Things you were into before they became popular

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

21 hours ago, Robin Evans said:

I was always sent to the shop to buy them cos I looked the oldest. 

A party seven and a packet of condoms so I looked all grown up and adult..... we'd blow em up like balloons

It must have taken a hell of a lot of breath to blow an empty Party Seven canister up like a balloon!

[Gerrumonside ref]

9 hours ago, Mumby Magic said:

This is why I like the Therapy Troublegum album. Sold over a million and released in 1994 yet not many have heard of them. Plus my fave album. Although they would have liked to have broken through I like the fact that my fave album is (sort of) unique to me.

I had this album back then, you bandwagon jumper!

[GUBRATS]

12 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

I refuse to believe breathing is mainstream, I discovered breathing before anyone else and I'm the expert on it here (despite actually having held my breath most of my life and only started breathing a couple of months back). 

Hallucinating again

[GUBRATS]

3 hours ago, Wiltshire Warrior Dragon said:

It must have taken a hell of a lot of breath to blow an empty Party Seven canister up like a balloon!

Have you met Robin ? , Full of wind

[wilsontown]

For me, this would be road cycling. Started on a knackered hand-me-down Raleigh when I was 13, saved up my milk round money to buy a proper racing bike (a Gazelle, still the thing I'm proudest to have owned), trained a couple of hundred miles a week around Sheffield. Up hill and down dale, in rain, sunshine, hail, sleet, snow and gale force winds.

Now high-end road bikes are what Surrey stockbrokers spend their money on and I'm a MAMIL who thinks he's in the Tour de France because I wear proper kit.

It was a real outsider's sport when I started and isn't now, so it's progress I suppose.

[unapologetic pedant]

On 20/11/2021 at 23:07, Johnoco said:

I've had similar arguments with people from the dance scene who have tried to commandeer the term 'hardcore'. There is only one hardcore and that is the one that emerged from the punk scene. End of.

I`ve got a few compilations of dance hardcore. Difficult to define genre - kind of banging bonkers comedy rave. Listening in the cold light 30 years later, it`s hard to believe I exchanged money for some of this stuff. One track`s full of Laurel and Hardy samples. Sacrilege.

Best hardcore punk band were Government Issue. End of. They were from Washington D.C. - absolutely brilliant and completely ignored. Often the way.

[Mumby Magic]

3 hours ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

I had this album back then, you bandwagon jumper!

So it's me u n Robin Evans I think.

[Mumby Magic]

Just now, Mumby Magic said:

So it's me u n Robin Evans I think.

Great album tho.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 hour ago, wilsontown said:

For me, this would be road cycling. Started on a knackered hand-me-down Raleigh when I was 13, saved up my milk round money to buy a proper racing bike (a Gazelle, still the thing I'm proudest to have owned), trained a couple of hundred miles a week around Sheffield. Up hill and down dale, in rain, sunshine, hail, sleet, snow and gale force winds.

Now high-end road bikes are what Surrey stockbrokers spend their money on and I'm a MAMIL who thinks he's in the Tour de France because I wear proper kit.

It was a real outsider's sport when I started and isn't now, so it's progress I suppose.

Another sport one for me would be long distance walking. Done it my whole life since I was a kid. Back then you'd hardly see anyone on the paths, just one or two liked minded individuals, you could walk hours without seeing anyone else. 

It's ridiculous these days when you have to queue to get through a gate or thousands of people just march up a mountain track in procession, what I tend to call the motorway effect. Completely takes the joy out of it when you are actually in an human traffic jam on the side of a mountain. 

And walking gear as well, how some of the brands have become fashion rather than just practicable clothes for enjoying a hobby. I remember the Helly Hanson coat craze with the more delinquent youths about 10 years or so back. Used to be considered a respectable, good quality brand of walking gear, now just seen as something less respectable youths of society wore while smashing up bus shelters. 

Lucky I tend to set off on a walk at the sort of time other proper walkers do, between 7 and 8 in the morning cos the less experienced, only doing it because its fashionable people don't set off til dinnertime so I've got a good few hours to myself.

[The Rocket]

1 hour ago, wilsontown said:

Now high-end road bikes are what Surrey stockbrokers spend their money on and I'm a MAMIL who thinks he's in the Tour de France because I wear proper kit.

What a hoot bikes have become. I went out looking for a bike recently - 15 gears and disc brakes was the minimum. I said to the shop assistant ` I want back pedal brakes and no gears`, he pointed at the kiddies bikes.

I ended up picking up an old girls treddly for nothing, stripped it back, new seat and a piece of 25mm pipe for the handle bars and bought a couple of hand grips, painted it black and it looks amazing. Total cost about $50 quid. My sons riding it now, that says something because he`s at the age where they are very image conscious.

[Futtocks]

Back a long time ago, I was in Hampstead or Highgate or somewhere equally prosperous, and the friend I was walking with spotted a bike on a skip that looked pretty complete. We hauled it out and, because he already had a decent bike, we agreed that this would be mine.

It was a drop-bar, skinny-tyred racer at the time when mountain bikes were really becoming the fashionable thing. When we got it home, we took a closer look, and all the parts were from different manufacturers. Instead of a cobbled-together job, this was clearly someone's assembly of carefully-chosen, top quality gear. It rode like a dream, and you could hold it aloft on your little finger with barely an effort.

Whatever the reason for it being binned, it wasn't the quality, because that was the best bike I've ever owned. Yes, I had to spend a few (very few) quid on new tyres, inner tubes, brake blocks and lights, but whoever chucked that bike out has my undying gratitude.

It eventually went (along with me) over the bonnet of an inattentive driver's car on the Edgware Road and was never the same again, but not 'til after many years' happy use.

[unapologetic pedant]

In 1976, a friend of mine got a skateboard. There`d been an item on Magpie about skateboarding in America. Over here, most people didn`t know what they were.

I could barely stand on it without falling off. Deluded myself that it must be like learning to ride a bike - a few grazed knees and elbows to start with, but eventually everything would click, and Hey Presto off you go slaloming tin cans and flying round half pipes.

Few months later and skateboards were everywhere. 1977 was the year of the skateboard craze. By 1978, you couldn`t give a skateboard away.

[Kayakman]

Kayaking....I was in/started in the middle early days....the growth has been phenomenal over the years....its exponential.

[Futtocks]

ITV's World of Sport (never not desperate for content) covered the World Skateboarding Championships at least once in the Seventies. Instead of stunts, it was more focused on choreography, like Torville & Dean-style Ice Dance. Very odd, in hindsight, but that was the way things were then.

It's come a long way since then. I'm sure there's some purists who whinge about how things have changed. How am I sure? I belong to a Rugby League forum! 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:

I`ve got a few compilations of dance hardcore. Difficult to define genre - kind of banging bonkers comedy rave. Listening in the cold light 30 years later, it`s hard to believe I exchanged money for some of this stuff. One track`s full of Laurel and Hardy samples. Sacrilege.

Best hardcore punk band were Government Issue. End of. They were from Washington D.C. - absolutely brilliant and completely ignored. Often the way.

GI were fantastic and 'You' is one of my favourite LP's. They influenced many other, more successful people like Ryan Adams and REM. 

[JonM]

10 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Another sport one for me would be long distance walking. Done it my whole life since I was a kid. Back then you'd hardly see anyone on the paths, just one or two liked minded individuals, you could walk hours without seeing anyone else. 

It's ridiculous these days when you have to queue to get through a gate or thousands of people just march up a mountain track in procession, what I tend to call the motorway effect. 

Just need to avoid the tourist honeypots. Hebridean way, I saw on average less than one walker per day. West Highland way can have 1000+ people per day in summer.

[unapologetic pedant]

13 hours ago, The Rocket said:

I ended up picking up an old girls treddly for nothing, stripped it back, new seat and a piece of 25mm pipe for the handle bars and bought a couple of hand grips, painted it black and it looks amazing. 

Vorsprung Durch Technik

[Gerrumonside ref]

14 hours ago, Mumby Magic said:

So it's me u n Robin Evans I think.

I even had the long sleeve Die Laughing t shirt in grey with the words in large print on the back:

”He who fights monsters should see to it he does not become a monster himself”

[Shadow]

This has changed from "Things you were into before they became popular" into "Tell me you're old without giving your age"

 

[gingerjon]

7 minutes ago, Shadow said:

This has changed from "Things you were into before they became popular" into "Tell me you're old without giving your age"

 

It seems to be more, "Tell me you hate everything and everyone these days without ..."

Which may be the same thing.

[Derwent]

I was possibly the first person to buy Linkin Park’s debut album Hybrid Theory. In October 2000 I was in Paradise record store in Santa Barbara browsing, it was the time when bands like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach were popular, and got talking to the lad behind the counter about music. He told me to have a listen to this album by a new band called Linkin Park and gave me some headphones to have a listen. This was on Monday morning and I was flying home that night but the album wasn’t being officially released until Tuesday and they couldn’t sell them until then. So the lad let me take one and said he’d put the sale through the till the next day. To this day it remains one of my favourite albums.

[Futtocks]

I was an early adopter of DAB radio.

I was also an early discarder of DAB radio.

[voteronniegibbs]

.

[Futtocks]

19 minutes ago, voteronniegibbs said:

I like DAB radio. Purely out of curiosity...and each to their own... why did you move away from it?

I got it for Test Match Special and (of course) Rugby League commentary, because Five Live Sports Extra wasn't available as an analogue channel. When reception was good, the sound quality of TMS was much clearer than the Long Wave alternative. Also, back then, if your radio was tuned to an AM station and was anywhere near a CRT TV, it would generate really intrusive noise, like a badly-played Theremin. Flat-screen TVs have since got rid of that problem.

However, reception is very poor where I live, here in the remote and distant lands of... inside the M25. Even a roof aerial needs a booster to pick up anything at all. Plus, DAB interference sounds really nasty compared to analogue hiss. When my first DAB tuner started playing up, I got rid of it and never replaced it.

Now I use a Freeview set-top box, connected to the roof aerial, for most radio use at home. The audio outputs go through the hi-fi and I have a model that shows the channel number on the front display, so I don't need a screen on at any time for radio listening and station selection. The bit-rates on DTV are higher and use a more efficient audio codec than the DAB, which was rushed to the UK market with MP2, which was pretty much obsolete even back then.

Then there's internet radio for stations that aren't broadcast on Digital TV channels (local stations' RL commentary, for instance).

[Tommygilf]

On 21/11/2021 at 10:03, The Hallucinating Goose said:

I just remembered when I last went to Sheffield on the train. There was a group of teenagers sat behind me and one of them said he loved Harry Potter, absolutely obsessed, one of the biggest fans in the world with the way he was going on. After earwigging for a bit it was revealed that he was basically a huge fan of the films because he admitted to having only read the first book. 

I'm sorry but he cannot claim to be one of the biggest fans of something if he hasn't read the source material. If he actually clarified he was a fan of the films then that's okay but don't say you are a fan of the entire fictional universe. 

Lord of the Rings is another example. I've known people that are absolutely obsessed with the films but have never read the books and have even had heated discussions about things that happen because I am referencing the books (you know the most accurate and original source of information) and they are referencing the films. What usually happens is when these people are getting really defensive and it's just become a full blown argument, they realise in themselves that they are wrong because there is so much info in the books that isn't in the films (of course they don't admit they are wrong) and they end the discussion there and then by clarifying that they were talking about what happens in the films, something they should have done at the start of the half hour argument. 

Just to come back on this point, I do think there is a case that can be made about different media.

I agree, an uber fan would most likely be a fan of everything associated with a subject. That said, to take your examples of LOTR and Harry Potter, the movies do somewhat exist in their own space. There's a bigger debate about faithfulness to the source material and whether these are the same characters even.

Perhaps the biggest example of this is Game of Thrones/ASOIAF. For years there were a group of fans of the latter who created websites and theories etc which was blown open by the TV show. A new mass audience came in and for the first 5/6 seasons of the show book readers and lore enthusiasts were ahead of the show-only watchers. This created somewhat of an elitism complex which has stayed as the book fans still hold onto ASOIAF even today to describe what they are talking about. The sophistication debate between visual and written mediums is a very old one, but still very prominent today in some areas.

In my experience, book readers and lore enthusiasts get most disappointed by the TV shows, especially when they divert from the source/historic material. Always watch first and read later!