As the saying goes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. When I first laid eyes on the lineup for the “Then And Now Massive Music Festival 2010,” I had to wonder about the target audience for this thing. According to the press release, the show — which is happening Saturday, May 15, at the SM Mall of Asia Concert Grounds — features JoJo, Frankie J, Baby Bash, Diana King, TQ, SWV, P.M. Dawn, All-4-One and V Factory, performing “all hits, all night long!”
Of course there’s a lot of money to be made from milking people’s fond music-related memories — the insanely successful Tears for Fears concert at the Araneta Coliseum being a recent and blatant example — but I’m not sure how many people are both, say, genuinely P.M. Dawn and Jojo devotees. Then And Now seems to be for people who are mainstream pop music fans in general, or perhaps people who just want to be time-machined back into their allegedly simpler college or high school or childhood days via what amounts to audio markers, not necessarily the sprawling oeuvre of certain artists.
The press material takes pains to note: “The Then And Now Massive Music Festival is a definite all-hits show — not an album tour (where artists only sing cuts from a new-released CD) or a promo tour (where artists only push a couple of songs) so music fans from all over the country can expect to sing and dance to their favorite tunes all night long.”
Look up YouTube videos by these acts and you will see comment sections brimming with sentiments like “Aahhh this brings me back” and “They don’t make them like this any more, new artists take note” and “even 90s MUSIC4LIFE!” It makes one feel strange, this nostalgia for a decade not too long past, but then again in a way I was missing the ‘80s even before they were over, so it makes some sense, or at least is not an uncommon derangement.
So anyway, back to the lineup. It’s impressive, in its own way. I doubt that any of these people are anyone’s absolute favorite artists of all time, but they all did score chart hits back when that still meant something, and to gather them all together for a show over here must have taken some deft balancing of desperation and compensation.
To be honest, though, I was not aware that half of these artists were even still active (and I was not aware that the other half even existed — I mean, who are V Factory?). I had assumed that P.M. Dawn, for example, had ascended to some higher plane of existence, powered by advanced meditation techniques and Spandau Ballet samples. And that TQ had perished in some unfortunate last-ditch gun-related attempt at gaining actual street cred. And that All-4-One had abandoned their musical ambitions and stolen an experimental spacecraft, blasted off, overdosed on cosmic radiation, and plummeted back to earth to discover that they had each gained distinct and fantastic super powers, which they now use to fight evil and explore the uncharted corners of the multiverse. (Okay, that last one was more wishful thinking, really.)
So if you want to spend Saturday night wallowing in a predominantly-‘90s urban sound and giving a warm welcome to a barrage of Billboard-busters, then I’ll see you there!
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Visit http://thenandnowconcert.com/ for more details.