Things ain’t what they used to be

A few things have got me feeling nostalgic recently, not least of which is a book I have been reading called ’Things ain’t what they used to be’ by Philip Glenister the star of the BBC shows ‘Life on Mars’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’ The return of the former to the screens with it’s soundtrack from the 80’s has only served to dredge memories from childhood as I am sure it has for most 30-somethings that watched the show.

So what is Nostalgia? Well to some it remembering the past faithfully with all the joy and pain it brings, but for most it it the sanitised version, remembering when life was carefree. So for me it is remembering the family holidays to Spain, going to the local park with the bigger boys playing football (soccer), or swinging on ropeswing that no grown-up would dare to. This of course filters out hard tackles from the bigger boys and breaking my arm on said ropeswing and hiding it from my parents as we were due to go on one of those holidays to Spain a few days later. The one thing right at the beginning of Glenister’s book is also obviously fact, the size of chocolate bars when I was younger were obviously bigger, from Mars bars to Curly Wurlys, to Wagon Wheels.

With the advent ‘social media’ music streaming and sharing sites many people are living the music of their youth once again with easy access to old music they might have forgotten,as simply never really got into in the first place. Seminal 80’s music from Spandau Ballet, or Aha comes to mind immediately, however I have always been into my music and so I always been into this music…….Actually no, I haven’t! Although I listened to this music when it was around, and like most people I used record them from the chart show on cassette, and in the process becoming a whiz with the pause button so there were no traces of the presenters on the tape. My true musical tastes I guess started with early House music around 1987, quickly usurped by Rap music, and these made their way to me via copied cassette tapes from friends of my older brother, and then from my own friends. So I find myself getting nostalgic over music like Todd Terry, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, NWA; which is odd for some people but there you go.  These days sites like blip.fm and grooveshark the internet lets me indulge in Nostalgia, but also lets me indulge right now, without having to go to a shop, or to send off for some rare music, and also lets me show people how good or terrible my music taste is without having leave my seat.

But is nostalgia a healthy obsession? Well to me I guess it is, as I try not top let it take over my life, well not for more than a few hours trying to track down where I can buy old fashioned sweets or chocolate bars, or surfing through old music whilst missing out on great new music!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 2:57 pm. It is filed under Blog, Life and tagged with Chocolate, Music, Nostalgia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.