A while ago I started writing a post about the “retirement” of David Bowie who, since his heart attack in 2004, seemed to have given up the rocking and rolling and was content to live the quiet domestic life in New York – painting, reading, and picking his kid up from school. I thought of him as the stranded alien Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth who has wearily “had enough” at the end and lives in anonymous seclusion.

Like 99% of the posts I start writing it never got finished, but the point I was going to make was that I was happy for Bowie that he’d retired, and personally didn’t care much if he never made another record because, you know, we’ll always have Paris. He made enough great records and left me with enough good memories that his reputation was golden for the rest of his life, no matter how many average late-career records he made that I didn’t want to buy.

But I suppose he must have had a creative itch he needed to scratch because he’s gone and made another one after a 10-year silence which raises the hype and expectation way higher than it was for Reality or Heathen and all those other albums of his I was never arsed enough about to actually buy (along with everybody else). He’s risking a lot with The Next Day because people are paying attention this time and he could have very publicly fallen flat on his geriatric rocker face with it, but — phew! — it’s actually a very good album. Not Hunky Dory or Low good of course, but almost Lodger or Scary Monsters good. Pulling off this surprise this might be Bowie’s most audacious move in a career that’s been full of them.

Now if only Paul McCartney would bugger off for 10 years.

Download: Valentine’s Day – David Bowie (mp3)

It’s my birthday today. I can’t quite bring myself to say out loud how old I am but here’s a clue:

Apparently my wife has some secret things planned to celebrate the big occasion, I hope it includes time for me to go off on my own with a bottle of Scotch and weep in a dark room somewhere.

Download: Old – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (mp3)

I joined a gym last year, that might not seem like hold-the-front-page news to you but it was a big deal for me. I’ve never considered myself a “gym” person — more the “record shop” and “pub” type — and always thought working out was a faintly ridiculous modern habit for the narcissistic, self-absorbed, and neurotic. I didn’t even like running for a bus, it just wasn’t me. To my mind grown ups should be sitting around having erudite conversations over a glass of scotch, not getting sweaty in a room full of strangers.

But the horror of a 50th birthday coming rapidly down the road (just a few weeks away now) and having to keep up with two turbo-charged young kids made even me think that my body needed a tune-up — and probably jumper cables. It can be hard to accept (after the anger and denial) that you aren’t the youth you once were — I liked that guy! — and that your body isn’t the indestructible vessel it once was. Also, I’d found it easy to ignore the fact that I was getting on a bit because I’m still thin and have all my hair in (mostly) its original colour, but that didn’t mean things weren’t falling apart under the hood.

Boozing and late nights are the two most obvious casualties of aging, becoming nostalgic exhibits in The Museum of Youth that you can only look at wistfully from the other side of the glass. I still like a tipple or three but the days when I could sink a skinful and still function the next day are long gone. Staying up late is a thing of the past too, by 11pm I’m wiped out and nodding off on the couch, the only time I see 2am now is if one of the kids wakes up — my dirty little secret is that I’d rather have a quiet night in anyway. On top of all that my knees hurt and my already-poor eyesight is deteriorating so much that I now need reading glasses. When I catch a glimpse of myself with those things perched on the end of my nose it’s like looking at a picture of my dad — not the young, groovy version of my dad either, the old guy.

Visits to the doctor have become more significant too. Thankfully my ticker is in good shape and my blood pressure is low, but my yearly check-ups (another new thing) now end with him sticking his finger up my bum and poking my prostate — a sign that I’m the age now where certain things need to be kept an eye on. The worst thing is the paranoia that sets in about your health, when every cough, every ache and pain, can become a worrying sign of potentially serious trouble — especially for someone like me who smoked ciggies for nearly 30 years. A few months ago I had some symptoms I was almost convinced were cancer (handy hint: never, ever, look up your symptoms on the internet) but when I got to the doctor it just turned out that my ears needed syringing. He had a good laugh about that, I felt like giving him a tearful hug of gratitude.

So I’m pounding the treadmill and pumping the weights about three times a week now, fighting against the dying of the light and trying to make up for past sins — though I would rather have my past sins than not. To my surprise I actually quite enjoy it (oh no, I’ve become one of those people) and, though I’ll probably always look less like Charles Atlas and more like the guy who got sand kicked in his face, it is nice to have a little more muscle on my reedy arms and be able to lift the kids up in the air without my back protesting. Maybe years from now I’ll be one of those spry, tracksuited pensioners running marathons and bungee jumping. Hopefully not, that really isn’t me.

Download: Musclebound (12″ Mix) – Spandau Ballet (mp3)

Much as I love records I’m not sure I’d want to be memorialized in this way when I die: Having my ashes pressed into a vinyl record. Seems a bit creepy to me (at least it isn’t a picture disk), and I’d probably end up covered in scratches and filed in the wrong place.

Though I guess you could convert it to an mp3 so your loved ones can carry you around on their iPods.

Download: When I’m Dead And Gone – McGuinness Flint (mp3)

I have a love-hate relationship with Sleigh Bells. One the one hand I love their catchy tunes, fun image, and cute lead singer, but their records are so brutally, viscerally NOISY — full of shuddering jackhammer beats and screeching metal guitars — that my aging ears can’t handle it so I also hate them for making me feel old. Which I guess is what proper modern pop music should do, ancient farts like me aren’t supposed to like it. So then I sort of love them again for making records I have a hard time with. It’s complicated.

Their latest single “Comeback Kid” is relatively easy listening for them, sounding almost at times like Katy Perry singing with My Bloody Valentine or something, but from what I’ve heard of their new album “Reign of Terror” they’re still a band that make you bang a broom on the ceiling and tell them to turn the bloody racket down. Which is good. And bad.

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)