OK, so it’s neither thing nor person. But this is from eBay:
Yamaha DX7 Synth – A vintage classic
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but the DX7 was a hideous piece of egregious digital junk. Which sounded fantastic at the time because we were all Young and Stupid. (By the way, did you know that “egregious” is an early example of the “bad=good” crossover thang, only in reverse? 1 outstandingly bad; shocking; 2 archaic remarkably good.) And now it’s “vintage”.
This isn’t actually a time-dependant concept. The DX7 came out in, what, 1986? 23 years old. My old blonde dot-neck/black P-90s Gibson ES330 was vintage when I got it in 1977; a mere 22 years old at time of purchase. I sold it for £300 in 1980 to pay the rent. I am somewhat mortified to have recently discovered that it’s now worth around £15,000. Fifteen grand. And that’s leaving out the fact that Jimi Hendrix actually played it.
But anyway, I digress. The 330 was vintage. It had qualities available only through the passage of time. The DX7 was, and is, a case full of bits. Any kind of garbage can become “vintage” now. Hideous furniture we despised in the 1970s. Britpop haircuts. Austin Allegros. Select magazine; you get my drift. It has become, essentially, a turd-polishing exercise in which folks hope that they can maximise their return by palming off junk on gullible trendies.
Sounds like fun.
2 Responses to Things and people I really despise #2: “Vintage”
It was a sad day when Burt Bacharach discovered the DX7.
Hey, Mark, as it happens, your (once pro) reporter is now gainfully employed as an “attendant” at an antiques mall near his home. Just the other day a customer asked me what “vintage” meant in a dealer’s description of an item on the price tag. “Well,” I said, “The dealer likely feels that the piece has some age to it, but that it isn’t old enough to be an ‘antique,’ so he calls it ‘vintage’.” I try to avoid such weasly chronology when tagging my own offerings at the mall, by instead noting the approximate age of the item (e.g., “ca. 1950s”), even if that’s only a guess on my part. In rockcritic-crossover terms, I have a **ca. 1977** MX-80 Sound EP for sale at the mall, even as we speak.
I can see your next entry in this series now — Things and people I really despise #2.5: “Vintage recordings by Seasick Steve” Amen, brother!