Has pop culture, uh, stopped?

James Parker asks the question:

Why do the major musical developments of the past decade include Guitar Hero, reunion tours, hip karaoke, the rise of the tribute band, pop stars made entirely from bits of other pop stars, and Van Morrison re-performing Astral Weeks? Lady Gaga, bless her radical retro soul, is Cher after three weeks in Warhol’s Factory. Cee Lo is Motown with swearing. This month, even as Roger Waters breaks temporarily from his transglobal plod-through of Pink Floyd’s 32-year-old rock opera, The Wall, Roger Daltrey sallies forth with a production of The Who’s 42-year-old rock opera, Tommy. One salutes the unkillability of these gentlemen, one reveres their work, but, honestly. And wherefore this pile of rock docs and rock bios, these waves of compulsive historicization? The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! … The Making of The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! … The Making of The Making of The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! …

And your iPod isn’t helping. Nor is YouTube. Nor Spotify. Music consumers now find themselves with the approximate power of the BBC’s Doctor Who, the hipster Time Lord who, on a whim, directed his TARDIS back to Sheffield, England, in 1979 to catch a performance by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. (That the Doctor—in this particular episode—mangled his coordinates and ended up in 1879, on a Scottish heath, with Queen Victoria and a werewolf, is strictly incidental.) The floating simultaneity and endless availability of all recorded music, the deadening sophistication of the average listener—these are not spurs to Art.