When did rock start taking its cues from Wynton Marsalis?
In jazz circles, Marsalis is admired (or reviled) for his backward thinking: If the music doesn’t sound like be-bop from 1959, he feels it isn’t valid. The same thing seems to be happening in rock, particularly when it comes to the current invasion of retro new-wavers. The records of Franz Ferdinand, the ironically named Futureheads and new additions Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs and the Bravery can be kicky fun. But they’re also jarringly studious re-creations of late-’70s/early-’80s post-punk or synth-pop — music being thawed from the Reagan years. Rock has often looked to the past for inspiration, but rarely so slavishly. On 2002’s “Make Up the Breakdown,” British Columbia’s Hot Hot Heat were among the first to party like it was 1979. The band we hear on “Elevator” has morphed from the one on “Breakdown.” They’re still fixated on the same era, but “Breakdown’s” suggestions of rainy-afternoon electro-pop are mostly gone, replaced by guitar-driven pogo-pop facsimiles executed with the br
