Gabba Gabba We Accept You, We Accept You One Of Us

Are you one of us? Were you there in the '70s when Glam rocked, disco danced and punk rebelled? Three great musical traditions in one short decade.

Someone I follow on Twitter had a fifty-something birthday today, Older Than Elvis, and she wasn't happy. She started me thinking though, and I realised that every now and then I still think that people who are 50 are old and then I remember that I'm 51 and I don't consider myself old at all. One rule for me and one rule for everyone else.

I'm still seeing and doing new things, experiencing new things (hey, I baked cakes for the first time two weeks ago!). I haven't settled into the kind of routine I saw my parents enter and, presumably, every generation before them. I'm not old, but I'm older. I still think in terms of 'when I grow up' (and only sometimes I'm joking), when I settle down, when I buy the cottage in the country or by the sea... and it'll probably never happen.

I'm deeply proud of some of my heroes. I was browsing through some old blog posts to find something about the Blood Red Shoes and found my post about Siouxsie playing at Shepherds Bush four years back and noted then that I said I was proud of her. It's an odd thing to say, that I'm proud of someone I don't actually know, but I am. Those old punks are still doing things. The onus is on us to still be worthy of them.

One song that always gets me going is 'Quickstep' by The Adverts from their 'Crossing The Red See With The Adverts' album that includes the line, 'Pretty soon you're gonna see what punks can do...'. And we all did - you changed music, you changed culture, you changed me.



Young people are beautiful, all of them. And so are older people. We are all beautiful. Look into my eyes and guess what wonders they've seen, Look at my feet and wonder which paths they've wandered. Have you seen what I've seen? Have you done what I've done? Have you sat in a theatre with tears running down your cheeks with emotion or pogoed all the energy out of you to ear-splitting music?

Yasmin Limbert tweeted last week asking about things to do before you're 50. I replied seeing the orange/pink dawn over the Ganges at Varanasi. I could have added wandering down jasmine-lined country lanes in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka. Or danced with ghosts at Karnak? Or be taught to use chopsticks by an old Japanese couple in a restaurant in a little town outside Siem Reap in Cambodia. Or be shown how to see the rabbit in the moon in ruined temples at Kandy? I could add lots of things. I've seen wonders.

I wouldn't have seen those wonders - or appreciated them - if I was 20 or 30. Wisdom may not come with age, but experience certainly does. So does death, sadly.

I was strangely affected by the death of Poly Styrene last year, one of the great heroes of my youth and a hero of my older age by releasing 'Generation Indigo' last year. Poly came back to us in a flash of glory and then left to join Krishna. I never met Poly and I wish I had.

I also never met The Ramones but I saw them play back in the day. The founding Ramones all sadly died, but Tommy Ramone is still going and I had the joy of meeting him and shaking his hand when he supported Buffy Sainte-Marie in New York a few years ago. I *had* to go up to him and say I enjoyed his set as Uncle Monk, I just *had* to.

For me, the real punks were always just being themselves, not what anyone else thought they should be. And that's a key message for all of us. Don't be homogenised, don't be the same as everyone else. Walk your own road and be you. You might not be terribly radical but that doesn't matter. I always wear mis-matched socks as a choice. I'd rather not wear socks at all, but the weather doesn't always allow that. I have glitter in my bureau to comb into my beard when needed. I can see ballet one night and raucous punk the next night. That's all part of me.

Be you. Are you one of us?