25 Years

I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing a lot lately about getting old. I don’t think I am getting old, yet, but I’ve been writing about it. And here we go again.

We were watching Listed on MuchMoreMusic the other day, and they were doing the top 20 British artists of the last 25 years. (First off, that’s a sign that I’m getting old right there: I was watching MuchMoreMusic.) And the whole time I was thinking to myself, “Okay, who are they going to put in the top 10? You’ve got Led Zeppelin, my favourite band, but you’ve also got the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, and…”

At this point, you might be noticing a problem with my math: It’s 2007, so 25 years ago was 1982. All of the bands I was thinking of were from way before 1982. But it wasn’t until they got to the top 5 bands in their list that my mathematical error even occurred to me. And I know why: When I hear that something happened “25 years ago” it seems like it was a long time ago. When I think of music that came from 25 years ago, I’m used to thinking of the 60s or 70s, not the 80s. So it threw me for a loop that they were talking about bands from the last 25 years, and they were all bands I’d been hearing as I grew up, rather than bands I heard on the oldies stations.