In a pub once Tim suggested that all Great Pop is written from the perspective of being 16. Not that all Great Pop was ABOUT being 16, but rather that it encompassed a certain sense of excitement and tremulous anticipation that the IDEA of being 16 conjures in us. I find this argument seductive, just as I find seductive the idea that the moment to which we return and find each time slightly altered by the passing of our elliptical routes before we then embark on another of those roads to (inevitably) nowhere, is also rooted deeply in adolescence. Richard Hell once suggested that adolescence was the most important part of your life, and that the extent to which you stay true to the ideals you develop at that time is the extent to which you stay Alive. And I think this hits on the point I feel I currently find myself believing in more and more. [Keith Watson] Indeed this is a fantastic argument, responsibilities of adulthood are only there if you wish to take them - of course there are a few things there, paying bills and stuff but mainly I still feel like I'm 16 any, in fact I feel like I'm 9, I don't feel like I've ever felt any different, people constantly bombard you with the idea that you're going to grow out of stuff like this, all your life (incidentally, this is kind of what I take "everybody's trying to make us a century of fakers" to mean - or at least, this is how I like to take it). People force themselves to forget about the things they once enjoyed indeed loved, just since they feel like it doesn't fit in with the way they're expected to behave. I'm never going to grow up, I can't see it, I've been told all my life I will and I haven't yet and long may it continue. It's like the difference between feeling alive and dead. Perhaps this is the eternal curse and saving grace of the Pop Generation, or at least the Pop obsessives; that the refusal to accept the responsibility of adulthood and the fact that we find Pop altering our perceptions of importance results in an ongoing obsession with a return to adolescence. That the true revolutionary spirit of Pop is not to overthrow governments and systems of media oppression through direct action, but by collusion, by exisiting in a peter pan like bubble of myopia. Perhaps, like the Mods' pharmaceutically induced disinterest in sex, the Pop generation will grow to refuse the concept of family, will deny the importance of familial responsibility in favour of the endless song, the endless rave, the endless summer of love. [Keith Watson] Indeed I don't believe it'll ever overthrow the government, but it can do much much more - changing people's attitudes to things is one thing - to take a trivial example... Look at the telly and see how often people swear, all the time now, and then think of the uproar with the Sexpistols on the Bill Grundy show 21 years ago. The affect that these people have is far too subtle to be able to explain definitively but it's definitely there. Cheers, Keith. ps: I kind of liked Blissed Out, I think he writes well about the stuff he likes, it's more just his views on the stuff he doesn't like that are strange, well, you can't expect everyone to like everything. Having said that "The Sex Revolts" which is another Simon Reynolds book is not quite as interesting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------