As I was sitting down to type this column (something about how there needs to be better bus service between Portland and Biddeford) a set of lyrics popped into my head from a song played at every dance I ever went to.
       
        Save yourself, serve yourself.
        World serves its own needs
        Listen to your heart bleed
        Dummy with the rapture and the revered
            and the right, right.
        You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
            light.
        Feeling pretty psyched

    And with that, I realized once again that I am old. This year, that song turns 20 and when that song came out, I thought 20 years old was pretty old. Now that song is 20 and I am as old as that song plus the age I was when I thought 20 was pretty old, which was 14.
    What makes me feel old is not the fact that I’m quoting songs that haven’t been new for two decades– I know lyrics to songs that are 50 years old. What makes me feel old is  that I remember when that song was new on the radio. That and the fact that I was about to write a column about public transportation. Well, those two facts plus the fact that I often find myself thinking, “I don’t like the looks of those teenagers.”
    Suffice to say there are a lot of things that make me feel old, so let’s get back to my archaic musical taste. I once heard someone say that  when it comes to style and taste, everyone’s version of “cool” when they were a junior in college remains their definition of cool for the rest of their lives. This is the reason we have on the radio “oldies” stations and “classic rock” stations and “contemporary” rock stations and “alternative rock” stations.
    Each one of them represents each generation’s collective decision that they are too busy to try to keep up with the latest trends.
    It was all alternative at one point. White kids listening to Fats Domino sing about what happened up on Blueberry Hill was pretty alternative. Grace Slick singing about some kind of mushroom was pretty altenative and Michael Stipe singing about Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs was alternative. But tonight, there’s probably a wedding reception where some band will play all three of those songs. We trick ourselves with the delusion that it wasn’t us who changed. But in reality, at some point we all had to get up from our table at the soda fountain, take off our poodle skirts and put our money somewhere other than the jukebox and it is at that point that our musical taste begins to fossilize.
    It doesn’t all happen at once. We coast for a while as our favorite bands continue to put out albums and the radio still plays our favorite songs. It’s hard to recognize because it is happening to all of our friends at the same time, but imperceptibly yet inexeribly our musical tastes becomes dated.
    For me, that date is somewhere around 1994. It took me forever, but a few years ago, I downloaded all my cds onto a computer to put on my ipod. Hundreds of CDs and thousands of songs, virtually every  one more than 10 years old.
    Of the songs I do own that were produced in the last decade, the majority are by artists I already liked in 1994 who have managed to stay relevant. Maybe, maybe there are five albums by artists that did not have an album out during Bill Clinton’s first term.
    But to me it all sounds hip and fresh. To me, I’ve got a great music collection- Oasis? Oh yeah. Blur? Bingo. The Cure? Coming up. Violent Femmes? Fantastic! Beck? Odelay!
    I may not be cool or hip, not that I ever was, but I finally don’t feel like chasing after coolness or hipness. As I grow older I have become happier with who I am, which is much better than the otherway around.
    Every once in a while I resolve to update my collection- maybe pick up some of that Arcade Fire I saw on SNL, but if I actually do end up at the music store, more often than not I walk out with a new copy of a long lost and long loved album whistling that now-familiar tune, “Man, am I getting old.”