It snuck up on me. So far as I was concerned, I had remained much the same age for the past twenty years. But somewhere along the line, things have changed. I suppose there were signs. Creaking joints, eyebrows that can only a Whipper Snipper can control and a face with more creases than un-ironed laundry – all of them clues to my advancing years. But I ignored them all. Only when the truth was staring at me in the face and holding a mirror did it truly dawn upon me – I am getting on.
It snuck up on me. So far as I was concerned, I had remained much the same age for the past twenty years. But somewhere along the line, things have changed. I suppose there were signs. Creaking joints, eyebrows that can only a Whipper Snipper can control and a face with more creases than un-ironed laundry – all of them clues to my advancing years. But I ignored them all. Only when the truth was staring at me in the face and holding a mirror did it truly dawn upon me – I am getting on.
We were attending a live music show. I call these events ‘gigs’ but am unsure whether this terminology still resonates with the younger generation. Or, for that matter, if most of them are aware ‘live music’ exists. For all I know, the mere use of the word ‘gig’ immediately identifies me as someone from a distant age, in which terms like ‘gig’ were used along with ‘groovy’, ‘wireless’ and ‘horseless carriage’.
As I stood in the venue, I ran into an old friend. By that, I mean he called out my name and I turned around, rather than some kind of low-speed incident in the car park requiring the exchange of insurance details. We chatted, as old friends do, and watched while the support band did their best to win over an audience that was, at best, distracted or, worse, yet to arrive.
The band were playing earnest indie folk rock and it was the kind of music my friend and I could relate to as, once upon a time, we had played some earnest indie folk rock of our own. It brought back memories – not all of them good. As I recall, when writing an indie folk rock song your job is to summon as much raw emotion and pain as possible. In retrospect, the pain was mostly that of the listener, as I wailed my heart-felt ditties like a spanked cat. Were I to summarise my song writing efforts of that era, I’d probably go with ‘attempted profundity’. In twenty years, not much has changed in the indie folk rock scene. Much like professional wrestlers, today’s songwriters are still very much attempting to ‘bring the pain’. But as excruciating as it was, it was made even more awkward by the efforts of the band to be noticed. Rather than by means of fascinating song-craft and undeniable melodies, the band members engaged in shameless ‘rock shaping’.
‘Rock shapes’ are the movements you make with your body whilst weighed down or otherwise inhibited by your instrument. It’s not dancing, as such, but it does represent an attempt to display the rhythm of the song by way of body movement. The prime culprit in the band we were watching was the bass player. Perhaps he was a retired jazz ballet student or a former mime artist. Whatever the case, he did everything short of strap fireworks to his ears to stand out. Contorting his body, it was as if he had earlier swallowed a key and was now trying to work the object through his system. It would not have surprised me if, at the end of the set, he had produced a metal object, held it aloft and waited expectantly for the crowd to applaud his efforts. George Harrison may well have had an album called ‘All Things Must Pass’, but the bass player had taken this far too literally.
My friend and I shook our heads as this young musician made a complete tool – probably a chrome vanadium steel sixteen-inch spanner – of himself. But in the midst of our merriment, it struck me. In fact, much like a chrome vanadium steel sixteen-inch spanner, the realization came upon me with great force. Here was I, with my friend, talking about how different things were in our day. The words ‘in our day’ rang in my ears like a blast of feedback from a stage monitor. I could ignore the state of my eyebrows, the hair in my ears, the pain in my joints and the fact that school children have started offering me their seats on public transport – it was a single conversation of the ‘back in our day’ variety that finally caused the penny to drop. The fact of it being a penny rather than decimal currency only made things worse.
My misery was compounded by the fact that I knew, deep down, that I had once been just like that bass player. I too had once writhed around in front of a paying audience as though I was locked in mortal battle with my digestive system. My humiliation was compounded by the fact that I wasn’t a bass player but, rather, stuck behind the keyboards. There is, I feel, nothing in this world quite as sad as a keyboard player that craves attention. Certain instruments lend themselves to throwing rock shapes. Guitarists have it easy. Singers can get away with murder. Bass players run the risk of having people accuse them of wanting to be a guitarist. Keyboard players, however, must suffer the indignity of being accused of being a keyboard player. It is a charge from which there is no escape. For all my efforts, audiences remained immune to my charms and I quietly retired.
It’s time to accept that I’m getting on. And rather than make fun of young men who appear to be in the grip of a savage tape-worm attack; given my age, the responsible thing to do is to walk up, put an understanding hand on the shoulder and say, ‘No’. I only wish that someone had done that much for me. Getting older is not so bad, even if my best rock shapes are now behind me. It can only be a good thing.