Disco Vicar. That's what I'm talking about. The horrible, sinking feeling of watching your local Minister busting some moves at the local church disco. The toe-curling horror of seeing one of your teachers wearing hi-tops at the weekend. Grown-ups dancing, generally. The minute someone white and middle class tries to communicate with young people, it all goes to shit. They think they're "really talking their language". They're not. They're just doing things that mean I can shout THAT'S FUCKING DISCO VICAR THAT IS as the telly/radio/paper/in the street. Examples include:
1. Politicians generally: William Hague in a baseball cap; David Cameron on Desert Island Discs (Radiohead? The Smiths? THE KILLERS?); Tony Blair playing the electronic guitar in public; anyone with the letters "MP" after their name talking about the Arctic Monkeys
2. Prince William doing this very bad thing I show above, and Andrew 'The Twat' Motion (our Poet Laureate, no less), writing a "rap poem" for his 21st birthday
3. The Daily Telegraph sponsoring the Student DJ Awards and the Newquay Surf Festival (which they did - and believe me, I know)
4. Mars Bar advertising with New Order's Blue Monday as the soundtrack (not as puzzling as Leftfield on Cheese Strings, mind you)
5. Tim Westwood
6. Local council advertising that uses graffiti (of sorts) and written patois
7. Most people over the age of 35 who work in creative departments in advertising agencies
8. Middle aged adults trying to take a 'lively interest' in their childrens' music
9. Christians with guitars
10. Christian Rock
11. Use of any of the following words:
- wicked
- cool
- trendy
- track (acceptable if you are 40 or over - just)
Give it up, loves. The only people who know what it's like to be 15 are fifteen-year-olds. No amount of "focus groups" (and ask yourself: what kind of person goes to "focus groups", eh?), is going to help. The massed ranks of the British advertising industry do not understand, and make themselves look like straining cockmonkeys by pretending that they do. Politicians are being given PR advice by callow youths who graduated in Classics from Oxford with a First and went straight into the Civil Service, and The Daily Telegraph is a right-wing broadsheet newspaper read by people who live in Walton-on-Thames and go to the golf club of a Saturday morning, or - rather more accurately - wish they did. What on earth do they know what it's like to be fifteen? When they were teenagers, TV didn't exist.
It has to stop. The safest thing you can do, if you are nearly middle-aged (as I am), is to remember that if you can remember wearing something the first time round (e.g. footless tights, leggings or baggy sweater-dresses), you should avoid it the second time round. That most music is derivative and no, it probably doesn't sound like Nick Drake. Stop trying so hard. As in all things, the minute you try too hard you look like a twat. So stop it. If you do, there's a chance that da yoot might listen to what you have to say.
And on that note, I'm off to listen to Radio 4, read The Guardian and have a cup of tea.
3 comments:
Oh God shall I just kill myself now or later??!!
As a Mother of an almost-teen and a tenyearoldgoingonfiteenyearold I already feel middle aged and have done for the past few years! Yes I know you're right about the "remembering something the 1st time around" thing but you don't need to rub it in!
Now...about that cup of tea and Radio 4.....your place or mine?
xxx
It's funny, but my two teenage neices think I'm cool on alternate Thursdays, mostly because of the music I listen to and the fact that I don't try to be anything other than myself.
Of course, that still only gets me alternate Thursdays. And THAT'S way more cool than I felt when I actually WAS fifteen, so nyer.
I'm not saying you can't be old and 'cool'. You can. (I can't. I never have been, and I don't intend to start now.) I'm talking about the retards in the meeja and in the politics (mainly), who imagine in their head that the only way to communicate with young people is to make up in their head what the kidz like, and feed it back to them. They are ALWAYS wrong. You don't try. Ergo, your nieces like you. If that makes sense.
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