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

Took my youngest to one of the oldest record shops in the country yesterday. One where I spent a lot of my cool teenage years, really cool place, full of cool people, listening to cool music, and spending cool jostick-scented hours looking through mountains of cool patchouli oil-smelling vinyl.

If she wants to get into retro records, this would be the place.. Certain albums everyone needs in their vinyl collections, Live and Dangerous, Rumours, Black Sabbath, XII, Quadrophenia etc... Classics! Cool!

OK, the shop's still there, there are still thousands of records, very very old records, a bit tatty now, but stuff I loved forty years ago, place smells of dust and old cardboard nowadays, and the cool kids?

Erm, two old hippies and a weird couple shouting a lot!

Times change, we did leaf through the overpriced tat for a while, probably to please me more than her. It did bring back happy memories, and I'm sure those of a certain age, or those into ancient rock albums still love the place. Sadly nothing purchased.

Spotify has my entire collection nowadays, patchouli, and scratch, free!

Some memories should be left alone! Time has won.

Uncool, dudes!


(update... She came home from shopping trip with two brand new LPs from bands I've never heard of.... And... Fleetwood Mac Rumours! Cool chick my daughter!)

Time flies. Very, very soon, there will be people coming to entertain at old folks' homes who will find out that the denizens prefer Jim Croce to Bing Crosby...

Black Sabbath and bingo? Hell yeah!

" very soon, there will be people coming to entertain at old folks' homes who will find out that the denizens prefer Jim Croce to Bing Crosby..."

And some who prefer Mozart to both. not many, but some.

One, you will always lose out if you expect the volunteers who show up to entertain to play classical. Two, even if they did, you're nuts if you think they'd be any good at it.

And three...Motorhead will be classical music, give it another few hundred years. I'm sure Amadeus and Ludwig were rockers in their day.

Point was not the kind of music, just how things are seen as being a better in the rear view!

Oh, apart from rap and hip hop. That's just crap, full stop!

And they will pronounce it 'Motörhead' and laugh.

And it's a good point. I've been around long enough to see it happen with different 'generations' of music lovers, too.

My piano teacher, lovely woman, was born in the late '80s. 1880s. She would introduce us to the hits of her day, which people now think are 'classical'. Although they're Romantic. Anyway.

One day, she tried to get me to play Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song'. I sight-read it. Then I sighed. Much as I adored her, I had to put my foot down.

'No,' I announced. 'I will not play that on a piano. Not now. Not ever.'

She was flabbergasted. 'But it was so popular!' she protested.

'That,' I firmly explained, 'Was before the invention of the animated cartoon.'

'Spring Song' by Mendelssohn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPwNbEySjG4

One of many reasons you can't listen to it now:

http://youtu.be/I7Tx24MAdhI?t=52

And you're right - Mozart and Liszt, both show-offs who produced very uneven catalogues. Music is music: some is good, and some is bad, and some bad music you love because of the memories.

I say as I sing to myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaHYvRyPI2U