nostalgia not what it used to be shock

I should have known when, a couple of years ago, there was a minor kerfuffle in the media about the thirtieth anniversary of punk - the features, the documentaries, the grizzled veterans, the ubiquity of Billy Bragg - that following hard on its heels would come the New Romantics. And here they are: a dramatisation of Boy George - the early years - on TV; the reformation (no, not that one) of Duran Duran (or is it Spandau Ballet? Or both?) - anyway, the reunion tours, the features, the documentaries, the ubiquity of some style guru or other. And so wearyingly on.

I have an interest to declare here, because I was a punk before you were a punk (perhaps: at least I was a punk after seeing the Stranglers play at the Doncaster Gaumont on June 16th 1977, a date that must have changed my life because I've remembered it for all this time). And after the stripped-down truth-seeking rawness of the best that punk had to offer, the mincing synthesisers (Ooh Vienna!), awful clothing, awful haircuts and vacuous partying of the New Romantics signalled less of a new dawn than a return to the proggish self-indulgence of the 70s. Plus ca change.

Other people's nostalgia is usually less attractive than your own, but my dislike of this latest outbreak is tempered by a chastening recollection. My generation, in its forties and fifties, in power in TV, in the newspapers and in politics, looks back fondly on its funny clothes, its hairstyles, the drugs it took and the music it listened to. What did my parents look back on in their flabby nostalgia for their own glory years? The austerity of the war and the struggle against Hitler.