Vintage fashion, music crosses generations
Brianna Martinez
No matter what age us students seem to be or what year we were born, we are all familiar with music sensations such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, to name a few.We are all also familiar with the fashion during the years when those bands were big.
Paisley patterns, long dresses, strappy sandals, and headwraps were main pieces in putting together ensembles during that era.
Now it seems music and fashion have risen from the dead and everything has been sprinkled with a touch of vintage.
Music is funkier and groovier than ever, with the help of better technology to create a more synthetic pop, electronic sound.
Fashion, now days, has decades such as the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s incorporated in one outfit.
I see people wearing headwraps, strappy sandals, skinny jeans, and Wayfarer sunglasses in one go, and I fancy how they mix decades.
I’m so pleased to see fashion taking sudden turns and dips through different eras and cultures.
The music scene these days is very diverse, with so many genres.
Many of the bands I have came across lately such as MGMT, Cold War Kids, TV on the Radio, Hot Chip, Atmosphere, and other eclectic bands, have that vintage sound to them with lyrics that mean something.
Back then the lyrics always had a meaning, especially with the Vietnam War in action, music artists were inspired.
“Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival wasn’t a note short on letting the world know what the lyrics of that song were about.
Today’s music artists also have meaning to their lyrics.
Though, some are more abstract than others.
MGMT, who are more abstract, incorporate carefree and intuitive lyrics with switches of futuristic and vintage beats.
Their song “Time to Pretend” and “Electric Feel” are both examples of it.
Their music videos also have a psychedelic twist that can trick one into thinking they’re watching a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream, but with a synthpop sound.
Atmosphere, a duo from the twin cities, have lyrics that are so honest and straightforward that sometimes they could give people inspiration or guilt.
Their song “Your Glass House” has a dark but catchy beat with candid and dry lyrics that can be related to any hot mess of a student.
Some bands will never be as legendary as the Grateful Dead or Velvet Underground, but this is the millennium, and we can do [almost] anything we want with all this technology floating about us.
So, in my opinion, we can have that Jimi Hendrix sound, just with an updated beat, which I find some bands are actually trying to do.
While some of us are about 40 years too late to attend music festivals as epic as Woodstock ’69 or experience the counterculture movement of the Summer of Love in ’67, we can still experience what these times have to offer.
Along with fresh new issues, minds, and fashion arising, there will always be those eclectic bands whose lyrics reach those who are willing to let them take them out of their mainstream zone.
As for the fashion coming back, there also will always be those free-spirited individuals that are not afraid to show it by wearing a double-braided headwrap.
The times are a changin’ and the great thing about it is that we can be retro while being modern.
So here’s to the future ’70s.
