This is wonderful, and a great document of when the King’s Road was an exciting (and a little scary) place to be. When Ann Wobble says “There’s me!” and the camera zooms in on her younger self I found it quite touching too, you can feel the glow of youth reaching across the years. I’m the same age as her and if I saw film of myself from that year I think I’d be more cringing than delighted.

This got to Number One twenty years ago now. Read all about it at Popular and feel (justified and) ancient.

Have you been into a record shop recently with the itch to buy something new and felt incredibly frustrated and let down when you can’t find a single thing you want among the racks of racks of new releases and have to leave the shop empty-handed? It can happen at any age of course but as you get older it happens more and more often and the frustration becomes coloured by the anxiety that the grim day is coming when you won’t go into a record shop for a new release ever again because you’re an ancient fucker completely out of touch with the now and your record collection is frozen somewhere in the past.

Serious music fandom is an addiction which starts when you’re a teenager and though decades might go by it remains a precious link to those golden days which is why it’s depressing to feel it fading away. You can feed your habit by buying old records (and I do) which are fine for a quick fix but nothing can beat the rush you get from a pure, uncut, new record — and buying it on the day of release is the biggest high of all that makes you feel like you did when you were an eager, passionate youth and the world was full of exciting new music. I turn 48 next week and there are still about half a dozen current bands and singers I automatically buy new releases by which isn’t bad for someone of my advanced state of decrepitude (I have mates my age — and younger — who lost touch with current music trends sometime in the early 90s), but with age the fountain of discovery inevitably starts to dry up or you struggle to embrace the latest hot thing (at the moment I’m trying hard to be impressed by the new Arcade Fire album with only “it’s OK” results) leaving you with longer and longer periods when there’s nothing new to buy and you feel like a heroin addict whose supply of smack has been cut off — and equally miserable and sick.

This is nothing to do with wanting to stay “hip” — God forbid — but about not wanting to turn into one of those sad blokes who mutters grumpily about “music today” and only listens to music he bought 30 years go. Contemplating this future is like staring into the black hole of your own mortality and the death of that last link to the kid you once were.

Download: You’re History – Shakespears Sister (mp3)

Some mornings when I’m on the bus on my way to work I feel like I’m living in the future. I look around me and see people holding digital devices usually not much bigger than a fag packet on which they’re listening to music, reading, playing games, watching videos, browsing the internet, sending emails, probably even blogging and — ugh — Tweeting. They have a dazzling multimedia experience in the palm of their hands while I’m just reading a boring old book and feeling increasingly like an old fogey with my “dead tree product”.

I know men are supposed to wet their pants over the thought of a new gadget but the grumpy contrarian in me is always suspicious of a sheep-like rush toward some shiny new thing (who are these people who camp outside a shop all night just to buy a bloody iPad?) and the current ubiquity of whatever Steve Jobs pulls out of the sleeve of his black roll neck jumper just makes me even less inclined to want one. I work in publishing which, like the music business, is currently being turned upside down by digital technology, working at a traditional print magazine these days is a little like being a Luddite when the mechanical loom was invented as we join the mad frenzy to embrace all these new gadgets. Though I’m rightly skeptical of the idea that a person can be reduced to a “type” or a category, especially by some smart-arse marketing executive, reading some of the character sketches at The Middle Class Handbook I came across a person they call a “Bitter” which captures a lot of my feelings about the “digital revolution”:

They are named after Twitter – a site they particularly hate. Bitters basically feel drowned by the technology everywhere, and yet are niggled by the idea that they ought to be trying to keep up. They were always crap with technology, they loathe any type of user manual, and feel a peculiar mix of resentment, jealousy and hatred when they see people such as the work experience kid clutching their copy of Wired and doing something futuristic on their iPhone.

Secretly, even though half of them do media jobs where it is quite essential the Bitters wish it would just all go away.

I’ve been using a computer to do my job for the past 20 years, know my way around the internets and can design web sites (like this one) so it’s not as if I’m some grandpa who doesn’t know how to program his video recorder (though I am one of those sad bastards who only uses his cell phone to make phone calls) but while I am niggled by the idea that I ought to be keeping up more — at least for the sake of my career — my real problem is that I’m bored by it all and find it impossible to work up any enthusiasm for the iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Droid, or whatever the “must have” gizmo du jour is. I’ve used an iPad to “read” a magazine and the experience left me completely cold, tapping your fingers on a piece of glass is no substitute for the feel of a piece of paper no matter how many interactive bells and whistles they load it up with. As the legendary art director George Lois recently said in his usual pithy way: “there is a visceral feeling of having that thing in your hands and turning the pages. It’s so different on the screen. It’s the difference between looking at a woman and having sex with her.”

It’s not as if I’m going to quit my job and go work on a farm in Vermont but, yes, I do wish it would all go away. Which is probably what all those typesetters who were put out of work by desktop publishing in the 80s felt, they must have hated young fuckers with Apple Macs like me too.

Download: Computer World – Kraftwerk (mp3)
Buy: “Computer World” (album)

Much as I hate to give The Sun credit for anything, this was pretty funny.

And two days later THIS happened too. What a week!

Download: A Father – Virginia Astley (mp3)

This is from Astley’s second solo album Hope In A Darkened Heart which has been out of print for years, so not only is it lovely it’s quite rare too. Enjoy.

The new baby is due any minute/second/day now so I’ll be vanishing into the New Daddy Twilight Zone which means there won’t be much posting for a while. I know that happens a lot here but this time I have a really good excuse.

Here’s a lovely slice of dusty old Motown to keep you company.

Download: Baby A Go-Go – Barbara McNair (mp3)