A brief thought about guilty pleasures!

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Here’s a promise…. at Creekside Vinyl you won’t find a raised eyebrow or a self-satisfied smirk that undermines or belittles your choices or likes, or makes you feel apart from the “in” crowd. We ain’t in school anymore…Creekside Vinyl is very much Anti Guilty Pleasure.

“I despise and dispute the term ‘guilty pleasure’. I won’t have it!”

Who remembers being back at school? The cool kids hung out over there, away from you… outside the hall, by the bottom of the stairs were Debbie, Denise and Carol, dishwater blonde, glamorous and unobtainable.  The boys, Neil, Chris and Anthony (all first picks in the football, natch!), by the gates behind the woodwork rooms, smoking and talking cars, girls and music.  They were the arbitrators of what was cool and what was not. You longed to have the things you liked confirmed, reinforced and blessed by them…that rare, oh so rare, feeling of affirmation or belonging. Long before Zeitgeist became a celebration of the Sunday supplement magazines, these kids controlled what was in or out. You didn’t want to fall on the wrong side of their judgement. 

So, if you enjoyed, for example, Z Cars rather than The Sweeney, or Showaddywaddy rather than Darts, the Two Ronnie’s rather than Not the Nine o Clock News, then you were out. Mocked for choosing the wrong thing.  Popular music culture was tribal back then…you want to be in with the in crowd? You don’t admit to liking the others. And thus, Your Joan Armatrading albums, your ELO Albums and (here’s a thing some of you won’t believe) even your Beatles and Abba Albums where hidden out of sight. Enjoyed, secretly, on your own and not shared in the school playground.

This is the genesis of a ‘guilty pleasure’. And just like so much that I was fed at school…I rejected then as I do now. I despise and dispute the term ‘guilty pleasure’. I won’t have it! 

“Your Joan Armatrading albums, your ELO Albums and (here’s a thing some of you won’t believe) even your Beatles and Abba Albums where hidden out of sight.”

Maybe a conceit of being in my mid-fifties, but hey man…life is way, way too short. And that brief span is for many, full of externally imposed stress, anxiety, worry and despair. If amongst all the difficulty and all the drudgery you find something you enjoy, then let’s celebrate that! Do not feel guilty about it.  Your passions and feelings are as valid as anyone else’s.

Here’s a promise…. at Creekside Vinyl you won’t find a raised eyebrow or a self-satisfied smirk that undermines or belittles your choices or likes, or makes you feel apart from the “in” crowd.  We ain’t in school anymore…Creekside Vinyl is very much Anti Guilty Pleasure.

Simon Tyler

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