Musical Maturity of a 25-Year-Old
I am a mere 32 years old. Some of you may be gasping at such superannuation, others chuckling indulgently at callow youth. In the world of music there seem to be a large clump of enthusiastic kids, a big chunk of people like me – getting a little too old to be indie kids but still are – and then another big clump of folk in their forties who decided a few years back that they were never going to be too old for all this and fuck anyone who suggests they are.
I seem to find myself easily identified as the middle category: not enough knowledge of Joy Division to be the latter, nor enough enthusiasm for Blood Red Shoes to be the former, and this is pretty much accurate. The problem is that almost everyone in this country of my age grew up listening to the sort of music that is being reprised right at this very moment, and I missed it. Spending your teenage years in Vienna and Singapore you just didn’t hear current music, ever. Beyond pantomime metal and shitty disco pop it just didn’t make the leap.
This means that when I hear groups like Cats on Fire, Decoration, The Siddeleys, My Teenage Stride, Shout Out Louds and countless others who are either reinterpreting – or just plain ripping off, depending on your view – this sort of sound I actually don’t hear a rip off. I am hearing a good chunk of this music for the first time, despite it conjuring up a slightly disembodied sense of nostaligia, which is slightly odd because just about everyone my age over here is pretty familiar with this sound from the first time round. There are patches of knowledge because we did have MTV and my cousin Steve used to send me mix tapes on my birthday, but for the most part my musical knowledge starts almost entirely from scratch in 1993, when I first moved to the UK to go to university. I was seventeen.
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Soupdragons, The Wonderstuff and The Levellers were just fading from public approval and Britpop was about to take off. My first year in Manchester was the year Definitely Maybe, His ‘n’ Hers and Parklife were released. So I missed C86, despite the fact that I should just have been starting to develop an interest in music at the time. I was the only person I knew who had heard of The Stone Roses.
This is why you will often hear me get all excited about groups almost anyone else my age would probably dismiss as a bland knock-off of stuff they heard years ago. For me the first time that is likely to happen is when the 90s Revival kicks in and grunge comes back.
The Cure – Killing an Arab
The Smiths -Â Shakespeare’s Sister
The Siddeleys – Sunshine Thuggery
My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends
The Wonderstuff – Welcome to the Cheap Seats
Levellers – Liberty Song
Pulp – Pink Glove
Blur – Tracy Jacks
