Mike Lockey: Why music taste mellows with age

Oct 31 2009

AS well as nasal hair, age has brought a certain mellowness to my musical taste.

I’ve had my car radio doctored so the liquid quartz displays ‘Kerrang’ but plays ‘Smooth Radio’.

Apparently, there is a reason why middle-aged men are repelled by the sound of booming basses, thudding drums and screeching lead guitars: hellish sounds that they embraced in their long forgotten youth.

That reason is people take the mickey if you turn up at an AC/DC gig in slippers and a cardie.

I spent years thrusting my son’s bedroom door open and bellowing: “Turn that racket down.”

My father spent years thrusting my bedroom door open and bellowing: “Turn that racket down.”

His father, presumably, did the same.

In distant history, there was a Lockley bellowing: ‘‘Turn that lute down.” Of that I’m sure.

Whisper it, but last week I sheepishly bought a Roger Whittaker CD.

I like the way the man whistles, OK?

People standing in shopping queues clutching top-shelf men’s magazines have felt less embarrassed than I did as I waited to pay.

The young thing at the counter smirked.

The youths behind me with multi-piercing smirked and tittered.

I was so hot and flustered when I reached the till that I scanned the CD cover, handed it back to the sales girl and in a desperate attempt to retain some street-cred announced: “Actually, I wanted the acid-house mix.”