My Generation
Aug. 2nd, 2010 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI may have been to a couple of gigs in my early teens, but the first one which sticks in my memory was on September 18 1971, at the Oval Cricket Ground. It was a glorious day and my favourite band — The Who — were headlining.
To be honest, the bands during the day were not that spectacular in terms of the Birks taste of the time (or, TBH, the Birks taste today, although I have a certain respect for Ian Hunter, still starting fights at the age of 71): Lindisfarne, Quintessence, Mott The Hoople, America and Atomic Rooster.
But the main support was The Faces -- when my main knowledge was still of The Small Faces and Rod Stewart was yet to reach major fame — and the headlining band was The Who. That alone was enough for the £1 entrance fee (the Surrey web site claims that it was £1.25 -- but I thought that was for the folowing year, which featured Focus, Argent, Genesis, ELP and Wishbone Ash).
The photographs of the time show what a long-lost era it now is. The police didn't want to know, so Geoffrey Howard, a 50ish old-school-tie type nearly always to be seen in a blazer, tie and elegant silk handkerchief over "respectable" trousers and smart black lace-ups, had to book Hells Angels to handle the security. Hard to believe that this was allowed only two years after Monterey, but my recollection of the event was that there wasn't any trouble. A lot of hippies and long-hairs, quite a few stoned people and at least one guy definitely on acid (I would contend that you can't freak out to Quintessence unless you are on some particularly powerful form of Lysergic acid diethylamide).
When you see films of London in the 1960s, and when you listen to the commentary of the Caribbean immigrants, the one constant is how the place seems to have been constructed in black and white. It's in that context that I recall how events like this propelled me further into the new era. I guess that it had started, politically, in 1968, and I remember Woodstock (1969) in hindsight rather than at the time. The same goes for the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970 (IOW was far more important than the rather weedy Glastonbury, launched in the same year). I remember buying the "Tracks" albums for 99p, which featured one artist on one side and another artist on the other. The ones that I bought (I wish that I had bought them all and kept them all in mint condition) featured The Who on Side One and Hendrix on Side 2. But I didn't listen to the Hendrix sides, even though I recall "vaguely liking" All Along The Watchtower and Hey Joe. Didn't like Purple Haze.
Of course, in a sense, this was a sign of my musical taste to be. Hendrix was an inspiration for what was to become Rock and Heavy Metal, and I became gradually more disillusioned with the Rock side, the Hippie side and the Prog-Rock side. There wasn't much "pop" from 1971 to 1976, and during this time it's hard to recall precisely what I DID listen to. ELP, and eventually Bruce Springsteen, plus Pink Floyd. Steve Harley, Sparks, some ELO. But the major names of the era -- Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Yes, all left me cold. I began to wonder whether pop music had passed me by, and whether I should start listening to more classical stuff. And, indeed, that was what I did.
It wasn't helped by the Radio of the era. Radio One had rapidly deteriorated into the DJ as superstar. Radio Two remained in its "Two-Way Family Favourites" style. Capital was launched in 1974, and was the best of a bad bunch. I should have listened to more student radio, but, to be honest, the students playing stuff hardly had taste in the mode of John Peel. Indeed, neither did John Peel, who was still wrapped up in a whole bunch of hippie-prog-rock tosh.
++
And so, I was thinking of all this as I looked at Aon's recent item on "expectations for retirement" throughout the EU.
I'm not that keen on this kind of survey, to be honest. Asking people what they are worried about when retirement eventually comes is less effective than asking people who have already retired what worries them every morning, now that retirement has actually come.
But there were still a few snippets of interest. One of them (and this is by-the-by) was asking whether people were worried about a loss of status/self-esteem. This got a relatively low response compared with stuff like "having enough to live on", "health" "inflation" and "the mortgage". But, while 10% of people in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Germany were worried about a loss of status, this concerned only 2% of people in France. Only the Netherlands came close (3%).
+++
A more significant factor in terms of demographics was that only about half of people in Ireland, Germany and the UK want to stay in their own country when they retire. I'll admit that the Irish one rather surprised me. Clearly the high PR campaign for the place over here is not working so well with the people already over there, who are nearly as unhappy with where they live as we are.
Contrariwise, the people happiest with where they live are in Spain, France and Denmark, with between 80% and 90% of nationals wanting to stay in their own country. There's no mention of demographic shifts within countries, though.
And Spain and France are also, unsurprisingly, popular destinations for retirees-to-be from other countries, with Spain by far the most popular.
This, as Aon observes, spells bad news for Spain, which is already creaking under the most generous state pension arrangements in the EU. If it gets an unduly elderly population, combined with an unduly generous pension system for the Spanish who retire, the only options would appear to be a begging bowl to the rest of the EU to pay for all the elderly people sitting in crumbling beach-side apartments, or a campaign to bring in more young people to make up for the demographic imbalance.
On the other hand, there's a plus side for Spain. If people retire to Spain and if they have enough to live on, that works as a stimulus for the Spanish economy, because effectively it transfers cash from the retiree's previous country (UK, Ireland, Germany) to the retiree's current country (Spain).
Muind you, it will be fun to see 90-year-old Germans and English having a spat about putting towels down on the pool-side recliners the night before...
+++
One final thought on the European economy. In 2002 there were about €30bn in €500 notes in circulation. Now there's €285bn. That's €235bn in "free money" for the EU. Most of which is, as we know, used for illegal financial transactions. The EU can't afford to withdraw the €500 note, because it really needs to remain the drug-dealers' currency of choice.
_____________
To be honest, the bands during the day were not that spectacular in terms of the Birks taste of the time (or, TBH, the Birks taste today, although I have a certain respect for Ian Hunter, still starting fights at the age of 71): Lindisfarne, Quintessence, Mott The Hoople, America and Atomic Rooster.
But the main support was The Faces -- when my main knowledge was still of The Small Faces and Rod Stewart was yet to reach major fame — and the headlining band was The Who. That alone was enough for the £1 entrance fee (the Surrey web site claims that it was £1.25 -- but I thought that was for the folowing year, which featured Focus, Argent, Genesis, ELP and Wishbone Ash).
The photographs of the time show what a long-lost era it now is. The police didn't want to know, so Geoffrey Howard, a 50ish old-school-tie type nearly always to be seen in a blazer, tie and elegant silk handkerchief over "respectable" trousers and smart black lace-ups, had to book Hells Angels to handle the security. Hard to believe that this was allowed only two years after Monterey, but my recollection of the event was that there wasn't any trouble. A lot of hippies and long-hairs, quite a few stoned people and at least one guy definitely on acid (I would contend that you can't freak out to Quintessence unless you are on some particularly powerful form of Lysergic acid diethylamide).
When you see films of London in the 1960s, and when you listen to the commentary of the Caribbean immigrants, the one constant is how the place seems to have been constructed in black and white. It's in that context that I recall how events like this propelled me further into the new era. I guess that it had started, politically, in 1968, and I remember Woodstock (1969) in hindsight rather than at the time. The same goes for the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970 (IOW was far more important than the rather weedy Glastonbury, launched in the same year). I remember buying the "Tracks" albums for 99p, which featured one artist on one side and another artist on the other. The ones that I bought (I wish that I had bought them all and kept them all in mint condition) featured The Who on Side One and Hendrix on Side 2. But I didn't listen to the Hendrix sides, even though I recall "vaguely liking" All Along The Watchtower and Hey Joe. Didn't like Purple Haze.
Of course, in a sense, this was a sign of my musical taste to be. Hendrix was an inspiration for what was to become Rock and Heavy Metal, and I became gradually more disillusioned with the Rock side, the Hippie side and the Prog-Rock side. There wasn't much "pop" from 1971 to 1976, and during this time it's hard to recall precisely what I DID listen to. ELP, and eventually Bruce Springsteen, plus Pink Floyd. Steve Harley, Sparks, some ELO. But the major names of the era -- Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Yes, all left me cold. I began to wonder whether pop music had passed me by, and whether I should start listening to more classical stuff. And, indeed, that was what I did.
It wasn't helped by the Radio of the era. Radio One had rapidly deteriorated into the DJ as superstar. Radio Two remained in its "Two-Way Family Favourites" style. Capital was launched in 1974, and was the best of a bad bunch. I should have listened to more student radio, but, to be honest, the students playing stuff hardly had taste in the mode of John Peel. Indeed, neither did John Peel, who was still wrapped up in a whole bunch of hippie-prog-rock tosh.
++
And so, I was thinking of all this as I looked at Aon's recent item on "expectations for retirement" throughout the EU.
I'm not that keen on this kind of survey, to be honest. Asking people what they are worried about when retirement eventually comes is less effective than asking people who have already retired what worries them every morning, now that retirement has actually come.
But there were still a few snippets of interest. One of them (and this is by-the-by) was asking whether people were worried about a loss of status/self-esteem. This got a relatively low response compared with stuff like "having enough to live on", "health" "inflation" and "the mortgage". But, while 10% of people in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Germany were worried about a loss of status, this concerned only 2% of people in France. Only the Netherlands came close (3%).
+++
A more significant factor in terms of demographics was that only about half of people in Ireland, Germany and the UK want to stay in their own country when they retire. I'll admit that the Irish one rather surprised me. Clearly the high PR campaign for the place over here is not working so well with the people already over there, who are nearly as unhappy with where they live as we are.
Contrariwise, the people happiest with where they live are in Spain, France and Denmark, with between 80% and 90% of nationals wanting to stay in their own country. There's no mention of demographic shifts within countries, though.
And Spain and France are also, unsurprisingly, popular destinations for retirees-to-be from other countries, with Spain by far the most popular.
This, as Aon observes, spells bad news for Spain, which is already creaking under the most generous state pension arrangements in the EU. If it gets an unduly elderly population, combined with an unduly generous pension system for the Spanish who retire, the only options would appear to be a begging bowl to the rest of the EU to pay for all the elderly people sitting in crumbling beach-side apartments, or a campaign to bring in more young people to make up for the demographic imbalance.
On the other hand, there's a plus side for Spain. If people retire to Spain and if they have enough to live on, that works as a stimulus for the Spanish economy, because effectively it transfers cash from the retiree's previous country (UK, Ireland, Germany) to the retiree's current country (Spain).
Muind you, it will be fun to see 90-year-old Germans and English having a spat about putting towels down on the pool-side recliners the night before...
+++
One final thought on the European economy. In 2002 there were about €30bn in €500 notes in circulation. Now there's €285bn. That's €235bn in "free money" for the EU. Most of which is, as we know, used for illegal financial transactions. The EU can't afford to withdraw the €500 note, because it really needs to remain the drug-dealers' currency of choice.
_____________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 07:25 pm (UTC)It's rather attractive, in fact. Now, is there an equivalent for a logical antecedent (∵)?
Or have I answered my own question? Er...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-05 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-05 10:34 pm (UTC)My "dividers" system is ++++ for something which has more words following it, and ______ for when I have finished, BTW.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 02:33 pm (UTC)Not so sure about this "Two-Way Family Favourites," though. I certainly don't remember that. It sounds like something that Ashley Cole would suggest to Cheryl after a particularly satisfying session of underpants modelling.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-03 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-05 10:36 pm (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-08-05 10:48 pm (UTC)Your memory is correct
Date: 2010-08-11 11:45 am (UTC)"And now a record for Mr. & Mrs. Dumphuck, parents of Private Dumphuck, stationed somewhere in Aden, who'd like us to play 'Surfing Safari' by Bert Kampfaert for them."
I am sure there was pop music in the early seventies - Bolan, Bowie, Mud, Sweet, Glitter, Mott the Hoople, Sparks, Roxy Music and the all conquering kings of the era, Slade - but perhaps you weren't listening to it. Much of it was better than the Wombles, the Osmonds and David Casserole.
Interesting to note (or perhaps not) that it was an era when rock-pop acts probably did better than soul-pop acts, which is not to understate the success of Stevie Wonder, Barry White, the Jacksons and the sound of Philadelphia.
I am struggling to work out why, when I saw Faces at the peak of their fame (June 1973) it was at the Sundown Edmonton, a venue no bigger than your average cinema, whereas now they are a bunch of old crocks supplemented by Mick Hucknall and Glen Matlock ("Matloooooooock!" as Grandpa Simpson calls him) they are selling out the O2.
Johnny H.
Re: Your memory is correct
Date: 2010-08-11 12:30 pm (UTC)Looking at the Billboard top 100 of 1972, (http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1972.htm) I think that I appreciate some of the stuff more in retrospect than I did at the time.
But a look at the number ones in the UK (http://www.wwwk.co.uk/music/hit-singles/years/1972.htm) is depressing indeed. I think that at the time I liked but one of those tracks (Nilsson), and that could hardly be described as breaking new ground.
__________
I blame Greatest Hits!
Date: 2010-08-03 04:12 pm (UTC)And I knew that this was a hysteron proteron!
Don't we all blame Greatest Hits!
Date: 2010-08-03 07:52 pm (UTC)It took Birks to popularise the bastard in the debased South London of the '80s and '90s. He was wildly successful. Which is probably why he gave up the booze. There's only so much self-inflicted intellectual debasement a man can take.
The diseased metamorphosis (via Virgil, and maybe even Ovid) of ὕστερον πρότερον is a version of what, in the private terminology of film noir Hollywood directors, was called the "Opening Scene Set-Up," which is to say that you give up the ending at the beginning. (It's, well, a set-up. Sunset Boulevard was the greatest of these. I suspect it was a -- brilliant -- way to get around the Hayes code.) Homer supposedly did this in the Odyssey (the dramatic arc goes 1 book home: 22 books anything I feel like: 1 book home); however, I'm utterly convinced that he would laugh in your face if you said that. Of course, he was a blind bastard, so you could wave two fingers back.
I think it's fair to say (and I await contradiction) that 100% of Greek tragedy depends, in a way, on the principle of ὕστερον πρότερον. By that I mean that (if you've been down the temple recently or listened to mummy when you were growing up), you already know the order in which things happen. ὕβρις, νέμεσις, κάθαρσις. Maybe the Nemesis bit should be capitalised for the Goddess. I'll work on that.
Later authors such as Burroughs messed this up by getting blind-dead-drugged and confusing their manuscripts with their wives and further confusing cutting up with shooting in the head.
However, with shoes and socks, it's quite obvious to yer average Athenian of the fifth century. "Put on your shoes and socks!"
But mummy, I already know that shoes will be the catharsis and socks are the nemesis. Where's the hubris?
Re: Don't we all blame Greatest Hits!
Date: 2010-08-05 10:36 pm (UTC)Re: Don't we all blame Greatest Hits!
Date: 2010-08-05 10:44 pm (UTC)And what's wrong with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and ... Tich?
Those who do not understand the Legends of Xanadu are condemned to repeat them, as I think Santayana has pointed out: but, this time, at 78rpm. And backwards. With da acid house grunge garage back-beat.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 09:56 pm (UTC)Not only is it far easier for an Eire national to emigrate to the US than it is for any other G20 citizen, but you have to remember the consequences of the Irish diaspora. If you've got relatives in Canada, the US, Australia, etc, then there's a certain appeal to moving nearer to them when you retire.
(And if anybody wishes to accuse me of anti-Irish bigotry, may I point out that the same sort of thing applied to the UK, post World War 2? Half of my bloody relatives moved to Canada, with the odd sprinkling in Australia, and one particularly annoying git called Peter (yes, another one!) taking up a university post in Boulder.)
The Germans probably want to move to Turkey, on the grounds that all the Turks have moved down the street where they currently live. The English, as usual, are incompetent dreamers, although their retirement aspirations hardly square with their hatred for the EU. I admit that I'm confused by the Danes. I suspect they're addicted to cream cakes and are too bloody fat to move. (Have you ever seen Copenhagen on a weekend bakery rush?)
William's comment that Ireland is "a bit cold for old people" is, well, Irish. It isn't all that cold (certainly less cold than Manchester, for example), and I've never noticed young Irish people complaining that it's not cold enough. I must be visiting the wrong bits of Dublin.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-05 10:31 pm (UTC)With Ireland, despite its recent boom in Eastern European immigration, I doubt that this is much of a factor.
I also doubted the "it's cold" argument. Sure the Norwegians like Italy and the Germans love Spain or Italy, and the English love France or Spain, and you don't see many people planning to move North for retirement, but Ireland is mainly wet rather than cold -- I think that it gets far less snow than, say, Yorkshire. And although you get less rain as you head south, you don't get none.
No, there are more matters at play here. It merits further research, the whole darn thing, not just the Ireland bit.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 09:51 pm (UTC)It's no secret that I loathe this revolting underpowered slimy feeble useless excuse for a country. I'm probably stuck with it. If I had a choice?
Northern California. Damn place was a bit of a surprise for me. Not so much for the weather (wonderful); more for that waking-up-in-the-morning-feeling-I'm-home bit. I even get that when flying in to SFO. Oh, Lord, let me die two hundred yards outside SFO, facing the pitiful little sierras through a nasty brown CO2 haze. I will die with a smile on my backside.
Failing that, Stockholm. Specifically, Alvik. God-damn beautiful, from morning til night, and within a 15 minute tunnelbana from the most beautiful people in the world and the best and nicest and most polite bars and restaurants (go for the ones on Drottningsgatan. Go for the holes in the wall or the ethnics). Continual happiness doesn't get any better for a manic depressive.
I'll also take the Charentes-Maritime Departement, which (having sold the shack) I miss. Absolutely gorgeous; mostly peasant; possibly the best food in France; if you need a town, there's the Roman town of Saintes and the echt-bourgeouis town of St Jean d'Angely. Drive up an hour, and there's Rochefort. Damn place is marvellous, and wonderfully free of idiots with knotted hankies on their heads asking for the nearest M&S. Did I mention the three months of music festivals and such? That too.
Spain, Portugal, Italy? Pfui.
There are some nice deserted islands in France Oceanique, but I feel I owe it to the world to stay in contact.