Not wanting to kill the buzz man, but is the Roller revisionism (“they were pretty good, really”) ironic? As a teen into arty glam and working on increasing my credibility with the 6th form hairies a few years ahead by getting into progressive and heavy rock, the BCRs floated like an unflushable turd through my mid-70s. I can’t believe I am the only one here who found them ghastly. Even The Osmonds had “Crazy Horses”, which no rock fan could be pissy about. The BCRs were a Scotmid boyband and their hard-girl fans were scarier than the types who later followed Skrewdriver. Their back story makes Motley Crue look like Coldplay, and is only missing a Jimmy Saville connection. This is the best (or at least, most interesting) thing about them. Might I speculate that the Roller sympathisers were 10 years old at the time, and being below the age of criminal responsibility, knew no better, m’lud?
Are there other examples of music revisionism that need exposing?
I was a bit baffled by this too, but as a thread below shows there are those among us who can’t see any merit in ABBA. In the Rollers’ case I can’t help but think people who claim to admire them are taking the piss. Anyone willing to make a case for their place in in musical history, rather than as a marketing phenomenon, is welcome to have a go.
Their place in history is assured – up there with Edison Lighthouse, The Rubettes, Boney M et al (bands who came into existence after the songs were recorded).
And not forgetting a host of Stock Aitken and Wateman puppets
I think there is a difference between the BCR and the Rubettes in that the Rubettes made their best records once they were a proper band and the Rollers made theirs before.
Whereas the BCR were always dreadful, it would be curmudgeonly to ignore the undeniable pop appeal of The Rubettes’ last big hit, “I Can Do It”.
They also had a 1976 album titled “Sign Of The Times” – yet did they ever consider financially lucrative legal action against Prince all those years later? No, they did not. Good for them, I say.
The Belle Stars, however, are now huddled around a brazier* under a railway bridge owing to those cheersome white-hatted fiends.
(*steady)
Arf
As johnw suggests, the ‘bettes produced some (okay, two) pieces of quality after ditching the Binman falsetto schtick. Baby I Know and Under One Roof more than pass muster and in blind tests few would attribute them to the rock n roll revivalists.
It’s hardly likely to be financially lucrative to start legal action over someone else using the same album title. There are hundreds of prior examples of same-title albums.
It’s more likely to be financially disastrous.
Some of my earliest pop memories feature them and it’s true to say that they were resoundingly marketed to young girls. Even so, as the OP says, it is possible for prolific boy bands to crossover with a great pop song occasionally. I think Take That did it with Back For Good, the Back Street Boys produced the wonderful I Want it That Way. and Blue gave us All Rise.
But then we move to Westlife and Boyzone, who have had more number 1s than Elvis but none of their songs stick in my mind. At around the same time the Spice Girls, All Saints, Sugababes, Atomic Kitten and Girls Aloud all gave us many thumpingly great pop singles. Do the women get all the best songs?
But in the end the BCR phenomenon was memorable but not the music.
While I have sympathy for his family, I thought they were shite then & no amount of revisionism would make me change my mind.
I’m here to applaud “Scotmid boyband”
*applauds*
Their music has little worth, but they were a true phenomenon. I was the right age and I remember the girls in my class when I was around 13 all being totally obsessed by them. Biggest hysteria produced by a band since The Beatles. They (Les) was going to do gig in Ottawa last year (it was cancelled naturally), ticket sales were very slow it seems, I was thinking of going just for a fun night out, and maybe getting to know some 60 yr old female fans 😉 I would rather see a band like that than the likes of dreadful stuff like Marillion or something.
Is that a tartan scarf I see peeping out from your wardrobe door, you rascal? Still got some stacks in your shoe box, have you? And a feather cut?
No, not a fan but girls my age were, so one had to recognise that. My daughter is a similar age now and has strong interests in certain acts (you probably won’t have heard of or like any of them). It’s actually an amazing thing to witness.
Absolute scenes, repeated across the nation…
“The Rise and Fall of The Bay City Rollers – Flashbak” https://flashbak.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-les-mckeown-and-the-bay-city-rollers-1952/
They were unmitigated shite. No hard feelings towards any of the band themselves, but the records? Good grief.
The poor man’s barely been dead for 24 hours and already the vicious anti-Rollers backlash has begun!
I said to a friend earlier this morning that 50 years ago, there was no way I could have ever envisioned that I would hear a tribute to The Rollers on Today on R4.
All this bollocks about their unique look. It was simply a sanitised Manchester United hooligan look.
Add Wham, Spandau and Take That as well to the whole revisionism list. They were shit when they came out and time hasn’t improved.
And Gary Kemp. As well trying to reinvent himself as the world biggest Bowie fan and an original punk. All I’ve got to say is this – if you were listening to all these things as a kid how on earth did you end up in a terrible boy band making such unmitigated crap (mostly).
Oh so True …
Wham were great actually.
Each to his own Dai.
I thought they were horrible at the time and still do.
I think Wham!’s music is great too. In fact, there’s only a couple of their songs that I don’t like. Miles better than Spandau Ballet (a couple of decent songs, but the singer was like a slightly better quality club turn) or Duran Duran (a handful of decent songs). I surprised my ex on a few occasions by knowing all the words to Young Guns, Everything She Wants, etc.
And, although they are not necessarily ones I’d turn to on a jukebox, I still like several Rollers tracks too, so they can stick that in their pipe and smoke it. I’ve never really bothered worrying about what’s cool and what’s not. But I hate the term ‘guilty pleasures’. Why should you feel guilty about liking a song? Depending on the subject matter, of course.
Gary Kemp was also a great Pink Floyd fan, by all accounts. He did a good job with Nick Mason, so maybe this is true. This makes Spandau Ballet even shitter than they were.
GK has a good podcast with Guy Pratt which is well worth a listen, and his recent WIYE shows he’s a real fan. Plus doing a great job with Nick Mason apart from writing a string of hits. I think he’s a good bloke. He did a lost solo album with a lot of Irish folk musicians which is worth checking out.
I’ve listened to it as well and still remain utterly unconvinced by the guy. Although I am looking forward to the upcoming show where they have Marti Pellow discussing his Josef K singles collection and his forthcoming documentary on The Fire Engines.
Have to disagree on that.
Spandau Ballet made some great songs.
Compared to The Rollers they were in a different league and also wrote their own material.
Agree with you Wheaty. Due to the FPO’s insistence, I’ve also seen them live twice (2009 and 2016) and they were a surprisingly good live act.
I agree with you agreeing with Wheat. I don’t like a lot of it but their greatest hits are as good as anyone’s.
I am in complete accordment with the statement you have just vouchsafed.
Came across very well in a recent Word In Your Attic. Didn’t like him too much in the 80s, but Chant No. 1 is a banger.
Also saw him with Nick Mason and he did pretty well
Chant Number 1 was a big influence on Weller apparently. It is as you say a banger…
Yes one or two decent songs but they had their time, why care too much over the fact that they were rather bland otherwise. Those days are gone. They did well for themselves, got other careers. Seems mean minded to kerp on berating these acts. The whole Spandau vs Duran game was fun at the time really. Not everyone can have an enduring legacy. GK is someone who has come out of celebrity and pop stardom with integrity and something interesting to say and there aren’t so many you can say that about.
Despite what I said further up, the Spandau v Duran game is a no contest, with DD head and shoulders a better experience both on record and live. Despite the sniping about bands like them, they are far better musicians than they are generally given credit for.
@twang I’m also a big fan of the Rockonteurs podcast with GK and Guy Pratt. I think given that they have been there and done that, they have a level of credibility that their interviewees respond well too. Suzi Quattro and Bob Geldof were painful though.
I really enjoyed the one with Roland Irzabal. I felt because GK had been through a similar experience Roland opened up more than I’ve heard him. I need to try some others..
Yes SQ was very unlikeable from the start – the only one I haven’t finished. I quite enjoyed the Geldof one as far as I can remember.
I’ve seen Tony Hadley live, and he’s a complete knob
The Spands were basically Blue Rondo a la Turk with David Cameron bellowing over the top. Its him, not the songs that stick in my craw. It’s like the captain of the rugby team trying to be hip in the art college bar.
There was a Duran Duran thing on BBC4 last week. The songs are great, really good. The musicianship and in particular John Taylor’s bass is exceptional. The mix of guitar and keyboards quite experimental for the time. Then there’s Le Bon. Bloody hell. Imagine Spandau or Duran with even halfway adequate vocalists…
John Taylor is doing a YouTube thing like Guy Pratt explaining and demonstrating his old bass parts. Really good.
Derek Forbes from The Simple Minds has done a similar thing.
Derek Forbes has his own band I believe play decent Simple Minds songs.
He was apparently inspired by Chic..
Yes, just imagine Duran Duran with a better vocalist, they might have sold in excess of the 100 million records they’ve struggled to get over the line so far. God knows what they were ever thinking.
It’s a good point well made. I think they’re great with Le Bon. He was obviously a huge part of them shifting units. But I often think he’s the reason they lack much critical acclaim. Although it feels like they are starting to be appreciated more. * Hums “Rio”…
They put a lot of effort into some preposterous videos, but then so did a lot of other bands at the time. eg. Frankie. But I remember the Wild Boys video in particular made me dislike them intensely. Humourless, po-faced show ponies more concerned with style than substance. They seemed to chime with the Thatcher era.
Having said that I don’t think they were a band without merit, and I’ve enjoyed some of the latter day stuff I’ve heard.
Rio was an excellent album and I loved and still love watching the videos for its singles (especially Save A Prayer, by the pond with an elephant and an acoustic guitar, nice). But post-Rio only Notorious and Skin Trade ever grabbed my attention. What latter day stuff is worth checking out?
I’m not au fait enough with their back catalogue to answer that @Gary but perhaps someone else can chip in. I’ve only heard a few singles here and there, and put that comment in because I didn’t want to rubbish them.
Gary, those are the best I’d say, and add in the song “Election Day” by Arcadia, one of the spinoffs.
I don’t mind Hadley’s voice as it goes. A mile better than Simon Le Bon if we’re comparing.
@Gary I’ve always thought this was a high point with Duran.
I can’t say that tempts me to investigate further, Mr B. I’ve kinda forgotten it already.
Blue Rondo a la Turk turned up in Arbroath in 1981 to play our new nightclub, Smokies. Kudos to whomever envisioned the place because we got a lot of big up and coming acts at that time but they were by far the biggest set of wankers to walk the earth at that time. Almost on a par, no, equally with Glasgow’s Set the tone. Now there was a set of wankers.
I was 15 going on 16 and helped load in the equipment. This was my in of getting to know. If you know what I mean.😉
Memory still fresh when it’s called upon.
You’ve got to start a new thread with your remembrances regarding that. No~name Artistes being knobs has to have some gems.
Gary Glitter’s road crew comes to mind. Gary was eventually a no show.
They were younger and slightly hipper version of Modern Romance.
That’s said, it’d be a boring world if we all liked the same thing!
Wham ‘Fantastic’ is a brilliant record, non stop pop thrills from start to finish. Spands had a majestic run of pop singles and as proved on the WIYE podcast Gary Kemp is a top pop geezer, erduite and smart and loves his music with a lack of snobbery that is really refreshing. He can write immaculate pop songs like Chant No.1, Instinction, I’ll Fly For You, True and Gold, and he can nail early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett cos I’ve seen him do it. Take That is another era but fair play they have some nailed-on floor fillers too and solid gold pop.
BCR to be fair I think it probably needs you to be either a Pete Paphides / Bob Stanley type who loves that particular trash/bubblegum aesthetic or you need to have the nostalgia for that era. I don’t, so with BCR I hear rather soupy, unpleasant music and inseperable from the listless and grim back story of the Rollers and poor old Les.
But revisionism ? Nah that’s a bollocks concept as is “Guilty Pleasures”.
We are all music lovers, we form our tastes in endlessly changing and unlikely ways over time and one of the great things about music is you may suddenly learn to love something you despised years before if you stop being a dick and open yr ears (I speak from experience here!).
🆙
Willing to open my ears (see my comments about Carole King), but I reserve my right to remain a dick, as you can’t take that away from me.
Wham exploding on to Top of the Pops was one of “those” moments. Love them still. Just great sing a long, recorded fun, made to make people dance and be happy. Jitterbug indeed…
Majestic? Immaculate? What does that make things that are actually brilliant? The superlatives don’t exist. Spandau and DD are OK. Chant nr. 1 and Ordinary World are good. No desire to play any of it now though.
And the Rollers? Like a tartan and even-worse version of Slik. I was probably their target age group of about 7 years old when they came out and even at that tender age I could still see them for the rubbish that they were
All that said, it’s sad he died at a relatively young age and they did have a appalling time with management/abuse and being ripped off by all accounts
Nick Lowe once tried to get kicked off his record label by writing a hymn of praise to the Rollers.
“Every night, when I’m feeling alright
Dancing and clapping my hands
To the best thing from Scot-land.”
Genius.
Brilliant story Gatz,
Franco hit the nail firmly on the head: The Little Girls Understand.
I am not and never have been a Rollergirl. My opinion is supremely irrelevant
This was the target audience
I don’t think it’s revisionism as much as context & nostalgia. The songs are not unpleasant nor would have me rushing to turn the radio off, but I wouldn’t usually choose to play them.
On the other thread, I said about them trying to revive their fortunes by bringing in Harry Maslin.
The audience had moved on, but this is their “Back for Good” A perfectly pleasant pop song with a guitar sound like Bowie’s Fascination
Never heard that before.
I was 10 in 1975 and remember the effect they had on final year primary school girls.
They had two good singles with Shang a Lang and Bye Bye Baby but beyond those I recall nothing else.
Blimey. If you’d played me that and asked me to guess who it was I’d have got a very long way down the list before guessing the Rollers.
They weren’t great but they do hold the place in history of , ahem, making the first record I ever bought. The 8 year old me chose “Shang-a-Lang” , a choice I put down to age and inexperience at the time.
(My first LP was “Remember me this Way” by Gary Glitter, not sure If I’m even allowed to mention his name these days)
We trust you are deeply ashamed and that your early music purchases will haunt you for your remaining days.
Early music? What’s wrong with the mellow tootling of a shawm or crumhorn?
Bloody post-Raphaelites.
Bloody hell Moose have you heard a shawm it was a war instrument put the fear of god* in the enemy. A friend used to refer to the crumhorn as a tuned fart.
Have a rackett.
*other deities are available.
Mmm…. wooden bongs!
To be fair, I think it was Glitters album that gave me a last for live versions of songs. I’ve spent a lifetime listening to live versions of peoples music. I (nearly always) love live takes.
Yep, I agree they were crap, but I genuinely feel for the guys in the band (maybe not the one who was done for possessing indecent images) – imagine selling 120 million records and not making any money?
Power Pop band The Knack had an album called But the Little Girls Understand. To me that sums up the Rollers.
They were shite.
No offence and, frankly, if they had a good time, it was a better bet that the coal mine.
Also, if people liked them, great.
They were shite.
Imagine being born at the right time for the Bay Ci…. Nurse! No!… (DD escapes)… but the wrong time for Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Beatl… (DD gets restrained)… Nurse! No…ooo…ooo…. that’s the very definition of bad timinnnnnnnggggggg…
They weren’t shite but they were unremarkable. There was worse music in the charts in all eras, including the sixties. Just calling acts shite is uninteresting and lazy, not worth saying really. Adds nothing to the discussion.
Indeed. A bunch of old codgers declaring bands like BCR and The Osmonds “shite” says far more to me about the narrow demographic of this site than it does about the artistic merits of pop bands in question.
Musing on the byways of popular culture is pretty all encompassing. I love that people can say yeah the Rollers were ok or Crazy Horses was great or any other choices. The more variety the better but I would say that….
I remember Nick Lowe doing one of those personal pick shows where he praised The Osmonds to the skies for their harmonies on “Love Me for a Reason”.
I have just listened to a few Osmonds tracks off the back of this thread.
They are far more rocky than I recalled and made some top tunes,
“Crazy Horses” was the first album where they wrote most of the songs, and whilst there are a couple of bubblegum ballads, there are some banging rockers of which the title track is just one.
Here are the Rollers with Ann Margaret performing Saturday Night. So refreshing to see the young people in the audience enjoying themselves. Look out for the ear trumpet.
Thanks @Gatz. That is the most magnificently peculiar thing I have seen on Yer Tube all week. That audience are seriously out there.
Please help me here. I am struggling to get a grip on this clip.
So this is the Swedish-American mega-star, famed for her duets with Elvis Presley, singing with the sensationally popular tartan teeny pop terrors in front of an audience of crazed British pensioners.
1975 was a peculiar year!
Ooops! I think I’d better take is easy on the old jazz cabbage!
I think it was her show and the Rollers were a guest act; the audience were probably bussed in to ensure a full house at a weekday recording. Full marks to them for being so up for it though (with the exception of the woman using the opportunity to catch up on her knitting), and to the director for realising that there was as much fun to be had in filming the audience as the band.
I’m not quite convinced. Ann Magret was a big star and was over in the UK to film Tommy with Ken Russell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_am82sYFXU
She was surprisingly a big fan of our Ken as she explains in this interview.
http://www.ann-margret-from-sweden.com/various/magazines/74photoplay.html
Sizzling Hollywood femme fatale at the height of her career does a show in the UK.
And they needed to bus in old biddies catching up with their knitting?
Was the seductive Swede so short of UK fans??
Filmed at Elstree in November 1975.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1198526/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_103
Hearing aid? Knitting? That audience was far too perfect to be accidental.
Wow this clip has made 2 threads. Who would have thought a week ago that we would effectively have 2 threads about the Bay City Rollers?
Revisionism? This notion that Crazy Horses was in any way other than torrid and turgid shite: about as much fun as as an explosion at a diarrhoea factory.
Is that torrid turgid diarrhoea the reason for ‘Ahh-WAAH!! Ahh-WAAH!!!’ chorus?
Why doesn’t anybody know what “torrid” means any more? Never mind….
Believe me, I do. If a martini can be dry, so too can liquid stool.
I think I saw Liquid Stool at Cambridge Folk Festival in 2012. Acoustic stage.
There’s another?
The dubstep tent, of course…
You ever seen Burial with a bodhran? I have…
Weren’t they a split off from Liquid Stool as regards the Air?
Air retraining as a French musical duo.
Loved it then, still love it today. No revisionism required.
It is that aah-WAA precisely that loosens my bowel. Ghastly racket.
“About as much fun as an explosion at a diarrhoea factory” made me laugh a great deal today.
Where in the world are there diarrhoea factories?
The nearest approximation I can think of was a brutally basic toilet block at a heaving Cap D’Agde campsite in the summer of ’76.
Also, if there was an explosion in a diarrhoea factory how would anybody know, unless the diarrhoea is being manufactured by non-traditional methods?
Look over there! Diarrhoea factory. Bad place to get some thinking done.
I’m not checking it out. I’ve got it figured out.
Now why did my eyes read that as fingered out?
Here, have some hand-san’!
And I saw that as ‘Have some, han’some.’ I’ll pass, both counts, but thanks for the thought.
(Wouldn’t hand cleansing gel give a bit of a spring in your step frisson, I wonder?)
What have you been doing to make you so short-sighted, doc?
Crazy arses. Waaah!
Totally agree. Laughable that they were anything other than simultaneously weird as fuck and utterly crap.
I have never knowingly heard a single track by Bay City Rollers. I don’t think they were that huge in Sweden.
The only thing I know about them (unless I’m getting senile and is getting them mixed up with some other teen favourites at the time, but I’m pretty sure this anecdote is about BCR) is that when they visited Stockholm to play a gig at the outdoor stage at the Gröna Lund funfair, they were pissed off because a couple of girls watched their rehearsal, so as a revenge they left a gift for an old employee (who had nothing to do with the incident), and when he took the bow off and opened the box, it contained a turd. Classy guys.
That’s a symbol of great respect in Scotland 😉
Only if it’s deep-fried.
This is the best BC post to date.
Paula Yates (RIP) used to work in PR for various acts, one of which was Sooty.
She said that one day she opened a package and inside was toilet paper heavily soiled by human shit. A note said “that’s what I think of your fucking puppet!”.
I may never stop laughing at this.
What’s Sharon Osbourne got against Sooty?
I was just thinking that. What are the odds? Nothing for years and then three shit stories in a week, so to speak.
It’s the tartan I remember most. Boys and girls were sewing tartan on to the cuffs of there trousers and adopting Doc Martens to go with them. Vivienne Westwood? Pah! It’s the beginning of the punk explosion 💥
If you were mid-teens in 1976, punk wasn’t a reaction to all that Yes and Genesis double-necked capes nonsense, because mercifully we missed all that. It was a rejection of BRC and The Rubettes and Showaddywaddy and all those other bands that came out of the Northern cabaret circuit. We disdained that mix of Working Men’s Clubs + flares and championed pub rock + art school. We thought it was dead hard and edgy, which is ironic because any one of the Bay City Rollers could have beaten the shit out of the Pistols, Damned and Buzzcocks combined, without even missing a Shang-a-Lang
Punk was more anti-disco than anti-prog. As with Abba, how much hatred there was for disco has been written out of history because the consensus now is that disco was A Good Thing. The fact that the Disco Sucks thing in the US was both racist and homophobic doesn’t help. A lot of people saw disco as suffocating at the time – the Black Arabs thing in Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle was not an affectionate tribute.
In the real world of course, kids danced to whatever came on whether it was Sham 69 or Odyssey.
Excellent comments, Chiz and Moose.
Gee @Vincent you got that hamper quick.
124 comments…, err 125
Why thank you, Jr! I think people have views about the BCRs given their strong presence in the mid-70s. For some it was a fearsome portent of a world in which the received wisdom that rock and album-oriented ‘heads’ were not quite as important as they thought. For others, that transient trashy pop for younger teenage girls will prevail, and they don’t care as long as the singer is pretty and it’s catchy. I accept the latter, but think there were (and are) infinitely better pop bands out there than this lot.
And now those same heads are declaring Roller peers ABBA to be pop geniuses.
I was never a ‘head’, but I was an ABBA early adopter. The little boys understand…
There you go then. I saw them win the Eurovision Song Contest. Oh how we laughed.
It’s the prevailing that I have an issue with.
Transient trashy pop has it’s place but it’s supposed to be transient and ephemeral, yet here we are 40-odd years later talking about The Bay City Rollers.
Something has gone wrong.
And ABBA. Tisk tisk.
But we have been lauding the transient and trashy since it all began with rock ‘n’ roll then pop. It wasn’t meant to last but it has, that’s old news. What’s gone wrong is that terms like classic and great have been bandied about all too freely, awarded to any old thing that has got treated with affection through nostalgia and age.
Sure we’ll they were in, and won, Eurovision which speaks volumes.
Isn’t this just a remix of the old authenticty argument? As pop music has got older it has become more academic, or at least it has to those – like us – who are interested in its history and minutiae, and has now entered a realm akin to literary criticism. Revolution in the Head was a landmark book in this regard. Nostalgia has been grandfathered in and we can now approach the universe of music in any way we choose. Sometimes I want to think about music in deeply academic and muso terms, other times I just want to turn off my mind and enjoy, unburdened by prevailing trends and opinions. That enjoyment can be built around a bass line, a chorus, a melody, a vocal style, a personal memory, pure nostalgia, a crush on the lead singer or any number of other things. In this context, terms like classic and great are heavily impacted by emotion and personal experience.
The death of Les McKeown has caused us to reflect on the BCR. But when was the last time you saw a BCR record in the shops, or advertised anywhere? They’re effectively extinct in the current pop landscape. Transient and gone. Rarely, if ever, mentioned on The Afterword. But the distance of time adds a new historical context that we feel compelled to explore. Because as music fanatics, that’s what we do on here.
I think it’s the nature of pop music, it can be art and deserves to be taken seriously because of that but at the same it’s ridiculous and absurd and is meant for teenagers for it’s idols and dressing up and all that. Rock gets seen as more serious and grown up but really it was made for slightly older teenagers and is equally preposterous much of the time so what’s meant to be trashy, transient and ephemeral can be art that lasts too. What’s great is it can be all those things. The use of classic can get rather undiscriminating though.
Spinal Tap get to the essence of it:
To the majesty of rock!
The pageantry of roll!
The crowing of the cock,
The running of the foal!
The shepherd with his flock,
The miner with his coal,
We’re in this together, and ever
I don’t think it’s anything much to do with the music itself.
It’s almost entirely the desire of people with an analytical mindset to do some analysing. Pop music is a highly suitable phenomenon to turn that tendency upon. Maybe it’s just a side effect of getting a university education.
No, you’re thinking of crabs.
We do!
Further up the page it was argued that punk wasn’t a
rejection of prog bands it was a rejection of the likes
of the Rubetters, BCRs, etc.
Do people really consciously “reject” anything?
Surely they simply stop buying stuff and move onto
other acts as they get older and their tastes change.
Years later, desperate to reclaim a taste of their lost youth
many of them might go back to the old acts they supported
as teens
What a beautiful poem.
Have you considered working for Hallmark?