Retro Revival

By Heather Collins

Greasers, hip cats and chicks rev up your hot rods, pull your poodle skirts and finish your root beers because it’s time for a trip down memory lane. Don’t be a square, Turn off those Ipods and turn up your AM radio for a blast from the past featuring the retro revivalists from the Ball State community.

Each of them are pressing rewind on the times and going back to the slower lifestyle of the ‘50s to the ‘80s. Times when Facebook wasn’t all the rage, Harry Potter was just a twinkle in his father’s eye and you couldn’t just slip your music collection into your pocket. It’s in with the old and out with the new!

So take a seat in your mustard yellow couch, put on your thick black-rimmed glasses and find out how you too can rave your own retro revival.

Rave on! Culture & Fashion

Holly Cotrel prefers the clothes and lifestyle of the ‘70s. She wears floral-patterned shirts, flared jeans vintage-style prescription glasses and knitted berets. She refers to herself as a modern hippie and says she looks most like the character Jackie from “That 70’s Show” when she’s wearing her ‘70s wardrobe. Her lifestyle follows the ‘70s mantra, as well. She enjoys the slower pace of the ‘70s, the peace and love ideologies of the decade and the groovy fashion.

Students can find vintage threads at their local Goodwill store. Cotrel recommends the Carmel and Indianapolis Goodwill stores for good finds. She bought her favorite ‘70s dress at a surf shop located in Florida and says that it’s easy to find flashback clothing in mall sale racks, since many designers capitalize on bringing back older fashion.

“I’m obsessed with the ‘70s,” Cotrel says. “I love the peace signs, I love the idea of one society, one nation, one people. People just liked you for who are you and that’s how I am.”

Cotrel thinks that today’s society is too fast and she prefers to take the time to stop and see the roses – real or printed on her t-shirt.

“I think in our generation everybody is so busy. They’re always doing stuff that they don’t take time to appreciate anything,” says Cotrel. “I’m real big on – and this is the hippie in me – I love walking at night and looking at the stars and I don’t think anybody really notices that anymore and that kind of stuff breaks my little heart. Everything is so up-tempo. There’s no calming moments, nobody really takes the time to enjoy things.”

Rave on! Culture

Michael Foster’s jet-black hair with a blonde streak is reminiscent of the hairstyles popularized in the ‘80s. He rides an old bike with a boom box attached to the front. The boom box works and people can hear and see Foster riding around on his retro wheels.

“It’s got a stereo on it because nobody carries a boom box around anymore – That’s ‘80s,” Foster says. “It’s just so people can listen to good music. Plus, it’s safe so I don’t have ear buds in so I can know what’s going on around me. It plays the best of each genre. I do have “Bust-A-Move” I have a remix of “Bust-A-Move,” Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares To You” – That’s remixed on there.”

Foster says that everyone seems to enjoy the idea of a boom box bicycle but he does have to cater to the crowd with the music. The boom box bicycle allows Foster to hear things around him while he’s traveling throughout campus and helps to prevent bike accidents - a retro and safe way to ride.

According to Ibike.org, world bicycle production has increased from roughly 30 million in the ‘50s to over 100 million in the year 2000, beating automobile production by roughly 60 million units. This increase in bicycle production and bicycle use can be attributed to the high cost of gas and the eco-friendliness of a no-emissions ride.

Get Your Rave On!

The Vogue, a popular bar in Indianapolis, blasts to the past every Wednesday night for Retro Rewind. Bar hoppers can bop to Elvis Presley, Blondie and The Beach Boys on the popular retro night. Retroradar.com keeps readers “retro-active” and features fashion-forward retro clothing, retro film reviews and all-things retro.

If you’re looking to get a vintage tattoo, 3-1-1 Tattoo Shop and Art Gallery located off of West Main Street in Muncie offers vintage-inspired tattoos.

Village Green Records, located in the village area of the Ball State campus, sells a wide variety of records – old and new. Many of the newer vinyl records also have a code inside the record sleeve to download the MP3 format of the album.

Students can find retro reads at The White Rabbit. The bookstore, located in the village, has old horror films, retro toys, retro board games and a plethora of vintage books.

Rave on! Music

Aaron Thomas hosts the 91.3 WCRD radio show, “The Art Factory,” on Sundays at 11 p.m. He prefers vinyl records to compact discs and oldies music over today’s Top 40. His record collection consists of roughly 200 records, which he says is fairly modest. Artists in his record collection include Chucky Berry, The Ramones, Roy Orbison, Dick Dale and Leonard Cohen.

“Almost every time I turn on the radio and happen to catch some of the current top 40, I can’t but think that it’s very boring. Most modern radio is just plain boring,” Thomas says. “Country music is as safe as milk. Punk rock has become a fashion statement. Rap has become bland and un-catchy recantations of the artist’s sex lives and rock music has become a completely flat-lined flow of uninteresting dreck from artists who have no stories to tell, no message to communicate and no melodies left to do anything than hold our attention for the song’s three minute duration...The more I delve into older music, the more I find that I love.”

Gavin Wilkinson is also an avid record collector and prefers older music, particularly from the ‘50s and ‘60s, including Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, The Chordettes and Patsy Cline. His band, The Bears of Blue River, also put a retro spin on their music with song titles like, “Celia Blue,” “Betty Homemaker” and “Jimmy D.”

“If you’re into music, once you start listening to music, you’re going to want to find the roots to that music,” Wilkinson says. “A lot of (current) songs aren’t in the standard forms of verse-chorus-verse-chorus. I want to know what the song is about in three minutes.”

Rave Out!

History professors will attest that history repeats itself and that we can learn from our history. If you can’t take the fast paced, junk food-infused, information overload signs of the times, then take a tip from the revivalists – and blast to the past.