Old farts (40 plus thread)

As I am a little younger than you, scraping into this thread at a mere 41 years old, I was 10 in 1985. I did have an FM radio cassette player, and I used to tape the charts like crazy. Funny thing is, this was the start of music videos being a really important thing, but we didn't have MTV or indeed a VCR, so really I didn't see too many of them really. It was still about the music for me.

My first and abiding musical love that I came to on my own was (and remains) Pet Shop Boys. I know some people are snooty about synth-pop but they just stood out from the crowd in terms of aesthetic, production and lyrics. I mean, a number one single about Catholic guilt? That's not quite your usual chart-topping fare...



And their output was (and still is) of such consistent high quality from political album-tracks... ("the man at the back of queue was sent to feel the smack of firm government.")



...to B-sides about losing a friend to AIDS. (Yes that's where my username came from. No that's not an official video - god knows what whoever made it was smoking.)



I'd put them in a category with the likes or REM and Simon and Garfunkel, not in terms of musical style but because they make catchy pop tunes meshed with intelligent, historically and politically engaged lyrics.

Yeah me too, especially with Skyrim for instance.

The first and only 45 I remember is when I turned 45. hahaha

In the gaming guild I'm in, we have really old players. I think the oldest is 80 over or slightly less. I actually had a shock several years ago when the chat, during a game, turned casually to the members of the guild and I discovered there are really older players. Entry to the guild starts at age 25 and there're many groups for all kinds of games; from computer games to table tops.

Some of them have passed on in the last few years and it's tough when you realised that the player / person you see / talk to in the game, is no longer there.

Entry starts at 25, oh boy they must feel really young then. 

But joking aside, it is good to see that our Elders are doing what they like together with us youngsters. Losing someone is never easy, but personally, I believe that it is best to remember someone for having lived their life the way they wanted. And not for how society expects them and us to live our lives. ( As long as it stays within the law of course ... but again that is a personal opinion. )  

I don't remember my first record as they were always around the house. I do vividly remember skating around the driveway while the Mickey Mouse record player blared disco, though. I still have all my records, including the 45 we only listened to because my mother hated the song so much.


I do remember my first cassette, though. It was Earth, Wind, & Fire and it blew my tiny little mind (and started a life-long love of horn sections).

In the early 80s, I was into funk and Prince, Michael Jackson, and whatever pop was on the radio. Then we moved to California and I discovered a million things I never knew existed. I turned into a rabid Oingo Boingo fan but listened to everything from The Clash and Suicidal Tendencies to the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J to Tower of Power to Duke Ellington. I still have 400 cassettes, too, boxed up in the basement.

My love of video games (and pinball) fell by the wayside for a while but I still have my Atari and fond memories of hours playing Night Driver and Breakout. [Superbreakout? That's for noobs!] My brother and I used to sneak off on our bike to the gas station where he'd play Galaga and I'd hog the Spy Hunter machine until my mother found us. I programmed in Basic for a few years but we moved and the new school didn't have computers. Back then it was all DOS, none of this fancy Windows malarkey.

We had an Apple IIc for our first home computer which featured Donkey Kong, Logan's Run, and the text-based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game. I spent a stupid amount of time playing SimEarth in 1991, or at least booting up and waiting for my first laptop to load it so I could see if the choice I'd made seventeen hours earlier had killed everything or not. I decimated whole galaxies in that game. Never touched a Sims game since.

Just discussing with my brother here when he got his first Sony FM Stereo portable radio cassette player (or Ghetto Blaster, as they weren't yet known) - 1981. Life did become slightly easier for us at that stage, and we started having to buy our blank cassettes in multipacks. As I said in my first ramble in this thread, TDK AD90s were a significant cut above all other reasonably priced tapes, and mine still play nowadays. We got our first VCR in November 1984, so were able to start recording Top of the Pops, Whistle Test and The Tube. Also in Ireland we had an MTV-lite programme on Sunday afternoons called MT-USA playing 3 solid hours of music videos. 

I was never much of a fan of the Pet Shop Boys, although they won me over eventually. It wasn't a snooty thing about synths, because I had already loved OMD, Depeche Mode, New Order and to some extent Gary Numan and Kraftwerk, but I really struggled with Neil's singing voice. I also had suspicions initially that it was all some journalist's scam, despite my ears telling me that even if it was, West End Girls was an undeniable classic. Opportunities and Suburbia also appealed to me, and I have it on good authority from another photographer friend that you really haven't lived until you've seen them belting out Where The Streets Have No Name in front of 30,000 drunken Irish people. 

And obligatory middle-age 'snooty' reference, around the 1.05 mark..... 

Yeah Neil's voice is certainly divisive. I obviously never minded it but you're not the first to say they didn't like it. It's certainly distinctive, though, even if not technically strong, and distinctiveness is always a good thing if you want to set yourself apart. Also, as I said, none of those other bands could ever touch Neil Tennant lyrically. 

I actually think Barney Sumner of New Order is a worse singer than Tennant, if you look at some live performances... Of course, together, they were pretty decent.



I think the strongest synthpop vocalist wan't any of the blokes, anyway.



(Fuck The Flying Pickets)

New Order were one of the worst bands I saw back in the 80's. Played for less than 30 minutes. Barney kept throwing (throwing) his guitars at the tech. Then they stalked off stage with no encore. I was part of a mob at their tour bus about ten minutes later.

Saw the Bunnymen this past saturday and they delivered. In full.

I agree.

Welcome aboard the thread. Pull up a chair. Take off your coat. Take off your shoes. Rest your feet. You are part of the elite. You've earned it.