“The whole sixth form likes The Smiths and he’s listening to Yes!” scoffed Garve one day in the sixth form common room as I foisted 90125 on everyone again. No actually Garve, the whole sixth form does not validate your tastes because they’re not all tossers (not quite), I thought inwardly. Strange that someone who prided himself on being so radical in his politics couldn’t tolerate non-conformity in music preferences. Sadly, I lacked Garve’s raging certitude of the rightness of my own opinion and couldn’t muster the appropriate response, which would have been to pull out a large revolver and empty it into his smug, twitching corpse. Doubtless there would have been denim-clad rockabillies throwing gladioli at his funeral; he’d have liked that.
If only back then, as an alternative to random violence, I’d been able to tell him that one day “How Soon Is Now” would be covered by a couple of Russian pretendy teen lesbians - and they’d do it better.