Elevator, goooing up!
I tell you what I don't get.
When I was in my early twenties, I was working on location in Dorset, and we ended up staying in a hotel mostly populated by old folks on undemanding coach tours of the West Country. The whole place was kind of shabby, the lighting a little bright and the food was cooked until it looked and tasted like boiled bus tickets in gravy.
A bunch of us sat around in the lounge after dinner and mused about our own old age, as you do when you're just out of your teens. We listened to muzak versions of Beatles and Stones tunes, plus the usual smattering of Mancini, and we joked about what tunes they'd maul into easy-listening for our pension-claiming pleasure. I suggested 'White Riot', someone else went for 'Kill The Poor' and we laughed heartily as we sipped our Sanatogen Tonic Wine.
Imagine my horror on discovering that my old age had come early.
No, I'm not talking about the previously related humming along to Echo & The Bunnymen at the Beefeater. I'm referring to the sick joke known as Nouvelle Vague.
A lot of folks seem to love this cheeky French outfit, famous for their reinterpretations of new-wave and punk classics, but for me they are simply 'musique d'ascenceur' disguised as a hipster joke. I love a cover as much as the next person, but as I hear more and more of this stuff on TV (put there by TV producers of a certain age, I might add) I worry that the increasing Radio 2-isation of music is gathering pace.
When I was in my early twenties, I was working on location in Dorset, and we ended up staying in a hotel mostly populated by old folks on undemanding coach tours of the West Country. The whole place was kind of shabby, the lighting a little bright and the food was cooked until it looked and tasted like boiled bus tickets in gravy.
A bunch of us sat around in the lounge after dinner and mused about our own old age, as you do when you're just out of your teens. We listened to muzak versions of Beatles and Stones tunes, plus the usual smattering of Mancini, and we joked about what tunes they'd maul into easy-listening for our pension-claiming pleasure. I suggested 'White Riot', someone else went for 'Kill The Poor' and we laughed heartily as we sipped our Sanatogen Tonic Wine.
Imagine my horror on discovering that my old age had come early.
No, I'm not talking about the previously related humming along to Echo & The Bunnymen at the Beefeater. I'm referring to the sick joke known as Nouvelle Vague.
A lot of folks seem to love this cheeky French outfit, famous for their reinterpretations of new-wave and punk classics, but for me they are simply 'musique d'ascenceur' disguised as a hipster joke. I love a cover as much as the next person, but as I hear more and more of this stuff on TV (put there by TV producers of a certain age, I might add) I worry that the increasing Radio 2-isation of music is gathering pace.