On saying goodbye to my inner hipster
It’s hard to be a hipster in Leicester. The charity shops only sell shellsuits and nobody here has ever heard of any decent music from any era in the whole of human history so you can’t even tell them you were into The Shins way before they sold out. Now that I’m old and jaded and TWENTY FUCKING EIGHT YEARS OLD (and doing a music industry uni module), I can occasionally hold a candle to my hipster days by sneering at a teenager who thinks they’re the first person in the world to discover Nina Simone. Every so often I tell them about the time I played spoons for Mumford & Sons in a jazz club and they look at me in the same way they do when I say I’m going to get a job with Haus of Gaga after graduation.
It’s finally happened. I am too old to be a hipster.
I’ve made my peace with that. The last thing I want is to become like the indie Tim Westwood, bouncing round student nights on shit pills, trying to pull guitarists well into my 50s. While everyone else at uni is talking about illegal downloading like it’s the end of civilisation (and then going home to torrent this awesome new singer they’ve heard of; Nina Simone), I’ve been writing self-important stream-of-consciousness GOLD about Theodor Adorno and the death of the subculture. I’m a GROWN-UP now, innit.
But, with that in mind, I’ve been coming across some fucking stunning music recently. Music that, if this was 2007, I’d have already got bored of, decried the ‘crass unapologetic commercialism’ of, and moved on. The 2007 me would’ve seen a band’s appearance on the BBC’s ‘Sound Of’ list as a sign I should stop dropping them into conversation with immediate effect, but now I’m more excited about the Friends album than anything for ages. I love love love love love them and am totally gay for Samantha Urbani.
Urbani. AS IF that’s her real name.
And then there’s Django Django which I posted something by a day or two ago. The 2007 me would’ve deplored them for ripping off the little known sample-heavy Glasgow three-piece Down The Tiny Steps, but today I’m trying to get DtTS’s principle songwriter to reform the band and support Django Django on a fucking STADIUM TOUR. I’m so open-minded and mature.
