Remember nostalgia?  Think about it, nostalgia is one of our most base and ever-present emotions.  Thinking about times past not only serve to increase their effect on us, but also greatly inflate their worth ("I used to be able to throw a baseball over a mountain! I swear!")  Music is often the trigger for nostalgia.  I can't hear any track of The Smashing Pumpkins' "Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness" without thinking of talking to my 8th grade girlfriend.  I can't hear Smash Mouth and not think of the embarrassing clothes I wore in high school.  I can't hear Lily Allen and not think of last summer.  So it's no surprise that bands a few years past their prime are cashing in on their nostalgic influence.  From Yahoo News...

When guitar-rock band Built to Spill announced its fall tour in May, fans took notice. That's because rather than a typical jaunt around the country promoting a new album, the three-month trek will find the band performing its 1997 release, "Perfect From Now On," in its entirety throughout the United States and Europe.

It's the latest in an ever-increasing list of tours and performances of the ilk, joining recent and upcoming experiments from Sonic Youth , Liz Phair , Slint , Echo & the Bunnymen , the Stooges, Public Enemy , Tortoise and Sparks. And those in the know say it's having a positive impact on the bottom line.

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What a fun idea.  I would pay a high price to hear some of my favorite bands from the mid-to-late 90's perform their classic albums sans-"new stuff" and I'm sure I'm not alone.  Hopefully this trend will continue and I can one day find myself, well past thirty years old, screaming the lyrics to all my favorite Smashing Pumpkins jams from my childhood.  Oh, to be young again!