I’ll probably make this Guardian article the basis of my next CNE IP posting, which has to be in by tomorrow morning, i.e. tonight.  The theme there will be Big Music finally accepting that downloading is here to stay.  What the article is about is making lots of ancient pop tracks which have long been unavailable in the CD shops available in the Great Jukebox in the Sky.  Big Music has in mind to get oldies into the downloading habit, and I should guess that they are particularly keen on cultivating a demographic that might not be so keen on or practiced at downloading illegally.

But what this posting, here and now, is about is the continuing impact upon the culture of the Baby Boom, i.e. me, us.  At every stage of the Baby Boom’s life, we have imposed the manner and style that is characteristic of that particular age group on the world around us.  When the Baby Boom was a teenager, it said that young people were It.  When the Baby Boom got its first crap job and could afford to buy its own clothes, it set the tone of the seventies with its idiot trousers and ties and shirts.  When the Baby Boom got its first decent job and could afford a car, it set the tone of the eighties with its loads of money and yuppie Ferrari driving.  Now that the Baby Boom is nearing sixty, politics is starting to have a distinctly grandma and granddad tone about it.

Consider this Respect stuff.  That sounds to me like a bunch of oldies going on about the rudeness of Young People These Days, but like so many oldies having no bloody idea about what actually do to about it, other than moan and shriek.  On Tuesday I was doing some of that on Samizdata myself, although me of course, I know what should be done.  Not like all those other idiots.  I am intrigued, thinking about it, that I began that piece by telling the world how old I am.

Culturally, we are now entering the “they don’t make blah blah blah like they used to” phase of popular culture.  This downloading of ancient pop will reinforce that trend.

As does Top of the Pops, which is now presented by people like Jeremy Clarkson, or that North Country bloke pretending to be old, in a wheel chair.  It’s about time they admitted the truth about Top of the Pops and had an audience of old people, like they do for the crown green bowling.  Because that’s what a lot of pop music is now, a pretence of youthfulness, a memory of youthfulness, done by young people for old people.  It is no more youth culture than getting your first job as a twenty-year-old cleaning up in an old people’s home is youth culture.  And no less, I suppose you could add.

The important thing to get about these trends is that they are never confined to the Baby Boom itself.  The Baby Boom sets the tone, but others eagerly collaborate.  When the Baby Boom was ripping universities to pieces and doing its pathetic bit to lose the Vietnam War, there were plenty of old geezers like E. P Thompson and Marshall McLuhan and Herbert Marcuse (on the right) wandering about flattering us and telling them us we were the greatest thing ever.

Now, when the Baby Boom wants Proper Pop Music Like They Used To Make It, the likes of Katie Melua are only too happy to oblige.  Such a nice young girl.  Not like most of them nowadays is she?  “Pop” music is now advertised in the Sunday Telegraph.

Or take my current favourite blogger Mark Holland, who bangs on about ancient movies.  He too can sniff the zeitgeist, and can sense that he may get an echo if he writes like a grandad.

Tony Blair is not a granddad, yet.  But he is a right old granddad in what he says.

The point is, if what you want to say or sing or rant about in the newspapers or on your blog chimes in with the current state of decrepitude of the Baby Boom, you need not be on the defensive.  You can say it, confident that the surrounding culture will back you up.

Not much is certain about life in 2025, but one thing is.  We Baby Boomers will be about eighty.  We’ll be dropping like flies of course, but many of us will still be sitting in the corner yelling gibberish, groaning along to Van Morrison on our iPods or whatever, or lying in state in hospitals, sucking up the Gross National Product and demanding vicious tax increases.  Not a pretty thought.

But by about 2050, the world will finally be rid of us.  And it will heave a huge sigh of relief.