Intro & 2024: Part 1 - Intro

The ‘Get With It, Man’ (GWIM) Project.

Part 1 (of many) – Intro (Britpop's Death, Snobby Kev, and the Old Man I Hate):

Intro Statement:

GWIM?:

This is the ‘Get With It, Man (GWIM)’ Project I began at the start of 2024 as I was unhappy with my lack of knowledge and engagement with new music. That’s the ‘in a nutshell’ summary. But, the whole thing came about for a few reasons.

THE DEATH OF BRITPOP:

To begin, we have to go back a quarter of a century. As a teenager, I was deeply embedded in the 90s BritPop scene. Yea, Oasis, Blur, Pulp etc. When it crashed and burned many of us were happy to jump into the burning rubble. I simply could not muster the same enthuse for new music that I had during those very important young teenage years.

THE ACADEMIC MUSICIAN – ‘SNOBBY KEV’:

The death of Britpop coincided with a time when my relationship with music was changing. I’d been listening to my parents record collection since I was about 3. I began tinkering on keyboards around 4, and started piano lessons around 5. Having piano lessons meant I was slowly familiarising myself with classical music and training in music theory. 5 is an unusually early age to being serious lessons.  I think my love, enthusiasm, and commitment to music was a driving force that no parent could possibly contain. I often wonder if I’d have ended up a kid that’s constantly found drinking, public urinating, getting into fights and spending the night in police cells if it wasn’t for music............. which is strange because isn’t that exactly what ADULT musicians do? 🤔

Some people think I’m joking when I say western tonal music theory felt more fluent to me than English. It’s not a joke. I was 5. My musical prowess was advancing fast while I still only had a very basic grasp of English. Until I began GCSEs it was all pure unadulterated love. Education can deepen your appreciation for something, but it can also take away the joy by making it feel overly technical. From 14 onwards it slowly changed. I was working towards exams, qualifications, higher education, academic theses etc. My thinking was becoming very technical, critical, contextual & philosophical. I used to occasionally teach piano. When it came to music theory, I would always apologize to the student, warning them that I might completely ruin the music they love. Anyone thinking of taking up music lessons....... that’s genuinely the risk no-one tells you about. I sincerely doubt anyone ever reads my review of The Last Dinner Party "Prelude To Ecstasy" (2024) and thinks ‘yea I wanna be inside that guy’s head’. And if you do think that – trust me when I say ‘no! You don't’.

So, I believe that as my music education progressed, Britpop or no Britpop, I would have increasingly moved away from popular music on the whole and into more ‘serious’ forms of music. There’s a lot more to get your teeth into in a Beethoven Symphony than there is an early Rolling Stones’ track. In fact, once my higher education began, I suddenly distanced myself from pop music entirely and I was all about the classical guys. I’m sure friends of mine who were around at the time, such as Simon Ore, would comment that I actually became quite snobby and insufferable about it. And - they’d be 100% correct.

Going back to the mid-90s I was quite the pop music expert. I was educating myself on pop music history whilst being significant more au fait with current pop music than most of my peers. I spent all my pocket money on it. I prided myself on being able to recite the whole top 40 from top to bottom every single week whilst throwing in facts about the tracks and artists. I wrote it all down in an exercise book I stole from school, complete with arrows for position movement, stars for new entries, codes like ‘re’ for re-entries and all sorts. I remember once turning down my Dad’s offer of a trip to the cinema one Sunday afternoon because it meant I was likely to miss the start of the new top 40 countdown (yea it was Sundays at that time), which filled me with anxiety. Sorry Dad. I bet that was pretty gutting.

By the late 90s it had all changed. I can remember the very 1^st time I decided I wasn’t listening to the top 40. It was momentous. I was still consuming music like a pig at a trough, but my focus was changing. Since 1999, although I would dip my toe in the popular music pool from time to time, I was no longer swimming in it. I was no longer ‘with it’.

THE OLD GUY WHO I HATE:

OK – ‘hate’ is a ridiculously strong word. He’s a lovely chap actually. He just irritates me at times. He is a customer at my place of work, who I have encountered day in day out for the last 7 years. He is not alone in what I am about to describe – it will be familiar to all.  We have radio blasting out in my workplace and the vast majority of my encounters with him feature 3 things. First is a gesture towards the ceiling; pointing to the speakers or possible the sound waves flying through the air. Second is the vocal exclamation: ‘you know, I remember when things used to have a tune’. These 2 are always exact but the 3^rd is a variable; a little mimicry of what we are hearing.    

Now, I’m aware that this is just mundane talk. It’s the same as talking about the weather or the traffic....... both of which this man also does. My deconstruction is completely unjustified in many ways. However, I will still note that his critique is completely void of any substance. To begin, it assumes that having a tune is important without ever explaining why. In any case, most of what he refers to DOES technically have a tune. So presumably there’s something more specific about ‘tunes’ that he’s listening out for; but he has never elaborated. To reiterate - I’m being massively pedantic. We all get what he’s saying, yea? But I don’t think that invalidates my following point. I suspect his musical knowledge and appreciation is remarkably limited. And good for him. As I stated earlier - he doesn’t wanna be in my musical head! The bloke's probably got enough on his plate. BUT!! There’s a marked dismissiveness about it. I think its fair to conclude it is based on a very familiar cultural/generational premise that has been peddled for decades, if not centuries, and grabs hold of us more and more as we age. Everything was better back in the day. Modern stuff is bloody rubbish.

FURTHER RESEARCH: AGE VS CHANGE (SHOCKING RESULTS):

Ah – ‘modern stuff is rubbish’. This brings me to the part I became most fascinated with. This man is more indiscriminate in his critique than the premise of ‘modern stuff is rubbish’, albeit unknowingly (I suspect). A lot of the tracks referenced are NOT modern in terms of human life-span or pop music (as we refer to it) history. They are decades old. The earliest track I’ve noted is The Undertones ‘Here Comes The Summer’ ................ from 1979. This encounter was in 2023. 44 years later. To be fair to him, as much as I like the Undertones, that one does annoy me with its relentlessly repeated one line chorus that is literally the tune of the line ‘3 Blind Mice’  if you were to sing ‘3 3 3 blind mice’ instead. Over and over. But my point is more about the time scale. If, in that moment, I’d asked what year he thought the track was from, I don’t think it’s unfair to assume he would not have a clue but plump for a very recent year. He would probably be about 40 years out. Now, I know some will read this and defend that 40 years was that long ago. In the history of time – no it wasn’t. Correct. In fact, in that context, the onslaught of mass produced pop music in the 50s was figuratively just seconds ago. But that’s not the point he’s making, is it? The subtext of his critique is ‘this music the younguns are making and listening to is rubbish!!!!’ But the Undertones ain’t younguns. They are OAPs themselves now.

This led me to do some basic Internet research. I found an academic study on the topic, which focused on age versus the willingness to embrace change and engage with new things. The study, unsurprisingly, concluded that the older we get the more resistant and unwilling we are. However, I did find the average landmark ages upsetting. It seems, on average, the foundations of our resistance are actually laid around 15-16. It is then very gradual for a while, until a significant nose dive at............ 33. By the time we are in our early 40s we are set. So, assuming a lifespan of 75 years, we are massively resistant to changes or new things less than half way through our lives. Furthermore, just a little over halfway through our lives -----with the best part of half our lifetime still left to go –----  we have stopped bothering to live life altogether. A very sad notion. And although we’d instinctively deny this - it’s probably accurate. I had a test subject, of course - the man who’d inspired me to look this up. I put him in his late 70s so lets round it to 80. This would mean he’d have to be born in 1942 or 1943 to be 80 in 2023. So in 1979 he would be 35/6. That’s spookily close to that 33 age. In fact, baring in mind I rounded up, if we shave a few years off, he’d have been spot on. The time of the Undertones ‘Here Comes The Summer’ is the exact time of the study’s ‘nosedive’ when we really start significantly engaging less in new stuff. He would have started complaining about bloody modern music at that exact time. Chilling.

SO WHAT?

The main issue I have is that, despite this man’s dismissive attitude irritating me, I’m not far removed from him. I’ve said very similar things in the past and have lost touch with pop-culture gradually since I was 16, fitting with that study.  I’d say my nose-dive was a bit earlier than 33 (probably about 30 so before my case study-man) and I’d say there is evidence that my final ‘settling’ happened quite a bit before my early 40s – probably mid-30s. This might only apply to music. However, music is such an important part of my life. So, this really should not be the case. Even if I genuinely hate all new music with a passion, I should still be able to tell you all about it and give scholarly evidence to justify my aversion. A general dismissiveness.......... is not cool, man.

INTRO SUMMARY & ACTION:

So - I don’t want to be the collateral damage of Britpop. I don’t want to be a clueless academic. And, I don’t want to be a dismissive person of age. The human I just described sounds soooooo dull.

So what was I going to do about it? In November 2023 something related but separate occurred in the charts. Madness had their 1^st number 1 studio album. A big surprise to me and Simon Ore. It actually shouldn’t have been but I will get to that. I started to look into how the charts work now, because I was aware it was quite different from when I was last into it all. I figured this a good time to start sorting my issue out. I agreed with myself that it was my New Years’ Resolution for 2024 (although I also agreed to not call it that........ they always fail, right?) . Of course..... it had been 25 years since I’d engaged properly and 10 since I’d engaged at all. That's a huge gap to fill. How in the name of Satan’s Squirrels was I going to do that? Oh, that’s something else – you know academic research has also proven that squirrels are Satan’s Informants, dont you?

I will outline how I began the climb out this mountainous hole........ can a hole be mountainous?........ its.... sort of ..... anti-mountainous?....... inverted?............  in Part 2.