Those Were the Days That Were … or Were They?

Almost into the fourth month of the year already and it feels like a good time to check in and update my blog. So far in ‘26 I’ve been performing live music with our 80s versus 90s band most weekends which has had me feeling all nostalgic. Shoulder pads so wide they’re in two different postcodes, weaponised back-combed fringes covered in enough hairspray to poke a whole back in the ozone layer and recording songs from the top 40 on a Sunday. Answering an actual ringing telephone attached to a wall in a posh voice “Bedlington 824126 hello?” and sometimes even holding a real conversation. Those were the days, eh? Looking back, the 80s and 90s were a time of innocence, full of possibilities. Mind you, in the 80s and 90s the grown ups used to talk about the 1950s & 60s with dewey eyes so we could just be copying a familiar pattern of viewing past times more favourably than the present (Past Times! Wasn’t that a shop in town at one point??). Could it be that the 80s and 90s were literally worse than the 50s and 60s and things have continued to deteriorate through the 2010s & 20s or is there something about the way our adult brains work that makes us look back through rose tinted specs, while our here and now specs only show up the crap?

In the 80s, adults would reminisce about how kids were more respectful, neighbours would look out for each other, you could leave your door unlocked and how great the music was in the 50s and 60s. Ok so the 1950s saw the birth of rock and roll and pop music; the 60s UK scene exploded with The Stones, The Beatles and Dusty Springfield, artists whose music still sounds amazing. By the same token, though, there was stuff that would make your ears bleed; the 60s also brought us I’m Henry the VIII I Am by Herman’s Hermits and Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary whose eponymous dragon “lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee”.  WTF?? Let’s not even stop to think about the dubious DJs who introduced us to these atrocious tunes. On the topic of home security, I’m no historian but no wonder leaving the door unlocked was the norm for a lot of ordinary people who had so little material wealth that there wasn’t much of value in their house to half inch. You can’t tell me that households further up the food chain happily left their doors unlocked if their homes were ever left unoccupied or unstaffed. Work patterns would have been quite different in the 50s and 60s too, with fewer latchkey kids needing to come home to a safe and secure house. The problem with neighbours looking out for each other is that everyone knows (or thinks they know)  your business whether you want them to or not. There would have been plenty of opinions loudly shared by certain types of neighbour, if an opportunity arose to look down on others - a pregnancy out of wedlock, perhaps. A debt collector. We’ve all known a few Hilda Ogdens and Mrs Mangels in our time. The notion that kids and people generally were more respectful is an interesting one and on this point I find myself nodding agreement. Thinking about my own experiences - in cinemas, theatres, on public transport and shops - I can conjure up multiple recent examples where I’ve tutted (internally mainly) or given the side eye and thought “have a bit of decorum/consideration for others, will you?”. Feet up on seats, phones blasting loudly, vape clouds, talking through a film. This is really making me sound like an old git! Well if the flat cap fits … mind, there’s a possibility that in the 80s/90s I was one of the folk being anti-social but I’ll leave that for you to decide. All in all I’m thinking that there’s definitely some fact filtering going on.

Watching “Not the Nine O’Clock News” clips on a well-known platform recently, a lot of the themes of the 80s comedy sketch show feel relevant to now. Immigration, civil unrest, anti-social behaviour and of course “fake news”. I’ve thought of their Ayatollah Song more than once this past month with the lyrics “even in these World war three times..” being strangely prescient and a cameo from Billy Connolly as Ayatollah Khomeini. The immigration speech from the series includes the following: “The Conservatives are back …we are mostly concerned with two main issues. Firstly, immigration. Now, people really do get this party wrong on this issue every time, don't they? We don't think immigrants are animals, for god's sake! I know a lot of immigrants personally and they're perfectly nice people…honestly, some of them can do some jobs almost as well as white people... and we acknowledge this…Conservatives understand these problems, you see.” You might spot some parallels to a particular brand of politicians currently making a right nuisance of themselves. Funnily enough there was a popular tv show in the 60s called That Was The Week That Was, featuring - you guessed it - satirical sketches and songs commenting on topical news items. The opening song in 1963 made reference to a budget in which tax on homemade beer and gambling were cut and included the lyrics :-

“That was the week that was

Get out and grow your hops

All Maudling's budget's done

Is turn a nation of shopkeepers into a nation of boozing shops...

There's no tax on gambling, no further controls, you're laughing my friend if you're buying a Rolls

He's aimed the whole thing at the Orpington man, the Tories will hold on 'til '64 if they can

But that's way ahead, so go on, have a ball, especially if you're one of the three million seven hundred and eighty thousand... who pay no tax at all!”

And wouldn’t you know it, a new show’s just started in the U.K. Saturday Night Live, featuring satirical sending up of some of the more extreme and ludicrous things going on in politics, celebrity culture and the world in general. This all tells us that while lots of things have changed, plenty has stayed the same.

There’s no doubt that the 2020’s feels like the worst of times. The Doomsday clock is the closest it’s ever been to midnight. We’ve got The Right versus The Left. The Manosphere versus women. People not on boats versus people on boats. All the billionaires planning to colonise the moon or shoot off into space somewhere while the rest of us burn. And the price they charge for a Freddo these days!! The media constantly fills 24 hour rolling news with enough divisive bile to convince us that there are only two choices in elections one of which is terrible while the other is just plain awful. Boiling things down to binary categories, black/white, rich/poor, winners/losers, woke/non-woke, pitting them against each other. Is it worse than before? Who knows. Maybe we just had more hope back then as we hadn’t been on the rollercoaster enough times to make us want to shout “let me off!” and have a nice nanna nap.

Still though I prefer to spend time on the more upbeat distractions, whichever decade it relates to. Hair crimping, beehives, dancing round a handbag to old skool tunes, ripped jeans, Polaroids/selfies with pals, glowsticks, Acciiiiiddd!!, SMTV, Swap Shop, blue eyeliner, Jägerbombs, Baby Guinness, CB radio, that’s a big 10-4, crispy pancakes, Vienetta, Choose Life T-shirts, Smash Hits!! Which takes me back to our band. If we can help people forget the darker bits of life for a few hours on a weekend with some classic bangers and get all nostalgic then that’s time and energy well spent. I hope to see lots of you at one of our upcoming gigs but if you can’t make it, I recommend watching some old Top of the Pops online, or spinning some vinyl. Grab yourself a snakebite or a glass of Kiora (we all adore a Kiora!) and enjoy any of the nicer bits you choose to remember from your youth. Time to Rave On, Bend Me, Shake Me, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Step On and if it all gets too much you better Shake It Off, Shake It Off.