We live in a very post-modern age, teenagers happily wander around wearing T shirts emblazoned with Rolling Stones or Ramones album covers, electronica and house seems to be enjoying a revival as current bands happily acknowledge influence of Kraftwerk and Bowie. Yoof music is specifically designed to get on the tits of anyone over the age of 23, I may have told my stepsons that their music “is just noise”. Meanwhile, my stepsons are both extremely pleased with their replica 1990 Nike Air trainers. In many respects, not much has changed and teenagers seem to accept retro culture far more readily than I did 25 years ago.
But otherwise, I guess the seventies and eighties are as alien to a teenager today as the forties, fifties and sixties (delete as applicable) were to us. Imagine surviving today with no internet, social media, crap cars, three television channels all with rubbish programming that close down at 23:30, blue rinses, having to manually tune electronic devices, cassettes, 48k, Arthur Scargill, Russell Harty, leaded fuels, monochrome newspapers, wildcat strikes, Fatcha, mass unemployment, social division, the imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon, racist policemen, everyday sexism, having to explain to your granny why Anarchy in the UK isn’t just about a load of spotty teenagers spitting everywhere and terrible food.
