Accidentally Retro
It is a true thing that, any time you try to be cool, you definitely are not. I think we’ve all seen some version of a middle-aged person trying to be “down with the kids” and we die a little inside for them.
“Cool” is a thing that happens without effort. Or possibly by accident. Let me explain.
Recently we had a young person staying with us for a couple of days. They are all the things that “cool” currently is – creative and brainy with a dash of geek, and challenging of conventions.
As they looked around our house, their eyes lit up at the place we keep our music. “Ooh, CDs,” they said approvingly. “Very cool.”
I got the feeling they thought I had collected them – recently and lovingly - from vintage stores as a nod to earlier times. But in fact, these stacks of CDs have been sitting exactly where you can see them since the 1990s when I bought this house and moved them in. Some of them even date back to the eighties when CDs were The Next Big Thing. I know this because – ahem – that’s when I bought them.
But I wasn’t going to explain this. If there was a compliment coming my way for being ahead of the curve on vintage CD collecting, I was taking it. Besides, I was too busy inwardly noting that if you sit still long enough and hold onto the things you like, you will one day be accidentally retro.
I am thrilled the Compact Disc is making a comeback – artists like Beyoncé and Lorde are releasing new albums not just online, but also on CD and vinyl.
Handily, I still have a couple of CD players lying around near the CD stacks but those who had moved on – or weren’t there before – will find high end CD players are now relatively inexpensive. Or look! Here’s another use for the household’s PlayStation.
CDs might be less mobile than playing music from your phone, but the listening quality is terrific. Plus there are myriad reasons why something as ethereal as music should be made to exist, via packaging, in the tangible world.
Because for decades this is been how we’ve got to know each other – by running a finger and an eye across the spines of CDs and records (see also books) on someone’s shelves.
In the 1980s, a hopeful date would invite you over for Bolognese and Chianti and while they boiled the pasta, you did your research, checking out what they listened to and read before deciding whether to stay the night.
It didn’t even have to be about romance - this was also how we discovered new music in each other’s flats. Or how we picked what to play next – which was so much easier than choosing from every song in the universe on your phone.
Plus there was cover art, liner notes, lyric sheets – whole stories that went with the music and the artist. I don’t know if I would have fallen as hard for David Bowie in 1973 if I didn’t have that picture of him to stare at on the cover of Aladdin Sane.
Since our houseguest left, I’ve found another stash of CDs in the cupboard under the stairs. I am itching to go through them properly, to put them carefully in alphabetical order and then chronologically within artist, the same way I’ve arranged my books.
No, you’re right. I am definitely not cool.