Catching What?

Rip It Up, Issue 216, 1 August 1995, Page 10

Catching What?

I know that at 34 years old I am rapidly approaching Sad Old Git status, but in a weird kind of way, I don’t mind. I remember listening to Oasis in 1972, only they were called T-Rex then. I’ve watched with dismay the return of flared jeans and platform shoes to the streets (but have yet to see my lime green satin body shirt with stitching that glowed under disco lights), and I still play ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ by Dr Hook after a few beers. I didn’t mean to wank on like this. I’m just trying to let you guys know not to forget your older, but no less enthusiastic, readership.

So, Nick D’Angelo, please tell me and my fellow SOGs what the hell you mean when you say Michael Jackson is ‘catching wreck’? Please. Yours till the Rollers return,

Art, Christchurch. Nick D’Angelo replies: I’ll be gentle, Art, because you've surpassed Sad Old Git status and are now onto Boring Old Fart. If the Alzheimer's hasn’t already set in, try and cast your mind back through the mists of time to 1972. You were 11 then, and listening to T-Rex singing: ‘Bang a gong, get it on.' Your thirtysomething parents had no idea what ‘bang a gong’ meant, and that was just how you liked it. Each generation of youth have their own particular code, a language the others can't understand, and it would be ethically wrong for me to share today’s street slang with you. I’m ‘down’ with the ‘homies' and I can’t betray their trust — that .would be ‘perpetrating’. Suffice to say, if you don't understand terms like ‘dropping science’, ‘on the real’, ‘catchin' wreck' and ‘da bomb’, then you shouldn’t be reading my column. Supergroove put it even more succinctly: ‘You've got to know to understand.'