenomenon is so pervasive that it nips in the bud the circuits designed to promote creation and novelty.
Yet it's essential to look back at what was, if only to grasp the unthinking of the time, to understand, for example, that if Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." was able to reach such a wide audience, it's because its production put it in the format that appealed to radios and audiences in the early 1980s. If the song had remained an acoustic demo, like the rest of the Nebraska album sessions, it's unlikely that anyone would have heard of it, or only on the bangs. The form sometimes makes it easier to get across a substance that's hard to swallow, especially in an America in crisis, blinded by the promises of ultraliberalism. However, it's the blues version of the song that seems relevant to us in 2023, whereas the album version seems to have aged very badly, as Julien Bitoun points out in the long article devoted to The Boss.
The unthinkable is all around us. Like the fact that, even today, the guitar is still seen as a man's instrument, or that a woman on the cover of a guitar magazine sells less. What does this say about our relationship with the instrument? The MusiSHEans have an opinion on the matter, and share it with us in these pages.
Similarly, why do we persist in producing instruments in massive exotic woods at a time when we need the great trees of primary forests more than ever? Perhaps looking back allows us not to rush headlong into a future that is arriving far too quickly, but also to learn from our mistakes, like Éric Darmagnac, who took one of his first, imperfect instruments and turned it into a masterpiece on the occasion of his hundredth guitar. There's always time to repair the past, and it would be a pity not to at least try, unless you no longer believe in anything.