I Am The Resurrection, Stone Roses (1989) Or where we discover that we are older than we realised

Well it didn't quite pan out like I intended. We arrived in Montreal, awaiting a 2 1/2 hour stopover. After five hours it became apparent something was wrong. Probably entirely correctly the decision was not to fly in the middle of the worst rain storm Montreal had seen in years. Hastily finding a hotel in Montreal we made another attempt this morning to arrive in New York. On the very short flight the inflight entertainment system gave us a wide variety of films, deciding that 45 minutes wasn't long enough to watch a film I scanned the music options. Settling on classic rock, I was initially disturbed to find the Stone Roses amongst the Canned Heat and Creedence options. For me Classic Rock means flannel shirts, massive guitar solos and guys name Chet. Not the Roses, I mean they were around in my formative years... and I'm not old enough to have grown up with classic rock. Or am I?? I've reached the point now where when I hear something "new" I generally can say well they sound like Magazine/Talking Heads/ etc ... etc... I'm also pretentious and irritating enough to say that too... Which also comes with age. Occasionally I do find things which sound new to me (James Blake being a prime example) but then I discover that actually "they're quite mainstream actually and about 2 years behind the scene". Well I'm about 15 years too old to worry about the scene, so yes I am probably old enough to be an original consumer of "Classic Rock". As the plane started descending over New York it reached the final track "I am the Resurrection" and as The Statue of Liberty hoved into view the lovely skipping bass line and incessant, chattering drums kicked in. It was like the opening sequence of (an admittedly cheesy) movie, but it made perfect sense. This iconic, cinematic city spread underneath me, as this iconic generation defining music washed over me. And as we swung over Queens, and the Shea Stadium (Scene of the Beatles definitive US concert), THAT PART kicked in (About 3.40 in, where Reni's drumming becomes heroic and John Squires guitar playing shows him to be the guitar hero of his decade) and the thought came to me, of course this is classic rock. 20 years + on the song still stirs me, like this city does too. Who'd have thought that the sound of Manchester would also become the sound of New York too??

Further Listening

James Blake "Limit To Your Love"
South Park "Blame Canada"