When you wake up feeling old

In between going through my random CDs I tend to listen to the radio when I am in the car. Before I bought my new car that pretty much just meant listening to NPR as I had been unable to find a radio station out here that caught my interest (and I just can’t deal with sports talk when most of the talk is about teams that I am totally indifferent about.) But since my new car has satellite radio I have been searching that for something interesting to listen to and I have found it in the grunge channel.

It is pretty much exactly what you would think it is. Songs from the alternative nation era played with no commercial interruptions. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, my beloved Belly, and for some reason a surprising amount of Sublime. Basically it is just like being in my college dorm room again except without all of the posters of half naked women on the walls. For the first couple of times that I listened to the station I felt that this was the greatest thing ever. I loved every song I heard and nothing makes going to work more enjoyable than doing it while listening to Rage Against the Machine. Except that this past week I have come to a rather horrible realization.

I am listening to an oldies station.

I know that sounds bizarre, especially if you are my age, but hear me out. When we listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit we are listening to a song that is 18 years old. Do you know what we would have been listening to if we played an 18 year old song in 1991? “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Or maybe if we were lucky Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock.” Either way that is what you would have been hearing on an oldies station at the time and now that is what I have become listening to my grunge station.

This isn’t just my usual rant about finding out that I am growing old. That is no longer a revelation and is now simply fact. High school was half a lifetime ago and no matter how many people try to become my friend via Facebook I have to admit that that portion of my life is meaningless to me now. I’m happy with my age, I’m ecstatic with where my life is at the moment and I feel that I am going to be one of those people who get better with age. No, my problem is with grunge becoming oldies.

Some music is meant to be eternally young. Punk rock is young. Its stepchild grunge is young. Frank Sinatra’s music was old even when he was young. I just don’t want to see grunge tied to nostalgia. I don’t want to see hip kids wearing flannel as some sort of ironic statement of detachment. I want to protect my memories and not have them turned into a format that will segue us into easy listening ten years down the line. It just doesn’t seem fair.