The Past? Now let me tell you about the past...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in how people think about old pop. We spend quite a lot of our time here doing polls about it, but nonetheless I'm going to start another thread on it and see what happens.

Two thoughts specifically:

- "Older sibling syndrome": I remember a conversation I had with Al (my younger brother WINOLJ) a few years ago where he was expressing envy at my having "lived through" acid house and jungle. Obviously he was alive between 88 and 95 too, but he meant "paying attention to music". I explained that I might have been around then but I'd hardly been taking advantage of my raving opportunities. Anyway it struck me that, even though I don't have an older brother myself, I also had always had a fascination with the years just before I got into music, the stuff I'd just missed or had absorbed haphazardly via the Sunday Top 40 show. Does anyone else recognise this?

- When does pop stop?: Not many people tick anything in the 1952-1953 Number Ones polls. Fair enough - this stuff is quite obscure. But there's no sense of curiosity either, or not of curiosity in the sense of "wow maybe there's some great old stuff here". It's too far beyond pop as we understand it to excite much enthusiasm. Are there other, more recent, pockets of 'old pop' which are like this for you - sounds and styles whose appeal is lost or baffling?

Comments

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Interesting point (the first one). I'm the eldest sibling, and my parents, despite owning lots of old vinyl, never really played much music around the house. We never watched Top Of The Pops - the first time I saw it, Tasmin Archer and The Shamen were at the top of the charts. I remember lots of pop in the car on the way to primary school, but I suspect it was largely the radio, and it never interested me enough to drag me away from conversations with my sisters or my neighbours, with whom we shared lifts to school. As a result, I experienced the envy that you call 'Older Sibling Syndrome' in a different way entirely.

The chronology goes something like:
Age 11 - start secondary school, hear Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer' for the first time (well, a karaoke version, at a girl's Bat Mitzvah party), buy 'Slippery When Wet', go on a winter camp with a youth group and hear Nirvana's 'Nevermind' for the first time.
Age 12 - gap in my chronology... guess I was watching Top Of The Pops, had no real source for alternative music apart from any I bought or that friends played to me
Age 13 - best friend at school buys The Offspring's 'Smash' and introduces me to Metallica, Kurt Cobain dies on the weekend of my Bar Mitzvah, start buying NME religiously
Age 14 - go on holiday to the States and become friends with Libby, a girl from Norwich; Oasis and Blur spark the birth of Britpop
Age 15 - Libby makes me a mix-tape featuring bands like Spacehog, Rialto, Soundgarden, Hurricane #1. Go to my first gig to see Spacehog at Camden Dingwalls
Age 16 - first festival, V97

The 'envy' for me really started after Kurt Cobain's death, with the realisation that I would never get to see Nirvana live. Subsequently from ages 15-16, I started listening to older bands (as all true music fans should), and became envious of people who had seen The Clash, the Pistols, the Ramones and others in their prime. These days, it is more about specific legendary performances that upset me... Dylan in Manchester in 1966, Nirvana at Reading 92, early Orbital or Underworld shows, the White Stripes' first ever UK show (which I had a ticket for but didn't attend), Girls Aloud at V2006, the list goes on.

So I do kind of recognise what you talk about, but for me, it is more about missed opportunities to see things that subsequently became legendary, rather than missing the chance to be in the midst of a specific 'scene'.

My younger sisters never displayed such jealousy towards me. I suspect this is because I largely listened to what Weird Al Yankovic termed 'Angry White Boy Music'.