Are teenagers aliens...?

[Jassie]

I read this today in a couple of sittings and laughed out loud in parts and identified with quite a bit of it. It's also given me some ideas of how to approach my coming holiday in Scotland with my cousins and their thirteen year old 'goth' daughter and her friend. Don't get me wrong, we have a good relationship but I definately recognised some areas where I tend to go wrong when talking to her. I forget they only exist in the present and are mostly indifferent to the past and 'laid back' about the future.
When I come up against teenagers and their culture I can't help but examine it against how it was when I was that age - trying to understand where they are coming from sometimes leaves you more confused about them but clearer about some traits in yourself. I do think that despite not understanding some of what they do that I enjoy their company and even their moody silences (sometimes) with the relaxed feeling of having been there and done that, no matter what the current costumes and fixations are we've all been there.

I guess you can tell that I found something to identify with in the book which increased my enjoyment of it but I think I would have enjoyed the humour and its easy readability without that. I think I may have finally understood pyschadelia now too!
I'm definately passing it onto my cousins...thanks Tom... its good to know there are people out there who feel they act older years before their time besides myself.

Do we all rexamine what we raised up to god-like status in our teenage years only to tear it down when hormone levels descend to normal?

[Top Cat]

Gosh Jassie - you're a quick reader! Really glad you enjoyed it. One of the reasons you liked it seems to be the same one that has caused a few other people to slag it off. This is part of a customer review from amazon.co.uk:

"The supposed yawning chasm of a generation gap simply doesn't exist between the average 14 year old and the average 27 year old. It just doesn't ring true, the author getting wistfully nostalgic about Dinosaur Jr, Nirvana and all things 1992."

Perhaps some people might think I was looking back at my adolescence a little early, but it felt natural to me. This could have been because I consumed music so rampantly in my late teens and my early twenties that I reached a stage at the age of 27 that I might not have reached until, say, my late thirties, if I hadn't been a music writer and been lucky enough to get all the easy exposure and knowledge which is handed to you with that job. But I'm sure I would have been more relaxed by now and have had a bit of perspective on things, whatever the case. People change massively between 14 and 27; if they didn't, I'd still be wearing a Campri ski jacket, modelling a wet-look gel hairstyle and drinking Special Brew with someone called "Trouty" whose number one hobby was breaking wing mirrors off cars. I do think, though, that men in their late twenties (and older!) who are very precious and elitist about music might not like to be offered something from someone the same age that slightly ridicules the idea (affectionately!) of using rock, punk and indie as a badge of identity. It's strange: I currently write a column in the Observer called Lost Tribes Of Pop (also soon to be a book), which is essentially pop stereotypes, and I find that the most affectionate portraits I come up with are when I'm focussing on middle-aged pop fans and teens. Most of my portraits of people my age tend to be less flattering. I'll have to have a bit more of a think before I come up with some reasoning for that, but I do think men who are still clinging to the idea of being Johnny Rotten ten years and more after leaving school are an almost inexhaustible source of comic idiocy.

But, yes, I'm still confused about modern teens (albeit less frightened of them), and hanging out with Peter ultimately made me understand more about myself than him. Namely: that I was an idiot in my adolescence, but that I don't regret one minute of it!

[Jassie]

It was an enjoyable read, I think that's why it didn't take me too long.
I think when people go through a big change in their lives they examine their experiences and feelings about the past in relation to where they are going. When in the book you talk about your jaded feelings of the music industry and comparing that to how you felt about music earlier, struck a chord and seemed a natural thing to do. I don't think there is a minimum time when you can do this. Maybe some people feel that nostalgia should only be the province of the old, but I think we do it all the time; just the mid-life crisis seems to be a biggie for men.
I'm only a few years older but I am also at the tail end of thinking about my career and its direction so I'm currently going through a career change now that is completely opposite to what I've done previously. I saw some definate parallels with how you felt about music and the industry before and after working in it and my experience about working in the media. Like a reformed smoker hating smokers, I am the biggest cynic I know about television and the media.
I'm sure campri jackets and wet look gel will be back in, its only a matter of time, some bright spark will think it's a good idea like they did about ra-ra skirts and ponytails on the side of your head. Ah its good being older and cynical!

[Top Cat]

I'm only a few years older but I am also at the tail end of thinking about my career and its direction so I'm currently going through a career change now that is completely opposite to what I've done previously. I saw some definate parallels with how you felt about music and the industry before and after working in it and my experience about working in the media. Like a reformed smoker hating smokers, I am the biggest cynic I know about television and the media.

I definitely enjoy music more since I stopped writing about it full-time. If you work in music journalism, there's some unspoken rule that states you're not allowed to admit to being jaded, so most people just carry on doing it for far too long. I still write about music a little bit, but not in a remotely chasing-the-buzz kind of way. I'm thirty in a month, and I think that kind of thing should be left to people in their early twenties. Much as there are some v worthwhile rock historian-type writers in advancing years, there's nothing more embarrassing than reading some prat in his forties or fifties trying to get a handle on Eminem by equating him with an obscure Portugese poet. Not, I hope, that I would have got to that stage (for a start, I've never read any Portugese poetry, and probably never will), but I don't want to be remotely near it.