Getting Old!

[fatter than harry]

My mate borrowed my car last night, as I got in today to go to work I turned on the ignition to be greeted by the black eyed peas at full volume with all the triple-sub-woofered bass trimmings, my god what a racket! I put in a nice sunday Elton John tape and pootled around Phuket for a few hours feeling sad that I was preferring Elton to the Peas.

I was actually thinking 'ahhhh, music I can sing along to' Noooooo! Thats what my Dad used to say! I used to be a proper rapscallion hellraiser, now I'm a comfy mocasun slipper old basturd - is this what a mid life crisis is all about? does one rage against the middle of the road compilation album for a few years then realise that it's all a waste of energy and look for a good Chris Rea greatest hits album?

I realise I'm getting older, I remember my Dad hating Phil Collins for covering 'you can't hurry love' the same way I hate [enter boyband name here] for covering 'Uptown Girl' although I hate the boyband for regurgitating almost precisely note for note Billy Joel's worst song ever, whereas my old man quite liked the original - anyway, I am becoming my Dad and I don't like it!

Is there a well trodden path to growing old gracefully?

[Boon Mee]

Don't think there is an easy path to doing it gracefully but strongly suspect doing it in LOS is better than just about any place else.

I can't handle the music the younger guys have on at work but refuse to say a word remembering what my old man said about the Beatles!

[scummuncher]

I too am becoming my dad, I used to cringe when he would put on 'his' stuff, and Harry Nielsen was the end of the line for me, he would berate Led Zep in favour of the beardied nasty.

I have slowly become my dad over the last couple of years I have been buying Frank Sinatra, and other 'songs' you can 'sing' along to...

I do draw the line at the Ray Coniff Singers, he was wrong about them, they really are crap.

I was found singing along to Harry Nielsen the other day, quite good really isn't he......

By the way I am 11 1/2 yrs old....

Plus my dad is a great bloke so I ain't so worried about becoming like him

Cheers

[TizMe]

I refuse to become my father. My sound system would commit suicide if I ever played his "HERB ALPERT AND THE TIJUANA BRASS".

Come to think of it I will be ready to slit my own throat if I ever played that.

20 years ago I replaced the old Vinyls and Cassettes with CDs. Now I'm going through replacing the CDs with DVDs.

Nothing better than to sit back and watch Led Zep, Pink Floyd, ACDC etc. on the "big screen" in the living room and listen on 5.1 DTS sound turned up so load that I cant talk to the person sitting next to me.

I also like some of the newer stuff like Nine Inch Nails.

I put in a nice sunday Elton John tape and pootled around Phuket for a few hours feeling sad that I was preferring Elton to the Peas.

The last good thing EJ did was Yellow Brick Road...

[Simbo]

I like Edmund Hockridge myself

[Opl]

hahaha , fun !

Music is a generation marker , you're getting old when you don't even know the names of the bands you see on TV shows or hear on radio , except on nostalgia stations , or when you notice the CD's you buy all are classifiedin easy listening or oldies bud goodies !

Do you remember " 20 years ago.." better than 3 years ago, do you think you still feel in your twenties but stop buying these flashy shirts ?

Answered "yes" to the above points ?

That's it, you are becoming your daddy !

[davethailand]

you are all showing your age now!

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Don't think there is an easy path to doing it gracefully but strongly suspect doing it in LOS is better than just about any place else.

I can't handle the music the younger guys have on at work but refuse to say a word remembering what my old man said about the Beatles!

The beatles longish hair pissed the oldies off too. And Elvis' hip swinging would have worried 'em a lot.

[Opl]

IMO, the worse is : Britney Spears covering Satisfaction ..

[Boon Mee]

you are all showing your age now!

That's right! Nine Inch Nails, new stuff!

[castelleone]

Was I always old as my dad since I preferred classical music ever since and still do?

I think it is just the very normal process that is happening with all of us. Just take it easy and try to cope with it. (as our dads did as well)

[pnustedt]

The last good thing EJ did was Yellow Brick Road... 

The last good thing EJ did was George Michael!

I'm still playing my vinyls! Can't be doing with all these new fangled CD thingies.

[Marshy]

IMO, the worse is : Britney Spears covering Satisfaction ..

I agree--- but she' fun to watch for a few minutes---beets ta hel outa Mikeeey Jackson!!

[Padkapow Guy]

you are all showing your age now!

My mind thinks I am 18 and my body thinks I am 50. I can seem to get the two to compromize. It he11 the morning after a bender.

[Limbo]

Some years ago I looked at the Woodstock movie. It was like looking in an imaginary mirror. I saw myself again and realised what I spiritually lost.

This feeling was much stronger than when I look in a real mirror.

Should be the other way around, or am I mixing up things?

It was like an actor feeling that the role he plays took possession of him and that the own substance is lost. Help!

[chanchao]

I'm fairly lucky in that my dad had a good taste in music. :-) Queen and all those. I'm playing the Thai-DJ-Euro-Dance versions of these songs, of course, but I bet he doesn't mind. It's the thought that counts.

Also this MP3 thingy is a God-send. Very easy to mix styles and have some heavy rock song first followd by something Isarn - mor lam-ish. My girlfriend can't stand both.

God help you if you ever hitch a ride with me and have to listen to my music.

Cheers,

Chanchao

[p1p]

'Fraid my dad passed away before the beatles ever came on the scene. His favourite music was such pieces as Mascagni's "Cavalliera Rusticana", for which i have never been able to fault him. Still have his old '78 three single sided mono vinyl edition, a stereo edition, also on three sides and a CD purchased some 18 or so years ago. (Possibly the best introduction to opera ever written.)

Can't yet complain about my children's taste though. Great preference shown for the stones' original over Britney's disastrous cover. Dylan, Queen, Floyd, Tina Turner all high on the request list. My daughter is forgiven for her liking for the occasional boy band or singer. Old pharts can not compete on looks.

As for myself, I'm still me, and feel no different from the way I was when I was 22, 32, 42, or 12 for that matter. Just weigh somewhat more and can not do the things I used to with quite such energy and aplomb.

[Axel]

My son commented before to any singer I mentioned:

"Is s/he still alive?"

Guess this shows where I am standing.

[tuky]

We just had our first baby, that now makes me a Dad.

Very interesting feeling, however I still feel like I am 18.

Hence the shock I felt when I looked at a photo that was taken of my daughter and myself on Sunday, I am wrinkly and my hairline is receding.

My first thought was "who is that strange looking man cuddling my daughter", my second thought was "break that camera"!!!

[Pink Mist]

We just had our first baby, that now makes me a Dad.

Very interesting feeling, however I still feel like I am 18.

Hence the shock I felt when I looked at a photo that was taken of my daughter and myself on Sunday, I am wrinkly and my hairline is receding.

My first thought was "who is that strange looking man cuddling my daughter", my second thought was "break that camera"!!!

But do you look like a Cop (and a handsome one like me)

[simey]

But maybe we are right - the music was better before. There is a lot of talk about the nineties right now but unless it's just nostalgia the eighties and nineties had very distinct types of music - you could be goth or new romantic or whatever. But 2000 on seems to be a set of boybands that cannot be told apart doing covers. I would prefer to be younger than I am of course, but would I give up experiencing the music of the 80's and 90's for it - nope. And just to prove it I'm gonna listen to Spear of Destiny again.

[Martin]

Thank you all for telling what it is like to be an Old Man.This is a useful thread to me.

I am an Experienced Youth, but it does seem that I do have to work a bit harder at becoming a Still-More-Experienced Youth, as I approach 70.

So it is helpful to know what it will be like if it gets too hard and I have to succumb to being an Old Man.

It does help to be able to dismiss some suggestions (such as that I should settle down) with the words "Oh, I expect that will happen of its own accord when I grow up".

I once heard a super 80-year-old who was being interviewed on local radio (in the days when not many lived to 80) reply to the question whether he had any ambitions still to achieve with "Just the one---to spend no time between my first and second childhoods. I do hope to go straight from the first to the second"; and I thought "What a great attitude".

[Axel]

A real shock I got once, entering a railcar and two young girls got up to offer me a seat.

BTW, I am not a dirty old man, just a senior sexy citizen.

[cathyy]

I also like some of the newer stuff like Nine Inch Nails.

Nine Inch Nails are newer stuff? Sorry, Tiz. My son listened to them in high school, and he's on the far side of thirty already...

People tend to listen to the same style of music all their life. If you listened to the Beatles and Rolling Stones in high school you will always love rock. Not much chance of mellowing into country or classical music fan. You might prefer softer pop rock to metal after a while, but odds are high you won't adapt well to rap.

[anamore]

music and memories both go together very well because we seem to be able to recall music much easier than other remenbrances.

WOODSTOCK: I remenber 1974 watching it on the cinema in Lisbon. What a freedom had those american fellows and the police and the maire everybody helping to make it possible. It was just a new world opening up to young people in europe.

Looking back that was like a battlefield but not like Waterloo or something else. There was no war. Young people were ready for a change but they didn't want it by war. It was all about love and peace. And lot's of herb of course.

As to music: all the groups in europe wanted to rock en roll in english and as soon as possible go to the USA to conquer the world. Because if you would make it there you would make it every/anywhere (just like Sinatra sings in NY). The americans thought about the same and came to europe.

Probably the 60 and the 70 were the only decades in which youth around the world had the most in commom. the media papers and Tv was growing and we were curious and got to know each other. The first young people started travelling with their backpack.

Around 1978 I meet the first Australians,Americans and New Zeelanders in Europe. There were no books about travelling. The worldmap was the only thing. The most went to London and bought a volkswagenvan to go around for one year. I thought of them as being heroes. Mostly they were ready with the study and wanted to know the world before getting tieddown by jobs and family. Somewhere in the 80 all of it was finished.young people became very materiaal and the first economical crash came in 1983.

Freedom and peace where things every young persoon wanted in the 60 and 70 and the anti war movement was very strong, even the civil rights movement in the usa was known by me.

To these days american rock music and ballads from those days stil remain my favourits along with some english music. I loved to listen to the lirics until I would understand it all. There was commitment to a better world or against the bad things in the one we lived. And there were the songs you couldn't understand because as I learned later the makers were under influence when they wrote them. example:Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

Close to home (mainland europe) there was very little music that made a longlasting impression.english and americans had taken over!

greetings

ana

note: I am 45 I remenber a lot and I lived very conscious all the changes in the past.

Yes, after turning against our elders in our late teens and early tweenties, we later get close to them and learn to understand they wanted the beste for us and did what they could.

THis happens around the time we became parents ourselves. At the same time we start noticing that we handle our children in the same way as our parents did us.

Even later we notice that our children sound like we used to when they talk to us and try to paternize mom and dad who now want to do something new and enjoy freedom after more than 20 years of bringing up kids.

There is nothing wrong with growing older.the other option is death.

Aging gracefully means:

be yourself no matter what others say,

time has learned you to relativate things, so don't worry anymore about stupid things;

don't dress old but don't dress as if you were 20;This goes also for make-up

try to understand your children and stay in touch with them, they need you more than they say;

don't became dad when you are old enough to be granddad;

take care of your health as it is the only thingthat can make your old day ######;

invest in a relationship with someone who knows and understands you and takes you as you are;

be mild in your judgements and help young people as you can. Their parents are mostly hard but you know what they both don't by own experience.

[Bluecat]

Anamore, it is far, far too long.

Girls, they can't stop talking (writing),...

By the way, did you enjoy your Thai trip?

Short please,...

[Martin]

Anamore---The more the better of good sound stuff, as yours was.

One good long post of sound stuff is much preferable to half a dozen short posts of rant etc, IMHO.

[Bluecat]

One good long post of sound stuff is much preferable to half a dozen short posts of rant etc, IMHO.

Do I know you?

[Martin]

No. But sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I thought your reply was 'rant'. It wasn't. I was trying to make a general observation. And express appreciation of some good stuff.

[Flummoxed]

I'm getting into Burt Bacharach in a big way now. I'm 33.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head.........