Sea of Tranquility

Getting Old With Music

11 February 2014

Simon Bray

A couple of events have recently conspired to make me feel old and have therefore made me evaluate my relationship with (popular) music. The first thing you need to know is that I am now forty six years old, only seven years younger than my father was when he died. Yikes. I'm a bit of a music tragic, I have music playing almost all the time especially when I'm by myself, my PC is almost full thanks to the colossal amount of music on it whilst my loft is heaving with old LPs, cassettes, music videos and magazines.

The first event which made me feel old was that last weekend I went to see 1990's hitmakers the Quireboys at The Railway Venue in Bolton. Prior to the gig I emailed the owner in order to enquire as to when the main act would be on. His reply of between," half nine and ten o'clock," nearly made me want to die. Ten o'clock? That's almost bed time! They won't be off before half past eleven! It's a disaster! My God I felt old at that point. Fortunately the gig was excellent and reaffirmed my rock'n'roll credentials but I remain confident that an earlier start would have been more civilised and should be the way forward for all such events.

The second occasion which made me grab for the cup of cocoa was listening to the new Within Temptation album Hydra – fabulous album by the way. The track in question is And We Run featuring Xzibit where the guest rapper uses the oedipal compound noun. I actually thought, "There's no need for that and it is below WT to allow it." Crikey, what a fuddy-duddy I've become. I swear like a trooper in my day job and generally have no issues at all with bad language so what's going on with me? Am I hurtling towards senility? Should I be staying in watching Take Me Out on a Saturday night? Should I even be allowed to listen to up-to-date music in a world where, when I look at the single/album charts I don't recognise any of the names? I genuinely couldn't name an Adele song which isn't Skyfall. How out of touch am I?

So, as I get older how is my relationship with music changing? Does it define me in the same way in which it used when I had (long) hair? You know what? I think it does. Just browsing this very website makes me feel like I'm still kicking and screaming. None of my friends/colleagues like the kind of stuff that we listen to here at SoT. Not many of the kids whom I deal with during the aforementioned day job like guitar based music but could in fact be that music is in fact one of the things which helps me retain whatever is left of my youth? Obviously one of the ways in which we define ourselves against the rest of the world is in our media choices and the ones which are open to me thanks to SoT are things for which I am eternally grateful.

Simon Bray