I’m Old! (but don’t hate me)
A recent visit to my mate’s house saw me pick up the set list for this weekend’s Splendour in the Grass festival in Byron Bay lying around on his kitchen bench. A close inspection of the bands on offer felt like a kick in the guts. Who are these people? Out of the fifty bands/solo artists listed, I recognised seven. And out of these seven, the only band I liked were The Living End. This invariably led to two explanations: firstly, the line up this year is really atrocious; or secondly, I’m old.
Judging by the ticket sales, where 17500 tickets valued at $200 a pop were sold out in the space of five hours, I’m thinking it’s not the former. Which leaves me with the dreaded second hypothesis - that I am indeed getting old.
Music is a great indicator of your age bracket. People grow up attaching themselves to the music of their generation, and subsequently get applauded or bagged by others. My parents will forever be Beatles fans, my ex-boss is infamously linked to Bananarama and Cyndi Lauper, the middle aged owner of my local CD store (CD’s, kids, are plastic plate looking things filled with electronic data which you put in a CD player, no it doesn’t fit into your IPod) has a dangerous looking Metallica tattoo scribed across his left shin, and I will always have a place in my heart for the mid 90’s burst of Californian garage punk.
I like to think of Californian garage punk as your Bad Religion and Descendents type of music (and yes I know they started well before the mid 90’s). A bit more energy, a bit more fun, and a bit more melodic than traditional Sex Pistols. I’m thinking Unwritten Law, Ataris, Offspring, Greenday, Millencolin, and the ultimate advocate to the start of the teeny-bopper movement, Blink 182.
Oh how I remember the golden years in the mid to late 90’s when every new band we listened to was a fresh taste on our musical palettes. But I suppose the themes that they represented back then also helped attached them to my heart. Growing up, broken hearts and teenage angst were popular topics and those were the things which mattered to me back then as well.
But growing up, or maturing to my grand old age of 26, and priorities change. There are only so many sappy love songs you can put up with before you realise that you’re starting to sound like an annoying lovestruck emo. And why wouldn’t kids want to grow up? Why be stuck in a rut of poorness and immaturity (ironic coming from a uni student isn’t it?)? Now every time I hear a song complaining about growing up I feel like saying “get a haircut, tuck your shirt in, get a job and do something constructive.”
The days when my favourite songs meant something deeper are now gone. I’ve stopped telling people that I’m going to call my first born daughter Cailin (Unwritten Law). While Self Esteem (Offspring) is still an issue, it is also just a song now. What’s My Age Again (Blink) is a question I ask myself when it’s car insurance time (hoping every year that I’ve escaped the dreaded 18-25 year old male bracket). I don’t think I am a Prisoner of Society (Living End) anymore.
But I’ll still listen to them day in day out and love them, pretty much because they remind me of an awesome time, when life was a montage of stupid high school pranks, Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann’s version), making mix tapes (kids, tapes are…), and part time jobs.
As Blink would have it, “Well I guess this is growing up” (at least it’s not Bananarama).
