Are there any music/movie/literary genres that really don’t exist anymore that you wish made a comeback? Mine is whatever you call that horn based rock genre that was popularized by Blood Sweat and Tears and Chicago in the late sixties. Two hugely popular bands with unique music, but by the late 70s this style of music was essentially dead. (And I don’t count the Caribbean based ska bands or the very retro swing revival movement as the same.)
Another such band is Lighthouse, from about the same time. If you’ve never heard of them, and you liked BST and Chicago, you might like them too.
There have been multiple attempts to bring back the Western, but it continues to struggle. But, strangely, even though I had never been a fan when I was younger, I’d like to see it come back somewhat more permanently.
I’d also like to see more Noir Detective stuff.
I am a grown adult, literate and well read but I used to enjoy it in pulp S.F. mags when they had sketch pictures in the stories.
A picture paints a thousand words and quite often it gave a whole new direction to how I imagined things when I was reading.
That said I am most definitely NOT a fan of so called graphic novels, or comic books as they are more accurately called.
It would be nice if publishers started putting the odd picture into their stories now and again but I suspect that cost and technical difficulties will make that unlikely to happen.
Or CHASE, a band fronted by Bill Chase (that I got see live in a tiny gym in Michigan–blew the roof off)!
Ultra porn
Bebop, cool and modal jazz, as they were in their heyday…such a wealth of amazing talents all working in one genre, with a strong degree of public acceptance.
While they may not be produced in the numbers they were in the 50s and 60s, the western is still alive and well and never really went away.
Caper movies.
What was the last one, The Italian Job?
(I’m not counting the Ocean’s n films. they just don’t seem to fit for some reason.)
The “action horror creature feature.” They had their heyday in the 80’s and then became relegated to SyFy Channel D-list movies.
Flight sims.
The short story as popular entertainment. Especially stories in a series, involving recurring characters. I’m thinking of the Sherlock Holmes stories as the best-known example. (John Mortimer was doing this with his Rumpole stories, but now that he’s gone I can’t think of any other prominent modern examples.)
I’m a big fan of the tv miniseries. Roots, for example. In America, we seem to rely on PBS to import BBC miniseries, which are frequently delightful. I want more of that: well-adapted, well-acted, episodic televised literature – not made-for-TV originals, not sensational Lifetime movies, not sentimental Hallmark movies. I want thoughtful, thought-provoking, enlightening, endearing stuff that absorbs you for a month of Tuesdays.
edit must have been composing mine when the previous post went up.
I’m good with that idea too, for sure. But what I have in mind is more of a novel type thing that ends and isn’t serialized.
True film noir. It surfaces now and then (The Man Who Wasn’t There, for instance), but since it only works in black and white, it’s unlikely an audience that thinks 3D is cool would accept that sort of thing.
I’d love for short stories to come back. And the TV equivalent: the anthology series. The few that crop up lately are all renamed versions of past hits. The closest success in the genre was Quantum Leap, which used the conceit of Sam leaping into people’s lives as a way to tell a bunch of short stories but still have continuing characters.
Variety shows.
Turn-based squad games like Jagged Alliance and X-com.
(Anyone interested in these two should check out Ambush!, I just got into it and it made me long for the above)
I’d be content with just one movie - I really, really want them to make Weekend At Bernie’s 3. Set in a ski resort would be cool. Or maybe have Bernie as the puppet dictator of a third world country (that could be part 4 and it would be socially redeeming too)
Analog magazine ran this sort of short story up until the time I canceled my subscription. However, Analog is a science fiction magazine…so if you don’t like SF, you’re out of luck. But many of their writers will write stories set in the same world/universe, sometimes with recurring characters, sometimes just using the same setting. Larry Niven used to write stories set in a tavern that had a lot of extraterrestrials visiting, and usually the only recurring character was the bartender.
I didn’t cancel my subscription because of the recurring series, I canceled because I realized that I was reading and enjoying fewer than half of the stories in each issue.
I desperately want to see a really good variety show like Johnny Cash did. Cash invited some of the best, cutting edge musicians from all areas of music. Melanie, The Carpenters, Derek & the Dominoes, Pete Seger, Creedance Clearwater etc. The clips are on youtube.
They need to find someone contemporary to host a similar variety show.
Spoof movies - in the high of the Airplane, Spaceballs and Naked Gun heydey I absolutely loved then, then quality started to decline until they hit the layer of prehistoric shit at the bottom of the Atlantic that was Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans. “Not another teen movie” was good though.