The way we were
If this blog had a theme song it would probably be "Teenage Winter" by the wonderful Saint Etienne. They've always been good at mining the emotional punch of supposedly trivial pop moments and artifacts ("five to three, playing a tape you made me" is my favourite couplet of theirs) and this conjures up a whole vanishing world in such simple things as the stock in a charity shop and a pub jukebox. The last verse in particular is as evocative as a Phillip Larkin poem like "Going, Going."
Mums with pushchairs outside Sainsbury's,
tears in their eyes.
They'll never buy a Gibb brothers record again.
Their old 45s gathering dust
with the birthday cards they couldn't face throwing away.
Download: Teenage Winter - Saint Etienne (mp3)
Buy: "Tales From Turnpike House" (album)
2 Comments:
I've never had explained the apparent British preoccupation with the name "Jackie" representing wild youth. There's the Scott Walker cover of the Brel song, of course, and the AbFab character - Pasty's sister - who was obviously named in honour of same. Just a coincidence?
I think it supposed to represent the magazine rather than wild youth. "Jackie" was a very, very popular magazine that virtually every teenybopper girl in the UK read for decades so it's a bit of a cultural touchstone in itself.
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