As a former NME reader, I love bad puns in headlines – so the more song titles or appalling plays on words I can get into a headline, the happier I am (and the more obvious and groan-inducing, the better). So today a news piece was just begging for either “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, or “Running To Stand Still”. And then it hit me. Both songs came out exactly 20 years ago, give or take a few months. So not only are there people out there who weren’t born when those songs were in the charts, but there are *parents* out there who weren’t born when those songs were in the charts. In terms of cultural relevancy I might as well do a pun based on a Lonnie Donegan song, or a controversial cave painting.
Put it this way: I’m rapidly approaching the point where Creationists will tell me that Husker Du never existed, because the world simply hasn’t been around that long.
Don’t believe me? The title of this post is a play on a Shakin Stevens track from 1981. Nooooooo!
It’s not just punning headlines. Like most blokes I go without shaving for a few days and then find myself wondering if I should just have a beard, but where previously it’d be a “cool/uncool” question, now it’s purely a question of whether the lack of maintenance justifies having an itchy face and a big ginger beard. Cool doesn’t come into it.
I stopped buying NME a long time ago because I had no idea who most of the bands in it were, but now I’ve stopped buying Q too, for the same reason. It’s surely just a matter of time before I start liking Uncut, because I sure as hell don’t see the appeal of the Arctic Monkeys and I couldn’t care less what My Chemical Romance or Bowling For Soup or whoever has to say. And it can’t be long before I can’t even name the bands I don’t get.
And it’s happening online too. Instant messaging was the first – to me, it’s just a major time-waster, and I don’t launch IM software because if I do, people will talk to me. Sod that. Then, Second Life. And Twitter. And MySpace. And… you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people use ’em, and I understand how they work. But what I don’t have is any connection with these things, because I’m on the wrong side of the generation gap.
I’m wearing slippers as I write this.