The following is a complaint letter/email I sent to Hornsea Freeport, a local retail conglomeration. Read and enjoy do!
Dear Sir/Madam
Last Saturday on the 13th day of July myself and my family (one wife, one son) took a trip and/or an excursion to your land of retail dreams (Hornsea’s free port). I am unsure as to the specific time that we were there due to the retail revelry I was in while walking from shop to shop, browsing the dizzying array of wares on offer! I really must congratulate you on this capitalist enterprise, it’s the retail hub of east Yorkshire, a bargain to be had at every corner!
As we are planning a return trip to Italy in September my family and I were looking to get some new travel wears (new luggage, a handbag, mini travel pottles, hand fan, kilt and Smaptons) most of which we found and at a bargain price to boot! Speaking of boots, I returned a pair or walking boots to the Regatta shop this day and the manager there couldn’t have been more helpful, a quick and cheery exchange was made without fuss or a plum. Which is quite the opposite experience I had when once returning an item to the Mountain Warehouse, it was a very unpleasant experience with their manager, very unpleasant!
By and by we came to the section of the Freeport I dread! The lower area where the book shop and ‘youth’ clothes shop used to be (I’m glad this clothes shop has gone, I was always terrified I’d be mugged in or near there). Now just to tell you a little about me, I don’t like to read, the written word will often fill me with anger. I prefer a picture book. So usually when my wife goes to the book shop I will wait outside and have a delicious ice cream from Thornon’s. Which is exactly what I did on this occasion.
So with one mint choc chip ice cream I alighted on one of the many convenient benches just outside the book shop. That’s when it happened, that’s when everything changed. Usually the music piped throughout the Freeport has been the Beatles or similar, while not my particular fovorate, these have always been tolerable (I’m a blues my myself). But now, for some unknown reason, there was modern kiddy pop being forcibly squeezed through the speaker and reluctantly into my jaded old man ear pouch!
As I sat there basking in the summer sun, consuming the sweet cool iced minty cream, I was forced to listen to this ‘popular’ music. And try as hard as I did, I couldn’t not hear it. And that dear Sir or Madam is why I am writing to you, to complain about enforced listening of dross music. And music with a very sinister undertone. As I sat there, I couldn’t help hear every single word of this song, which I suppose is a testament to the production of the album, the lyrics were very clear.
At first I thought it was a song from a children’s televisual program, it sounded so simplistic and child like, I thought it might have been the theme tune to some kinds of child’s urban youth centre, like a modern day Bikers Grove theme tune, it was that kinds of naff, simplistic, soulless, computerized nonsense that seems prevalent these days. But I was clearly mistaken it was a song, from the hit parade!
I have done a bit of inter super highway web research into the song and found the lyrics to make double sure I heard correctly! I did! This song is called ‘Live while were young’ by the young boy band ‘One Direction’. As a gentleman in his 80’s I feel that the way they portray ‘living while young’ to be deeply offensive. I’ve done more living in my 60’s than I imagine these whelps have done in the 15 years they’ve been alive, if they’re even 15 they look like children to me.
On further listening to this pop vomit this lyrics literally beggared my belief. Let me take you through a few of the more baffling word nuggets and see if together we can reach some further understand of the human condition.
Firstly as far as I can tell this group consists of 5 young boys, all singing this song to one woman/girl, which going by the hedonistic sub text in this song speaks volumes about what their plans are with this poor young girl.
The first verse is Liam telling the young lady to come out of her window so they can have a celebration, though the specifics of this celebration is not specified, maybe he’s finished the last Peter and Jane book and had moved up to the next level of reading, or he went a day without going in his nappy, I don’t know. This verse speaks to me of the classic Romeo and Juliet, where young Romeo would ask Juliet to let down her hair so he could climb into her window and have his wicked way with her. It’s a classic tale so I shall forgive them for plundering these literary depths.
Then Zayn (Zayn!?) chips in with telling her that they will be ‘doing what they do’. I’m still unclear as to what this is. I’m hoping homework or helping out at a local community centre, maybe bob-a-job. Though I suspect it’s more likely to be happy slapping, or buying an asbo or getting quango’d or whatever the youth do these days. If they’re anything like the little devils near where I live they will be sitting on the town hall steps, playing heavy metal music’s and probably worshiping the Satan or a devil.
Then all the gentleboys sing together about going crazy until they see the sun, and we all know you should never look directly at the sun, but then if they are suffering mental illness all night then the last thing on their minds would be damaging their retinas. What’s worse is then that they declare they only just met this poor girl, which suggest that they went to a window and saw a girl and started singing at her to entice her out of her bedroom, like male boy sirens. Then the next line claims they will never stop, for anyone! Which totally contradicts their intentions a mere two lines ago (to stop when they saw the sun), which would corroborate their ‘crazy’ mental state. Then they declare they are going to ‘get some’, some what I don’t know, I can only assume by the debauched nature of the song they mean reproduction. They then continue to tell us they are going to ‘get some’ and ‘live while we’re young’. Because if they do make it into their 40’s they will, what exactly? Die? Watch news night review while eating a selection of cheese with French bread, with their wife, snuggled on the sofa. Which is just as much living as anything else, and one of my fondest memories and one of my fondue memories!
Later Zayn tells this young madam “Don’t let the pictures leave your phone (oh oh)” is this (oh oh) a veiled threat that if she did go to the press with photographic evidence of celebrating all night (while young of course) there may be dire consequences. The sub text would certainly suggest so.
And that’s pretty much all there is to this song, save to say that Harry only gets to sing the line “And live while we’re young” and nothing else. I assume he has the most severe mental problems and could only be coaxed to coherently sing just these 5 words.
Needless to say there is constant repeats of the refrain of ‘living while their young’. There is also a large nonsensical section of Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, where they clearly have had a mental breakdown in the recording process, or maybe Harry was getting particularly aggressive and they were trying to satiate him with soothing tones. I personally hate songs that have gibberish in, if a group cannot think of any words to fill that melody then they shouldn’t bother at all!
In summation, why do these young men feel the need to only live while they’re young, does it speak of the fear of growing old, the lack of job prospects in the modern world, the isolation of all humans as we continue down this electronic communityless isolated modern society, perhaps they all have degenerative conditions and will all be dead by 23, maybe this song was their dying wish? I simply don’t know.
Why can’t modern music be like it was in my day, we had classics like Be-Bop-A-Lula, Bama Lama Bama Loo, Razzamataz-Jazzamataz, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Rocko m’clocko and Plastic mambo. Those songs had clear meanings, none of this modern nonsense.
These were just the thoughts as I was forced to listen to the utter utter drivel while eating my ice cream. And my wife and son took ages in that book shop, and in the end they didn’t even buy anything.
So please, in future can you think about your song selection, I’m sure most if not all people of my age would have the exact same thought if they listened to this song, and they would feel even more isolated from the world because old age is seen as something to be feared, like a foreign land, slowly moving to invade your young and supple bodies and ravage them with frailty, immobility and bowel issues.
And you know what’s worse? My wife and son then wanted and ice cream, so they had one and sat on the bench. Luckily my wife didn’t stop nagging me about getting some new trousers so I couldn’t hear the next song.
Though I do have to say, now at Hornsea Freeport there is very little choice in gentlemen’s garments. Yes there are many shoe based shops, and a couple of places to get walking trousers, but if like me, the thought of trousers made from that cagoule type swissy material makes you physically sick then, you’re stuck for choice. I like my trousers polyester and beige or at a push cream. And sadly I cannot get these at your Freeport any longer. Where have all the old men’s shops gone? Long-time passing!
Thank you for your time, I hope you’re well
Cecil Thax
radiothax.com 