Gone are the heady days of political protest, revolutionary rousing and experimental intoxicants in our universities. What was once a breeding ground for cutting edge ideas, social change and pioneer thinking has now been dulled to accommodate the breeding of tiresome uniformed fashion victims with a thirst for nothing but pop culture, being force fed tired old texts whilst digging themselves or Mummy and Daddy deeper into debt.
I speak totally out of turn here as I have never been to university myself. Having been in the music industry since the age of 18 it was more who-you-know than what-you-know, and I happened to fall into the right crowd. However I have been a door girl for all those years (10+ and counting – my, where does the time go…) and have been both shocked and appalled by the psyche of uni students today.
I know they’re coming before they’ve even entered the venue. It only takes one look at the sufficiently scruffy-but-styled, skinny-jeaned, lairy-shirt clad band to alert me that the undergrads are coming. And then they come full force, like an army of children dressed in old ladies clothes and 80’s knock-backs, donning fashion that screams ‘we don’t care!’ but parading around in it like a bunch of supermodels at a high-end houte-couture crack party.
Once they have been sufficiently seen and heard they make their way to me with a look of contempt and disgust.
‘Do we really have to pay?’
‘My boyfriend/brother/Mother/dog is in the band! I shouldn’t have to pay!’
‘Is there a student discount?’
‘Do we get a free drink?’
These the incessant questions of the post-pubescent waves of the future that haven’t tried to sneak their way past me without paying earning immediate expulsion from the show. Once informed there is no discount, no guests, they in fact do have to pay and it might be considered a nice thing to do to support a fellow student in their artistic endeavour, they then proceed to pay me in nothing more than silver coins and take ten years to do so. Once inside they buy one drink, sit on it for the night and ensure they there are again appropriately seen and heard, often taking no notice of the band whatsoever.
Though this demographical study is scathing and heartless at best, I admit that it is not all their fault. For years generation after generation of high school leavers have been forced into undecided and overpriced tertiary education which neither they nor their parents can afford. It’s not surprising that somewhere down the line they’ve all just given up, spat the dummy, stumbled their way through arts or communication degrees and thrown it back in our face.
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