Never been Hip

I’m writing this while listening to Takin Off by Herbie Hancock – on vinyl. I’ve only been buying vinyl since the end of last year. I spent a few months on a temporary promotion, and when it finished, my team of hip twentysomethings bought me The Queen is Dead. I took this as a massive compliment – it beats socks by a whisker – although with hindsight it might have been a way to keep the old bloke happy while they got on with getting to know their new manager. Whatever the reason, I had to buy a record player, which in turn lead to me buying a lot of vinyl.

Buying vinyl has given me the opportunity to wind up fellow fortysomethings who still listen to CDs: I mean, how old hat can you get? A medium that has now been replaced twice (first by downloads and now by vinyl). I am old enough to remember when CDswere invented and for a while they seemed like an unimaginable luxury that only friends with affluent parents could afford, while I was reduced to listening to illegal copies on cassette. I’ve now got hundreds of CDs, sitting in a disorganised pile in a cupboard. I’ve got hundreds of cassettes too, sitting in several even more disorganised piles in the drawers of a sideboard. These drawers could easily be used for storing something more useful, but I probably won’t get rid of the cassettes until I move house (which isn’t on the cards at the moment).

Cassettes are also making a comeback, according to the BBC website. I don’t know how I feel about all of this. When I was young, men in their forties seemed to be set in their ways, scared of anything new, and happy to carry on doing what they’d been doing since the 1950s. People my age seem to find it easier to keep up with things – a Twitter account, a smartphone, a blog, what’s the big deal? – we aren’t scared of anything new because we’re a generation bought up on change; but just as we’re getting complacent, someone comes along and points out that we also don’t need to be scared of anything new because it isn’t new at all.

So, this morning I sat down after breakfast and listened to a moment’s crackle, before the sound of ‘Watermelon Man’ came out of the speakers, and for a few minutes I feel what it would have been like to be cool in 1962. I wasn’t born in 1962, and I’ve never been cool.