on music, youth and develpment.

I just turned 30. I think I'lll make the party's theme "The Music of my youth," as I symbolically kill the latter. That (along with a question from my wife) got me thinking: what was it about the msuic that I love(d) that I found so compelling that i integrated the music and the culture surrounding it into my own personhood?

Womens' voices were particulary and dramatically different. I can't even describe the gulf between heather Locklear in leather in the background of a Motley Crue video and PJ Harvey. Hearing "Dress" and "Rid of Me" was a stunning experience for a teenage boy. The similarities to my own experience (uncontrollable lust, discomfort? with the display of my body) and the differences.

Here's a further example: my class song was Far Behind by Candlebox. My friends and I mounted a write-in campaign for Life Sentence by the Dead Kennedys. Which one said anything? What the hell was candlebox on about? That mushy, mealy, content-free lyrical style of Candlebox was even then an affront to everything I know about anything.

what I'm saying is what Morrisey said so much more succinctly: The music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life so hang the DJ.

so now that I'm old, now what? I started a bad with another old dude. We're walking the line between nostalgia and progress so far. There are things that I just cannot pull off; they're not cute anymore. But remember: Andy summers didn't join The Police until he was 32.