>I’m reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I’m at the right age and frame of mind to being doing so: late twenties and almost wholly disenfranchised. The book popularised the titular terminology for the end-of-80’s-early-90’s generation of youth, and I’m finding it hard to read without thinking of check flannel shirts, nihilism and Nirvana.

Thinking of the music and those times now – when MTV was still a bit rough around the edges – mirroring the music – and comparing them with the media-savvy, always-on, always-aware, always-ready times of now will inevitably lead to you conclude that we were living in a much more innocent time then. Then again, it could just be latent nostalgia finally revealing itself, cackling at its control over your emotions.

In Generation X, the lead character decries the generation below him as being vain, air-headed and unconcerned with events beyond the end of their own nose. These are the same accusations levelled at 18 year olds today, by people like me. Perhaps the cavemen complained about the caveboys too.

Cycles, phases, waves: pop culture constantly regurgitates itself, like a snake eating its own tail. Today’s New Band is the positive result of the endless churning of pop culture past and present. Still Flyin’ are about the most hit-the-ground-running positive-start-to-the-week band as we’ve had on ANBAD.

Good Thing It’s A Ghost Town Around Here is a good song make frantically happy by a stratosphere-soaring chorus that will wheedle its way into your brain and stay there, drumming it’s fingers on the steering wheel of your mind. It’s so much fun, I can picture custard pies being flung around the studio by specially hired clowns while it was being recorded, possibly on a fairground ride.

Dead Memory Man, shouty, punchy chorus and all, reaches up your trouser leg and insistently secures your attention. Clattering and freewheeling like a tuneful runaway train full of cheerful deathwishers, and almost as intriguing, it’s a dizzying blend of all the instruments, ideas and melodies to hand, working against the odds.

Still Flyin’ are from San Francisco. If I could track down the band, watch them play, and whack an imaginary cow bell along to their music, I just know that life, right there, would be good. Tap along yourself here!