PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED

Ring out the bells! Le tout Brussels welcomes the reappearance of UpFront after a four-month absence, in a new handy format (somewhere between A4 and A5), with lots of colour photographs and a much more professional look. This is almost certainly down to the influence of new Art Direct Suki who has applied her architect's expert eye to the layout and general appearance, and additions to the team such as Andy Carling who is not only an ace photographer but writes quite well too. Editor Tony Mallett aka Tippler who is sadly missed in the blogosphere for his deep and insightful views on, er, football and Slovakian barmaids, has managed to put his stamp on the new improved UpFront, as can be seen from the front cover photograph. From little acorns mighty oaks do grow. Perhaps that is not the appropriate proverb, given that a few trees probably had to be pulped to produce this issue, but being old enough to remember when Time Out was a mere listings rag, I am excited to be a contributor to this soon-to-be Esteemed Organ. And by the way I've got a restaurant review on p.36 which you can soon see on my food blog, Daphne's Dinners.

I do hope the film "Hippie Hippie Shake" will be shown in Belgium when it is released, even though it won't mean anything to any non-Brits or indeed any Brits under 50. The Oz Trial in 1971 was one of the seminal influences in the awakening of my radical consciousness. I think I even bought a copy of Oz once, just to annoy my elders. What a shame I didn't keep it. Young people today (oh dear it's a bad sign when you start a sentence like that) don't realize what an exciting time the late 60's and early 70's was. It was so easy to rebel against one's parents, everything upset them. Nowadays parents want to dress like their kids and listen to their music, which is no fun at all. Parents, please play the game! While your kids are growing up and going through that necessarily rebellious phase, pretend to be an old fogey. It's no fun for you, but it's enormous fun for them. Homer and Marge Simpson should be your role models. Once they have flown the coop you can start listening to Amy Winehouse and wearing Converse again.

I missed out greatly on pop music in the 1980s, due to (a) having no kids and (b) living in France, where they play the songs on the radio without much commentary, so you don't get to know who's who. Hence I spent many years thinking that the singer of "Money's too tight to mention" was a black woman. (No really, try listening to it while watching an M People video with the sound turned down). I was also distracted by my explorations of French popular music, from Gainsbourg to France Gall via Brel and Johnny, and the seeds of my love of jazz and weld music were being planted by the marvellously eclectic Parisian radio station FIP. Hence I didn't pay too much attention to the UK charts for many years. I got quite excited once, in the late 80s, at the sight of two lovely perma-tanned Young Men in shorts on the TV jumping about singing "Wake me up before you go-go", only to find the French were showing the video to mark the end of Wham! Missing the boat seems to be an occupational hazard for me.

My years in the tropics during the 1990s didn't help me to catch up with the UK charts, but did broaden my appreciation of African music. At the end of the 1990s, I found myself in Poland which was still stuck in the 1970s and to play a gig in Warsaw or Gdansk was a sure sign of There Go the Remains of My Career for any visiting bands, Jethro Tull and Rick Wakeman to name but two. Hence I arrived back in the UK just after the turn of the millennium and looked at the lineup for Glasto with total bewilderment. I didn't recognize one name on the bill apart from Donovan.

Now I have access to the BBC again, sadly TOTP is no more, and Jools Holland is on too late for an old fart like me with an hour's time difference to boot. However I am lucky enough to have a younger person in my household who keeps me up to date on the music scene. McChe (for it is he) grew up in the era of punk, which was never really my cup of tea, although I still maintain that I invented the fashion for wearing safety pins on the outside of one's clothing back in 1974, when I could not be bothered to hem my jeans properly. My wee lodger often calls my attention to something new. "Hoots mon, Daff-bags," he will shout, usually while I am trying to watch Eastenders, "Come and have a listen to this!" And I will have to put my knitting down and shuffle across to the computer where he will plonk the headphones on my head and make me listen to something horrible. "Well it's not exactly King Crimson, is it?" is my usual response. But sometimes I will go back and have a listen when he is asleep of an afternoon, and occasionally I revise my initial harsh judgment. Of course he won't ever know this, as he no longer reads my "stupid blog" and has now gone back to hacking into the Kremlin. But I have to confess to singing along to Radiohead in the metro the other day. There's life in the old girl yet.