Do you remember Sunday evenings sitting in front of the radio, listening to the charts? If the answer is no then I suggest you stop reading this now and return to the world of Towie or Chelsea. If the answer is yes then come with me, dear reader, on a nostalgic journey. Music was once a thing of beauty. Vinyl discs in glossy paper sleeves with the band on the front in their latest incarnation or style. Big hair and wild make up designed to shock and excite in equal measures. Pop stars so bold and untouchable they were the stuff of fantasies. Young girls fainting at the thought of being on the same continent as their idol and young men folding up the sleeves of their t-shirts and quaffing fringes. Music today is so instant, with tweets and facebook bridging the gap between mere mortals and musical icons.
Our house honours the musical heroes of the past. Each day starts with Planet Rock as husband prepares his pack-up for the day. The comforting throb of bass not changing in tempo from record to record lets me know that all is well with the world. A wardrobe full of black t-shirts with faces, art work and album covers to commemorate years gone by. ‘Getting back together’ tours, ‘relaunch’ tours, ‘final’ tours and ‘final final’ tours all visited with equal enthusiasm. I worry that as the rockers who defined his formative years and to whom he is so loyal fall off the turntable of life, a little piece of him goes with them each time. When Lemmy (Google Motorhead if you need clarification) died we went into a period of mourning. Luckily for me Hubby has a concert buddy who has an equally impressive collection of shapeless rock t-shirts and together they trawl the likes of Rock City and The Rescue Rooms, forgetting for an hour or two about mortgages, MOTs and the Mrs, and communing once again with their own kind in a fog of sandlewood, long thinning hair and ageing leather.
On the ‘b’ side, the teenager of the family is currently into rap. It must be played loud and you get extra points if you can understand any of the words. There are no gloss record sleeves, everything must be downloaded immediately, shared, face-timed, tweeted or spotted. No sense of anticipation or achievement. No queueing at Boots front door (yes, I am that old that I remember Boots selling records) with a sweaty hand full of coins from weeks of saved pocket money. And what of proper record shops with soundproof booths and oversized head phones? Hours spent trawling through racks of discs, cassettes and, latterly, CDs. Our children will never experience the thrill of happening upon that elusive single or long-awaited album. Today’s music and artists are quickly made, quickly launched and quickly forgotten. So maybe, against all the odds of the modern era, there is still a place for the faded leather of the traditional rocker, if only to remind the next generation what loyalty and hard work can achieve.