The new rock’n’roll?

‘What did you do at the weekend?’ If I told them, they wouldn’t be impressed. Yes, I spend my spare time gardening. Middle-aged cliche number 1. But give me mud, sun, physical work, the air on my face, and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been in a sweaty club. It’s not that different, really. It’s just a different way of feeling connected.

Things I wish I knew when I was young

Things I wish I knew when I was young #1

Valentine’s Day is a capitalist plot.

Do this instead.

Culture Show

On Saturday night I’m watching the Culture Show, and the Next Big Thing are discussing their experiments with different rhythms and so forth, and I'm thinking: why are you talking about all this as if no-one had ever done it before? Because on Friday night I just happened to be listening to 'Damaged Goods'. The next moment, Lauren Laverne and Mark Kermode are name-checking Gang of Four and I realise I have just happened to become fashionable, by accident. But I still don’t want to listen to Foals, any more than I needed to listen to Franz Ferdinand when it was their turn. And I’m about to start intellectualising about the contradictions inherent in doing an experiment more than once when Mark Kermode says: they’ve got really bad haircuts. Which is, of course, the real reason I can’t take them seriously. A question. Why is it cool when Mark Kermode plays music that could have been made 50 years ago, but not cool when Foals play music that could have been made nearly 30 years ago? a) He has a better haircut. b) I’m just a hypocrite, basically.

Pop on trial

BBC4 has been running a season about pop, most of which I’ve avoided, because I’ve already got the T shirt. I find myself watching ‘1970s pop on trial’. A group of middle-aged men are discussing 70s pop music and how good it was and I’m wondering why there are no middle-aged women there. Punk changed everything, says someone, and I have to agree, because I Was There. On the sofa, my partner (who was playing Thin Lizzy when I was watching the Clash) says ‘oh no it didn’t’. And I think to myself, it’s a good thing I met you when I was grown-up because it would never have worked otherwise. We’d have split up due to musical differences.