...or 'I desperately try and convince myself I'm not really old'
Was just thinking that 1980 is as long ago now as 1954 was in 1980. Yet to me 1980 feels like only a short while ago, maybe a couple of years. Whereas if in 1980 someone had talked about 1954 it would have seemed like pre-history. (For starters everything was in black and white then, no? )
To me it really doesn't feel like anything has changed very radically since 1980. Computers have gotten smaller and faster, but that sort of change is itself a kind of constant, it'd be suprising if they stopped doing that.
Politically things turned a little bit shit in May 1979 and have pretty much stayed completely unchanged ever since.
If you see a movie from the early 80's it doesn't seem nearly as dated as if in the early 80's you'd watched a film from the late 50's. Or is that just 'cos I'm old? I mean U2 and Green Day just covered a Skids song from 1978 (I remember a friend buying the Skids lp when it came out) and it doesn't sound much different from the original. Surely if a major band had, in 1978, covered a song from 1949 (equivalent time gap) it wouldn't have sounded much like the original?
I guess its just down to my age, but when I asked some friends parents, i.e. a previous generation, they all agreed that the difference between 1950's and the 80's was vastly greater than between 1980 and now. Their predominant memory of the 50's incidentally was of unrelenting boredom and grimness. There being absolutely nothing to do, no money and nothing to buy anyway (we still had rationing after all). This is probably distict to Europe rather than the US which seems to remember the 50's as a golden age.
If there are any 'young people' on this forum (given its nature I'd settle for 'under 30'), does the early 80's seem like a totally alien country to you?
I'm building up to claim that maybe this is why New Order seemed so innovative back then, whereas now they don't. It's just that nothing changes that much nowadays, all the dramatic cultural and technological changes were over by the mid 80's, see, so its not just NO that's become staid, there is nothing really new in the music scene now, change itself is now old hat. (Course the reality is I'm just too old and jaded, but under no circumstances am I going to admit that to myself.)
Sorry if I am being a bit Tony Wilson.
