I spend a lot of time thinking about the future.
I imagine what I will be like in twenty, thirty, forty years time.
I wonder how I will live, and where I will live, whether I’ll be happy or not.
Those are the key details.
Once you get those established in your head, you move on deeper into that same cave.
I think about music a lot.
I wonder if I will play my songs to my children.
I think about what they’ll make of it, in the same way I would listen to my Dad playing bits of twelve-bar blues on his guitar when I was little and dance around his bedroom with my brothers.
This week I have been thinking about the phrase – ‘turn that bloody noise down’.
It’s something which has echoed through a couple of generations, and I wonder how much worse music will get for us to shout the same things at our children. Is it just a part of growing up? I know my own music tastes have changed from where they were a decade ago, softened even.
I try to think of what bands of our generation will be carried on, to burn as the defining sound of the 00’s.
I wonder if we will be sat watching TOTP2 in twenty years time saying ‘now The Prodigy, they knew how to write a song’.
It’s true of course, they do.
It’s hard to imagine The Libertines or The Strokes being described as ‘classic rock’ by the next generation, or even to think about who or what will follow. I can’t imagine what sound defined us, because we are still living it. Hindsight may clear the whole issue up.
I struggle with being a part of my generation. Sometimes it feels like I was wired differently, but I know that is just my attempt to be seen differently, and to feel as though I’m a unique little snowflake. The majority of the music I like and listen to is the music of the 60’s and 70’s which will soon be considered ‘grandad music’ I suppose. I find it hard to believe my great aunt and uncle who trained under the maharishi and were part of the flower power hippie movement are grandparents. It doesn’t seem enough time has passed.
As a child I wasn’t really aware of what was happening to music at the time. On the whole I guess it was a little contrived and dull (until grunge kicked in), so I listened to a lot of glam and punk and metal and thought it was just the most incredible thing. Listening to pop music has never done anything for me. I can see why people like it but it just seems so cheap and plastic and disposable to me.
I hope in twenty years time I am sorting through the loft of my mansion and come across a stack of CDs.
‘What’s that Dad’ my son will say, pulling his little raggedy head of curls and his dungarees up through the loft hatch.
‘That’s real music Huxley, that’s real music’ I’ll say.
I think about the future so much I struggle to think of what I am doing now.
Paul Schiernecker 