My Top 90 Mid-Life Crisis Songs #8: 84 is the new 64

If ever there was a song that got old before its time, it's When I'm 64 by The Beatles.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?

I mean, come on - I know plenty of 64 year olds (my sister turns that age in January, for one... and she still acts younger than me... always has!) and frankly, Macca's chirpy thumbs-aloft anthem to "old age" is an insult to every one of them! And while we're on the subject, Paul - who has grandchildren called Vera, Chuck & Dave?

Fortunately, 25 years after Sgt. Pepper (in 1992... a further 25 years ago from today), Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway gave the song-title a much-needed overhaul... with characteristic bite.

8. The Beautiful South - When I'm 84

No dribbling or incontinence
No longing for the old sixpence
Just smoking weed till age makes sense

When I'm 74
I'll dream on 

No smoking pipes and drinking bitter
No eyeing up the baby sitter
I'll trip up kids and I'll drop my litter!

When I'm 84
I'll dream on

Oh, and while we're on the subject, my mum is one year away from 90. She told me a few weeks ago that "89 is much harder than 88". So that's something to look forward to...

You're in your nineties, Arthur
Be careful with your back
Exercise your muscles
I'd rather Jack!

That last line always makes me cheer. Considering how much (as previously discussed here) I always hated The Reynolds Girls...

My Top 90 Mid-Life Crisis Songs #4: I Wasn't A Teenage Anarchist

Apparently, when you hit your teenage years, you're supposed to rebel against your parents and the establishment, severing the ties that bind you to your childhood and allowing you to fly free and conquer the world as you hit adulthood.

I reckon I got that all ass-backwards. As I've hinted at in previous posts, I didn't so much rebel against my parents and their generation as rebel against my peers. Every time they told me I should be listening to The Smiths, I cranked up The Beach Boys. When Frankie said Relax, in my house he said Regrets... I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. When 17 year old Aisling Reynolds (and her older sister Linda) told the world they'd rather Jack... 17 year old Rol screamed back that he'd much rather Fleetwood Mac, thank you very much. (I changed my mind completely on The Smiths and partly on Frankie, but I still find that Reynolds Girls song once of the most offensive things ever committed to vinyl).

It wasn't just in music that I rebelled against being a teenager. I refused to touch a drop of alcohol... until I was in my early 20s, and the slope was very slippery after that. I never smoked behind the bike sheds. (I would have gone with a girl behind the bike sheds, but what girl would want a teenage pensioner?) Drugs? Yeah, right. Zammo never had to warn me off those. By the time I reached Sixth Form, my friends were calling me Victor Meldrew. My friends! And part of me relished it.

Looking back, I must have seemed a complete dick to a lot of my peers. And I probably was. But I had one thing in common with a lot of teenagers: I wanted to be different. Not from my parents though, because they were different from everybody else's parents anyway. They were ten, fifteen years older than most other mums and dads I met. They came from the Land Before Rock 'n' Roll. I never wanted to disrespect them or hurt them in any way, and though we clashed occasionally, mostly my home life was harmonious. But this restricted me when I hit my 20s and caused me to make all kinds of stupid mistakes then that I should have made when I was 16. It would probably have been better for me if I had been a teenage anarchist...

4. Against Me! - I Was A Teenage Anarchist

Against Me! are a very interesting band, not least because their lead singer changed genders halfway through their career. A former colleague of mind did the same and I admire her so much for the bravery of that decision. Imagine living most of your life in the wrong body, and then having the guts to do something about it. Makes my own midlife crisis pale into insignificance...

The Top Ten Songs I Hated When I Was A Kid #5

I've not done one of these for a while, mainly because I've been struggling to think of any more songs I hated back when I was a kid but don't mind now. I can think of plenty I hated then and still hate now - I'd Rather Jack (Than Fleetwood Mac) by The Reynolds Girls always comes to mind, even though I really should have got over that by now. I mean, the Mac obviously had the last laugh on that one, didn't they? I'm sure there are other contenders I haven't thought of yet, and I'll get to those when I think of them, but here's one I couldn't possibly hate now as much as when it came out... I may even have developed a soft spot for it over the years.

5. Vanilla Ice - Ice, Ice Baby

All right, stop: collaborate and listen! My main reason for hating Ice, Ice Baby is plain to hear. The sample. Under Pressure. Queen AND Bowie. I mean, that's friggin' sacred, man! (Or it was when I was 18.) You don't mess with Queen AND Bowie! Even worse, old Robert Van Winkle (you can't make this stuff up) didn't even pay them for the sample at first and even tried to claim it WASN'T a sample and that he'd added an extra note (he didn't) which changed the bassline (it didn't) enough to avoid plagiarism (it didn't). To be fair, he later changed his mind on that, claimed his original quote was a joke, and paid up. (I suspect Queen AND David Bowie's lawyers might have had something to do with that.)

For a few precious weeks towards the end of 1990, nothing could stop Vanilla Ice. During that time, I hated this record. It put me off rap music (which I'd been tentatively dipping my toe into through the likes of Run DMC and the Beastie Boys) for a long time. Ironically, it'd take another white rapper - Eminem - to finally lure me back in, but that was almost a decade later.

Ice, Ice Baby was such a big, big hit that RVW wasn't ever going to be able to match it. As time went by, it became seen as a novelty record, leading the cool kids to turn against it in droves. In just over a decade, it went from being the first hip hop single to top the mainstream chart in America (and much of the rest of the world) to being voted fifth in a countdown of the 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped hating it... and it started making me smile. I'm not going to claim it's a great record: it's not. But it's stood the test of time better than a lot of music from 1990. And when Robert's big ice-skating comeback show - Vanilla Ice On Ice (I'm still not making it up) - was cancelled last year due to poor ticket sales, I felt genuinely bad for him. I guess he must have killed my brain like a poisonous mushroom...