I too jettisoned Queen from my increasingly paisley patterned playlists round about 1986, partly out of embarrassment, partly because I’d just gone off the sound. But now and again I walk home from work Spottipodding the joyously, raucously Edwardian “Brighton Rock”, which sounds like Bolan and the Kinks have turned up in a colourful van after picking up Dr Feelgood on the way.
I's forgotten about 'Brighton Rock', with Freddie's mad back and forth in different voices, although it was obviously sitting in the back of my head when I wrote that bit about the Edwardian seaside.
I feel like I spent a long time cringing about Queen and then a subsequent time cringing about the fact I ever cringed, so I'm finally getting to the stage where I can enjoy the odd (in all senses) good song fairly unironically. 'Seven Seas of Rhye' is an immensely silly good time.
What I didn't say in the piece, is that I think they were a kind of gateway drug - the heavier stuff prepared me for Big Black and Sonic Youth, the music hall stuff sent me backwards to 30s jazz. They're a good on-ramp for things too.
In 1977, I was in my early teens and about to discover the music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, so maybe not your hippest reader. I certainly remember thinking how feigned was our. enthusiasm for the Sex Pistols, and how driven by annoying adults we were. And then a friend told me that was the whole point. I obligingly bought "Never Mind the Sex Pistols", but it was a local performance of the Sid Lawrence Orchestra (a big band) that I remember most warmly -- I was, by my recollection, the youngest person there. At the time, I was embarrassed by my unusual tastes in music, add relieved that I could honestly say I enjoyed Bowie as well as Bing. Now, I'm rather proud, and saddened that I allowed myself to feel awkward. Bill Grundy was on the right track: Most of us didn't have much to complain of as youngsters in 1977, even though we complained. The "no future" stuff the Pistols pedalled was bound to appeal to our rebellious instincts, but music in the tuneful music hall tradition was what we really enjoyed. Now I wonder how much our poseurism affected politics. "No future", indeed.
Weirdly, I was listening to a lot of Glenn Miller in the late seventies, too - we had got from somewhere a compilation of the little medleys his band used to do for forces radio in the war ("Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue"), which were an excellent crash course in 40s big band tunes.
Rowan writes really well about that peer pressure around music taste in https://www.themetropolitan.uk/p/i-know-what-boys-like - I definitely tried to like a lot of things that weren't really my taste. A friend recently shared Peel's playlist up for Christmas 81 which was lots of bands I love: Birthday Party, Siouxsie, Joy Division, The Fall (of course), but I realised that the ones I would voluntarily listen to now were Heaven 17, Altered Images and The Cure - the pop music. I always preferred The Undertones to the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads to the Ramones. I've also always listened to Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt, alongside the contemporary pop music. Tunes, basically.
The status game around music choices can be stifling and infuriating, especially as an adolescent, but it can also lead to genuine discoveries and a broadening of taste. I suspect the trick is being happy about how your tastes changes as you age, in music as in everything else, including politics, I guess.
I too jettisoned Queen from my increasingly paisley patterned playlists round about 1986, partly out of embarrassment, partly because I’d just gone off the sound. But now and again I walk home from work Spottipodding the joyously, raucously Edwardian “Brighton Rock”, which sounds like Bolan and the Kinks have turned up in a colourful van after picking up Dr Feelgood on the way.
I's forgotten about 'Brighton Rock', with Freddie's mad back and forth in different voices, although it was obviously sitting in the back of my head when I wrote that bit about the Edwardian seaside.
I feel like I spent a long time cringing about Queen and then a subsequent time cringing about the fact I ever cringed, so I'm finally getting to the stage where I can enjoy the odd (in all senses) good song fairly unironically. 'Seven Seas of Rhye' is an immensely silly good time.
What I didn't say in the piece, is that I think they were a kind of gateway drug - the heavier stuff prepared me for Big Black and Sonic Youth, the music hall stuff sent me backwards to 30s jazz. They're a good on-ramp for things too.
In 1977, I was in my early teens and about to discover the music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, so maybe not your hippest reader. I certainly remember thinking how feigned was our. enthusiasm for the Sex Pistols, and how driven by annoying adults we were. And then a friend told me that was the whole point. I obligingly bought "Never Mind the Sex Pistols", but it was a local performance of the Sid Lawrence Orchestra (a big band) that I remember most warmly -- I was, by my recollection, the youngest person there. At the time, I was embarrassed by my unusual tastes in music, add relieved that I could honestly say I enjoyed Bowie as well as Bing. Now, I'm rather proud, and saddened that I allowed myself to feel awkward. Bill Grundy was on the right track: Most of us didn't have much to complain of as youngsters in 1977, even though we complained. The "no future" stuff the Pistols pedalled was bound to appeal to our rebellious instincts, but music in the tuneful music hall tradition was what we really enjoyed. Now I wonder how much our poseurism affected politics. "No future", indeed.
Weirdly, I was listening to a lot of Glenn Miller in the late seventies, too - we had got from somewhere a compilation of the little medleys his band used to do for forces radio in the war ("Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue"), which were an excellent crash course in 40s big band tunes.
Rowan writes really well about that peer pressure around music taste in https://www.themetropolitan.uk/p/i-know-what-boys-like - I definitely tried to like a lot of things that weren't really my taste. A friend recently shared Peel's playlist up for Christmas 81 which was lots of bands I love: Birthday Party, Siouxsie, Joy Division, The Fall (of course), but I realised that the ones I would voluntarily listen to now were Heaven 17, Altered Images and The Cure - the pop music. I always preferred The Undertones to the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads to the Ramones. I've also always listened to Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt, alongside the contemporary pop music. Tunes, basically.
The status game around music choices can be stifling and infuriating, especially as an adolescent, but it can also lead to genuine discoveries and a broadening of taste. I suspect the trick is being happy about how your tastes changes as you age, in music as in everything else, including politics, I guess.