h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"It's all just noise these days and you can't hear the words and you can't sing along. Not like when I were a lad. I don't know what the world is coming to. All this internet and mobile phones thing. I'm sure it will give you cnacer of the eyes and ears or something. What's wrong with posting things anyway? It was good enough for my dad and his dad before him and his dad before him"

On the fashion front, it could be a little different. Given the ever decreasing delay between styles becoming unfashionable, and then being resurrected by the latest crop of frighteningly unimaginative style gurus, the chances are these days that the older generation will be saying things like.
'But don't you know platform soles and flares went out of fashion in the *seventies*.. ..what on earth is *that* - you look like some sort of New Romantic...'

I have just turned 28 and I have recently started saying these sorts of things when I watch Top of the Tops.

Maybe there is some universal constant which governs the development of Generation Gaps, which equals the number of years it takes before you sound your like Dad, when you made him watch TOTP when you were a kid.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Ha! I've got you beat.

I'm only 21 and I think the same things when I watch MTV or listen to popular radio. I have a hard time talking to anyone under 17 without saying things like 'when I was your age' and 'we didn't have cell phones when I was growing up'. And I'm only like 5 years older than they are.

The generation gap is getting smaller (or should it be larger) at an alarming rate. Like with fashion, 70's fashion is coming back again and the last time it did was only about 6 years ago.

I once saw an interview with Frank Zappa (genius, musician and social commentator) where he reckoned that the time between something happening and people feeling nostalgic about it was getting shorter all the time.
He reckoned this was the greatest threat to creative people like himself, and that it was getting more & more difficult to put new ideas in front of peole
Looking at most popular music and TV these days, I am tempted to agree with him.

I have experienced this 'when i were a lad' phenomenon and I have yet to turn 30. It is very disturbing, especially about the fashions - I remember when platforms came fashionable again a few years ago being regaled with tales by other friends about when they 'originally' wore them so it's not new to us either...
HOWEVER there is original music out there still. I for one just don't have enough free time to track it down as I once had.

Try this :

http://www.theonion.com/onion3214/usretro.html
(US Department of Retro warns: 'We May Be Running Out Of Past')

I had a very strange experience last year with a sixteen year old saturday girl; she insisted on refering to her generation and my generation. She then expounded the theory that I look like a Led Zepplin or a Beatles fan based on the fact that was in 'my generation.'...I'm 24.

I know EXACTLY where you are coming from, I'm 22 and steadfastly maintain that all music after 95 was just mindless pop crap, barring a *few* exceptions who try to maintain the pre 95 style and most new releases by artists who came about from about '89 to '95
MTV is unwatchable, (except sifl and olly and Daria) musicwise it's all a loss.I heard that last week they was a special about a bad called "2gether" which was a PARODY of all the boy bands, in the "Spinal Tap" vien, and teens are clamouring for their "albulm" and wanting them to tour. But all society goes through cycles and so I'm guessing soon things will swing back to being a lasting trend again. Or else music styles will change so quickly that no one can by an "in" albulm, meaning they stop buying albums altogether and the music companies scuttle themselves. I wait for that time.
IGD

if only

What a dream.

Another thing I've been doing is thinking about how 'kids these days have no respect for those who came before them'. The punk rock scene around here is very small, and most of the people in it are very young, because as soon as they can, most people move away. I didn't move away, but I stopped going out to shows for a while. Now, when I do go, I get all these dirty looks from 16-year-old girls, like 'who is she? Look at her hair, it's so long. Who does she think she is, coming to a punk show? She doens't even have any cool patches on her jacket'. I just want to smack them, because (even though I'm only 5 years older than them) it was a lot harder for 'my generation' to be punk in Oklahoma. We couldn't just go to the mall and buy spiked collars and belts, we had to know where to go. I feel like these 'kids' don't know it how easy they have it. And, I look at them and think about how they have no respect for the 'older generation' and worry if I was that bad 'when I was their age'.

Surely this should make you happy with the fact that the movement that you were (and still are) into is still alive and well. Possibly the main problem with the punk thing is that it's just become too mainstream now, and nobody is experimenting with new ways to annoy the establishment. This can be seen in the ready avaliablity of "punk accessories". That these things are "cool" is a bit of an issue, 'cos they weren't ever really meant to be. People are so used to seeing dog collar's they're not even shocked anymore.

Ah well, that's my rant over.

completely defies thye point of point that - being able to buy punk accessories...
So.. what is the next so-called- old fashion to be regurgitated? I am putting my money on New Romantics. Based largely it has to be said that I watched TOTP's yesterday and saw a band strutt their funky stuff dressed in outfits that wouldn't have looked out of place in an Adam Ant video..

At a recent party I was at, the age of the revellers spanned oh at least 10 years, and after listening to numerous Raps and Raves, someone suggested a sing along and put on some of Tom Jones' old hits, (he's seemingly cool again). That was when I sobered up and became aware of the generation gap - I found that I didn't need to read the "word sheets" they passed out !!

Hi there! Someone mentioned 70s fashion back there - in this house 70s fashion is what I wear now - I/m 73. And they still play my kind of music in New Orleans where it originated around the time I was born. There was a 'trad jazz' revival at the end of the 40s. Now there was REAL music! Tom Jones? he's just a kid. Ever heard of Bessie Smith?

Daria! Whooo! Yeah!

No....but my Aunt & Uncle in Hampshire-England knew Nat Ginala (is that how you spell it ???) and used to take me to his Jazz Club whenever I visited them - swinging ! Other artists often came to play there, and I remember one great night when the drummer was sick and the audience (very willingly) supplied the beat for the night.

How about the Leith police who dismisseth us ?
I'M coming up into the border country for Easter so I hope you get rid of the rain - and the midges.
I'm looking for traces of my ancestors - border reivers.
But I'm afraid my jazz is older than your parents - pure original Dixieland.

Jazz was never my thing, nor is it ever likely to be. As for music, a lot of the music I would listen to is older than I am. I think the biggest point there is that there is very little stuff to be discovered music-wise that is worth discoverring -like a good movie theme, it's all been done before.

I personally like anything that has some aggression to it -whether it's heavy-metal, outlaw country and western, classical music (wagner, etc), or folk music.

It is amazing how good listening to music that you would never normally listen too can be if you haven't heard a radio (10" woofers hopefully -good for Black-Sabbath, Hendrix...) in a while.

Back to studying metallurgy I suppose.