Curiosities about the passage of time ... interesting discussion in the staff room!

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

Colleagues and I were chatting about Murder on the Dancefloor being No 2 in the charts following the film Saltburn (that I haven't seen) and remarking how shocked we were that it was 22 years ago that it was No 2 for the first time. I remember it like it was yesterday, I was a student and I liked the song then and I still do now.

One of our team is considering retirement this year, she is 66 in the summer and can get her state pension! She remembers being at the youth club in the 1970s and Rock around the Clock/Bill Haley being in the charts, and the re-release of that being actually newer than MOTDF is now (I think there were 19 years' difference). Yet she said it seemed like it was from another world, which of course it was, and it was history to her. It is to me, now.

It got us thinking about how time passes and how distorted our views are. I wondered why this was. I saw Sophie Ellis Bextor live last year, I've lived through her career and songs, I'm a similar age, her music is still current and fresh and it's part of our culture through the Kitchen Disco. Yet Bill Haley isn't, and wasn't for my 66 year old colleague either. Bill Haley seemed ancient to her then but a quick look on Google revealed he was 4 years older than SEB!

I'd love to see what you think about this weird distortion of time!

A packed club in 2023 dancing to '50s rock'n'roll - it's never gone away! ...
https://youtube.com/shorts/tNW2tYdpNrw?si=HiJcmtIhJido1j1V

As you get older time goes faster. In November it was the 10th anniversary of my Mum's death. Those 10 years have spun by in the blink of an eye.

Love the Beach Boys! I think I developed a love for a lot of 60’s bands based on what my parents listened to (and could sing along to a lot of 50’s stuff too).

That is partly why it felt great to me that in the 90s when I was at university there was such a massive resurgence of guitar based bands, often with a very 60s retro vibe to them. It totally cemented that type of music in my head (and in spite of little forays into other genres i guess it has been stuck there ever since).

Me and my friend alway muse over a similar thing. We were born 2 days apart in 1973 and can't believe that the war only ended 28 years before our birth so in '73 there would have been many people still alive who lived through the war and people as young as 45 who had actually fought in the war... Quite mind blowing really
but nobody really talked about the war back in the '70s as I remember. Maybe it was a bit too fresh in living memory.

Rick Around The Clock wouldn't have been played in a club in the 70s. It would've been Bowie, Queen, TRex, Mud, Showaddywaddy, etc etc.

You’re wrong. As someone who was in clubs then, late 70s anyway, there would always be a section where they’d play some fifties rock and roll along with some other old stuff See also The Twist, The Locomotion and for good measure a bit of Glenn Miller. It might have been in an ironic fashion but it happened.

I'm almost closer in age to the death of Queen Victoria than I am now, if that makes sense! i.e. born in early 60s
It blows my mind that I met my two best mates at university 42 years ago😮

I listen to the 90s chart show on Absolute radio on Sunday afternoons. I like to see how many songs I can sing along to while cooking dinner! Maria by Blondie can on and the little fact about it was that there had been 19 years between their previous release and Maria. 25 years has passed since Maria was released in 1999!

Time seems to be speeding up the older I get.

I find it weird that the 1900s are closer to the 1960s than the 1960s are to now.. how can that be? (taking the year 1900 to the year 1960)

It was played on the radio though, and I'd imagine even if not in sufficient quantity, it would be on the Sunday chart rundown and Top of the Pops, so it would stand out enough to provoke discussion. I just checked the Official Charts and it got to No 12. Who on earth would be buying it? Maybe 40-somethings reliving their youth!

Rock Around the Clock was re-released in 1974, for all you doubters who think it wouldn't have been playing in a 1970s disco!

That was the impetus for the post in the first place - took a while to get replies but I'm really enjoying the discussion. @Pocketfullofdogtreats Are you Rickrolling? 😻

DH and I were listening to Radio 2 the other day when they played Eminem's Lose Yourself. In our heads Radio 2 is still meant to be for older songs and it also feels like Lose Yourself is "newer" Eminem music to us. But a friend did point out that that song is 22 years old this year so as others have said, no different to the 70s revival we had in the 90s when that felt like really old music to us.

I was born 18 years after the end of the war. As a child it seemed like really ancient history, even though my parents had lived through it. 18 years ago from now seems like the blink of an eye!

In 1976 there was a huge march through London of people demanding the BBC play more old rock'n'roll.

No, that's a bit modern for me :). I'm a Hi Ho Silver Lining girl.

I would've been 15 then and a mad David Cassidy and Bay City Rollers fan. I have absolutely no memory of that being re-released then, and it would've seemed like awfully old hat and seriously uncool!

I love this thread. @Bbq1 I was born in the early 70s too - the war was the same distance away then as Blair's election victory now. I find that so incredible.

I do remember quite a lot of references to it though, there were sites that hadn't been bombed, pre-fab houses and dinner ladies who had been evacuated. I grew up in London

The one that gets me personally is that if I listen to kerrang or any rock station, I hear lots of songs that came out when I was a teenager - late 90s in to 2000s. But those are the same songs we were in to at the time, they weren’t playing 20-30 year old songs then!

I do like the closer time spiral image.

Also I introduced my mum to Call the Midwife recently, she was born in the 50s when the first series is set. She couldn’t believe how old everything seemed! Found it very hard to see that as being within her lifetime.

If you're 20, 5 years is a quarter of your life. By the time you get to 5 it's a mere 10th of your life.
What did you expect?

That's such an interesting point. I remember in the 80s my Gran would tell stories about WWII and they felt like another age to me. But to her it was like the 80s are to me now. Wow!

This time scale occurred to me the other day. Scared the crap out of me.

I clearly remember acts on TOTP in the 70s like Showaddywaddy, Darts and others that were influenced by rock n roll, and a few older teens and 'uncles' that still wore quite 'Teddy Boy' looks. Also my friend's parents bought him the re-release of Rock Around The Clock and we used to play it and jive around.

'Grease' was the big box office movie of 1978/9 and brought back a wave of 1950s nostalgia.

18 year old DD likes a lot of 80s/90s music (so do her friends) and they'll often go and watch gigs by the original artists. While I liked 60s music at her age, it would never even have occurred to me that members of the e.g. Moody Blues, Manfred Mann might still be working. In my mind, they all just vanished in a puff of smoke on NYE 1969 .

@cakeorwine At school I read a book called Ferney and a follow up which I can't recall the title of. Unusual book but the premise was that two people are constantly reincarnated over centuries, and come together in different lifetimes in different guises. The character Ferney says "History's much shorter than people think." A mere five lifetimes separate Henry VIII's era from his.

@Ariela What did I expect? A discussion. That's what this place is about, is it not?