"Making Meta-Music"

"You could call this alternative aesthetic 'record collection rock', in so far as a band is interesting in ratio to the esoteric scope of its musical learning, the extent to which it avoids obvious influences. The camp frisson involved in rehabilitating something formerly beyond the pale is something that wears off quickly.  For instance, when late '80's band like Butthole Surfers and Tad revived Black Sabbath's ponderous riffs, it felt like a thrilling challenge to the approved canon of underground rock (e.g Velvet Underground, The Stooges).  But after grunge and the mainstream success of doom-metal bands like Alice In Chains, Sabbath-style heaviness is no longer a novelty, it's an oppressive norm.  In indie music, the smart operators seek out neglected eras or genres, in order to titillate the hipster's easily-jaded palatte."

Simon Reynolds in a 1993 New York Times article writes that "[w]here financiers speculate in futures, bands today speculate in pasts."