things that make you feel old

[Atila Reincarnate]

Keef Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> Hating bands like Arctic Monkeys.

>

No Keef, that's just good taste mate.

[PeckhamRose]

Despairing about kids who can't spell, "& dont care 2 learn."

Being upset when someone asks me how long I have been riding a motorcycle, they don't blink or say "You're kidding!" when I tell them the answer....

[Acid Casual]

Realising the dawn of acid house - the youth movement which changed my life - is well over 20 years ago, and that it has absolutely no cultural significance to today's youth whatsoever. Sounds a bit like what we used to think about hippies really!

I was going to add that the first few summers of Ibiza were also over 20 years ago too, when it was something worth knowing about, but then it dawned on me that it made me sound reeeeeeally old!

I also think that ecstasy, the drug of choice for a period of a good decade when I grew up, now seems quite quaint and old fashioned.

[Acid Casual]

As an aside, I think that today's young people are also probably a good deal smarter than previous generations.

I think that their natural urge to rebel is far more positive and productive. Whether you like them or not (and I'm not too keen as it goes) The Arctic Monkeys used Myspace to launch themselves whereas a couple of generations ago they would have been at the mercy of some fat A&R executive who may or may not have seen them as a quick buck.

The fact that they said sod it and just did it themselves and broadcast to a huge audience, really needing no-one's help, had said music execs in a panic. It's almost like the Myspace generation are eating the beast from within, and I admire them for it.

For all their snarling malevolence, the sex pistols I don't think were ever this clever. They were exploited as much as anyone. Many will disagree, but punk I don't think has the level of cultural significance that some believe. To all intents and purposes it was started by Malcolm McLaren to help sell his wife's T-shirts. I'd say that with the passage of time Vivienne Westwood is the true lasting legacy of punk, not McLaren, Country Life butter bloke or anyone else.

I'm sure that The sex pistols will have a greater footprint in history than the arctic monkeys, but I think that is because they were really the sole visible representatives of their genre at the time, whereas I think young people now really have the punk ethic right (do it yourself) and have the means to transmit their efforts beyond the end of their street.

Just my musings...

[PeckhamRose]

Talking of which, realising I am the oldest person I know who LOVES MUSE!

Good points made above though.

Realising that many of the relatively harmless things I did as a naughty teenager would possibly have got me as ASBO these days.

[wee quinnie]

Keef Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> >

> Being able to finally afford the guitar you want,

> but looking to bald and fat to look cool with it.

Being amused by the idea that you ever cared about looking cool!

[The Eye]

"As an aside, I think that today's young people are also probably a good deal smarter than previous generations."

I can't help but not only agree with the above sentence, but applaude its insight.

[Acid Casual]

The Eye Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> "As an aside, I think that today's young people

> are also probably a good deal smarter than

> previous generations."

>

> I can't help but not only agree with the above

> sentence, but applaude its insight.

Well instead of their rebellion taking the form of spitting on grannies and drawing swastikas on their backs - a la punk in 1976, driving around the M25 for hours looking for a rave which may or may not exist (like me, only a different motorway) they are quietly going about the business of making and marketing their own music/lifestyle to their own crowd on their own terms.

I was chatting with a mate about how different things are these days. 20-25 years ago you could spot youth tribes a mile off - the goth would look different from the soul boy, would look different from the new romantic, would look different from the two toner, would look different from the skin, etc...

The reason that I think it is far harder to spot tribes now is because their rebellion is far more subversive and under the radar than older generations ever were. In in short they are far more clever. They are not conforming to youth tribes which have been manufactured by the media or music industry, they are making their own and we often don't know a thing about it. Why should we? We're ancient as far as they are concerned.

Probably the most faithful and authentic youth cult before now was in fact football casuals, which I was also a part of before I got into acid house (hence the moniker) Far from being encouraged, every effort was made to deny us the credit we deserved as a cultural movement, simply because the growth of the phenomena was from the youth upwards as opposed to the media downwards, it was driven my no single musical movement and it grew organically, very fast. In short most people couldn't work out how to make money out of it.

I happen to think that casuals are for this reason THE most authentic youth movement of the last 25 years. Far more so than punk was. Kids nowadays, in their own quite entrepreneurial way are very authentic too.

Again, just my random thoughts...

[SimonM]

You're all just a bunch of amateurs....

For really feeling old, try getting a 60th birthday card, as I did yesterday.

Even if I *am* in Miami Beach...:))

[????]

Acid Casual...

Couldn't disagree more with your views on youth culture.

Youth culture in the 60s and 70s wasn't manufactured or from the media it was from youth - skinheads had to go to specialist shops for their Fred Perrys, punks made stuff out of bin bags, soulboys had to get peg trousers through mailorder. The chains didn't sell looks off the peg - the media didn't create youth culture, it largely didn't have a clue they just followed them. You believe Malcoms McClarens version of Punk!!!! He's just hanging on coat tails he didn't want the Pistols to be how they ended up..

The casuals the most important!!!!...behave... I was a southern Soulboy in 1978 and we had wedges and labels way back before the scousers and the football mobs...there just weren't many of us and being a working class youth culture based largely on imported funk and the rougher end of disco it didn't get ANY press from the middleclass 'rock' press as it wasn't based on bands and hasn't got the retrospective glory that the northern soul scene now carries. But we had that prototype Casual look (actually based on Bowie circa 1976) 3-4 years before it got on the terraces - I remember at West Ham most lads in 1980 were still Oi/Skinhead and looked at the few of us Soulboys as freaks, 3 years later everyone looked liked soulboys and called themselves casuals and listened to the far shittier/manufactured 1980s soul that was in the charts then. Casuals were just Soulboys younger brothers....

As it happens, I think Acid House was the most influential youth culture - from drugs, licensing laws, etc and also killed off the tribal nature of youth culture that proceeded it.

As for modern youth culture being rebellious it just can't be in the same way...I've got mates who were skinheads who are grandads..in 1977, when my mtes and me cut our hair and pierced our ears with safety pins my headmaster had fought in southern Italy..he and most people over 40 were absoulutely petrified of punk

[Acid Casual]

Firstly, my point still remains that younger people are rebelling in a far more positive and meaningful way than any of the previous generations. That is the main point I'm making and I think I'm correct on that one personally. Just my opinion.

Casuals were unique in the respect that they are the only youth culture to date that were not either associated with a particular type of music or were the creation of someone, and therefore our rise was far less able to be tracked. It is a similar sort of subversiveness to what the Myspace generation are doing now in the respect that both were quite under the radar, albeit as I keep saying, I think this generation is far smarter and more positive.

By definition soulboys were associated with a particular musical genre, as are all other youth cults. Not a criticism, just a fact. Also, I didn't say the most important at all. I said the most authentic. In the respect that the whole thing happened pretty organically over a fair period of time, I'd say there are few more authentic cultural movements in the UK in the last 25-30 years. I don't count skinheads. Their rise started nearer 40 years ago to my mind.

I think that your last paragraph suggests that we're slightly at odds in how we see rebellion. When I was 15-20 I was running around various cities in Northern Europe booting the sh!te out of people who looked almost exactly like me, save for the accent or language. On reflection, not particularly positive or constructive. Same with Skins, mods, rockers etc...

These kids these days I think are just so impressive in the way that their natural urge to rebel manifests itself in producing more positive things like music, blogs, other content. Way cleverer than a bunch of hooligans (me included) battering lumps out of one another, and way more scary to those who hold power and who fear the power of a collective movement.

Acid house was positive I think only by virtue of the fact that it stopped folk like me being recidivist nutcases and calmed us all down enough to get on and become (hopefully) sensible adults. Again the subversive nature of it created a monster that was truly feared by society. God knows why though. It was also great fun.

[katie1997]

er...can I say that there are also certain foodstuffs that make you feel old...for example, the horrible realisation that you actually like Stilton cheese, port, whisky...brussels sprouts!!!:))

[Michael Palaeologus]

Its my birthday today. That makes me feel old.

[iaineasy]

happy birthday!!!

[????]

Staying in on NYE with the bairns for 4th year in a row and wondering if you'll make midnight and not being remotely bothered!

[plimsoul]

radio 2

[Ann]

BBC 2

[The Eye]

Terminator 2.

[Tarot]

You are as old as you feel, and when you stop feeling, you,re bloody old. Remember this when mid life, three golden rules, When out never pass a toilet. Never trust a fart,. and never waste an erection. for those of a delicate nature I apologise its an old English saying, but true.

[iaineasy]

hahaha! when your old you never trust a fart.xx

[RosieH]

Sage advice Tarot.

I felt old last night when dancing to an old school classic - Voodoo Ray - except this time it was with 10 kids in a game of musical statues. Only the day before I had been debating in the pub whether it was from 88 or 89 ( it was 88). I used to be 15 and groovy...

[Mick Mac]

Michael Palaeologus Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Its my birthday today. That makes me feel old.

Some things can make you feel old Michael. But a birthday is the confirmation.

[LegalEagle-ish]

Grey pubic hairs really make you feel old!!

[daizie]

::o

[PeckhamRose]

Ahh, see? I'll never know that feeling Legal, since I always shave.

Yes, indeed, anothing thing that makes me feel old, coming home last night having drunk mulled wine with vodka and a lot of maragarita (home made), getting into bed at about 2 and feeling irritated that a neighbour's was having a noisy party! Put earplugs in. Sorted. But made me feel old!