I Took A Stroll With My Fame Down Memory Lane

(I never did find my way back)

Recently I went to JB HiFi. Like the uber-hippatitis sufferer I am, I purchased some great stuff, like a CD of Nick Drake rareties, unreleased Black Grape singles (Japanese import only) and...

OKAY, OKAY, I ADMIT IT! I bought the Take That Collection DVD!

And I must say, watching it was bloody well marvellous. Such fun memories of adolescence. Such as it was - teenage girls always have infatuations with male pop stars who look like teenage girls. Anyway, their 1995 concert in Sydney was one of the highlights of my young life to that stage. Wathcing the video for Never Forget actually made me feel a bit teary this week - I was one of those screaming girls, and I would give anything to go back to those days for even a few moments, just to feel that hope and energy again. I'm not looking back at my teens through rose coloured glasses - most of my life was actually pretty damn unhappy, but I'll get to that a bit later on. Take That was an escape from my problems - pure fun. I was actually very upset when the band broke up a few months later.

However, I'm slightly bemused at the information that they're reuniting this year for a concert tour. I doubt very much that the guys have found much of a new audience - they're now all in their mid to late thirties - so who is going to pay to see their shows? I know - those same girls who used to go to their concerts in the 1990s - except now we're all nearing thirty. I can imagine that, apart from a few women who manage to drag timid boyfriends along, the audience will be full of women like myself who are reliving their febrile adolescent fantasies. Once, you couldn't hear the songs at a Take That concert over the screaming; now, you won't be able to hear over the sound of ominously ticking body clocks. Not to mention the guys. What a sight they are nowadays. And I hardly think that the high energy dance routines can be managed by men in their prostate-check years. Still, to be honest, if they come to Australia I will probably go see them. Though I won't be flinging lacy little panties onto the stage - rather something alot more supportive.

If you've just read all that and are shaking your head and thinking "That doesn't sound like Nico...I thought she was massively into grunge in her youth?", then you're right. Take That was, as I've said, about having fun with my friends. It was about the image. It certainly wasn't the music I listened to at home. No, then I was the desperatley unhappy teenager, who played noughts and crosses on my wrist with a razor blade whilst listening to Soundgarden's Blow Up The Outside World over and over and over again. At lease if you had to be a miserable teenager in the 1990s, the music was alot better. Planet Rock Evolution's show last Sunday was a history of alternative rock in the 90's. It was a bit weird hearing all those songs...as if you could close your eyes, drift back and open them in a world without terror alerts, without George W. Bush, without an all-powerful John Howard (also without DVDs, iPods, text messaging...I never watched a DVD in my life until I was 21, or sent an SMS until I was 23) and without, if you're my age, life insurance, a superannuation scheme, saving the deposit for a mortgage, a career; without laugh lines and body-sculpting underwear and eye cream (and a receding hair line if you're a guy)...Don't look back in anger, I heard you say.

At any rate, I've decided that 2006 is late enough; this year for my birthday, I'm going to have a big 1990s theme party. The guys in coloured pants and those yellow boots, the girls in slip dresses over white t-shirts (well, no, not least because my birthday is in the depths of winter). But all 90s music, and I'll see if I can get some Sub Zeros (or some real, 1990s ecstasy...hmn, maybe not). But who knows? Maybe for party games, we'll even re-enact the Clinton impeachment. Just as long as I don't have to be Ken Starr...

4 comments