I’ve been writing this column for more than a year now, and what a momentous year it has been. In the space of the past year, I’ve been called everything from a funny cunt to a fuck head and everything in between. (Actually, I suppose there’s not too much in between those two.) The original intent of this column was to share some opinions on music and movies. I’ve strayed a bit over the past several months, to put it mildly.

One reason is that I’ve hit a sort of musical menopause and am not listening to that much new music these days. Most of my friends hit this stage decades ago. I have friends who used to listen to the most bizarre shit in the world but as soon as they got married started going to Beach Boys concerts, singing along to Kokomo and trying to convince me they were having a good time. I never thought it would happen to me.

But the fact that it has happened fits into a theory of mine which says that after a while your brain fills up and that for every new thing you learn, you have to forget something else to make space. Oh sure, scientists tell us we only use a small percentage of our brain (mostly trying to decide between Hello Kitty and Doraemon tissue box covers). But aren’t these the same scientists who told us the Chinese are actually one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel and that some day Tom Cruise will win an Oscar? I’m sorry, I can’t remember. Hell, just yesterday I woke up and forgot to remember the Alamo.

I guess I’ve officially become a cranky old man like my dad, who used to call the Beatles the Beat-less and ask me why Janis Joplin was trying so hard to sound black. Or maybe Father Time is just catching up with me, as hideous an admission as that is. I went to see The Cure last month when they played in HK – to my mind, they’re still a relatively recent band, until I checked and saw that Robert Smith has had the same hairstyle for almost 30 years.

I no longer see the point of keeping track of which hip-hop artistes are in which posse; it all sounds the same to me and I long for the days when groups like Public Enemy were making political statements. That was the ’90s. Now in the ’00s, Flavor Flav is roasted on Comedy Central and all the jokes are about him sleeping with Sylvester Stallone’s ex-wife. Yes, I watched it, sitting there in a catatonic trance, unable to figure out why I had it on yet unable to find the energy to go looking for the remote.

Back in the ’90s I loved the way Britpop looked back and winked at some of the great records of the ’60s, but now in the ’00s all I can think is that everything new merely sounds like something old, so I might as well just listen to the old stuff I have an emotional connection to. Yes, I know the White Stripes released a new album this year and everyone thinks it’s the best thing since, oh, the last White Stripes album. But I was far more excited that all five Bonzo Dog Band albums were re-issued with incredibly cleaned-up sound and some truly rare bonus tracks.

Another case in point – I was flipping around on the TV and eventually made my way to one of the music video channels. I paused and watched for a while, absolutely convinced I was seeing some Cocteau Twins video I’d never seen before. I thought, how cool that they’re showing something as retro as this and how odd that I don’t recognize the song. I kept watching till the end to get the song title and was astounded to discover that the two geeky looking guys making a big noise in the background while a woman’s voice floated into and around it was not the Cocteau Twins at all, it was Blonde Redhead, a group currently getting a fair share of attention in indie circles. My only thought at that point was why bother to listen to them if they sound just like the Cocteau Twins – might as well dig out some of the Twins’ old records instead. Then the next video came up, something from LCD Soundsystem, and I quite liked it.

So I can’t quite claim that all new records suck and all old records are great; that would be silly. A couple of weeks ago I loaded most of Pink Floyd’s albums onto my iPod. And one day I sat down and listened to The Wall for the first time in about 10 years. Of course, this is one of the largest selling albums of all time and everyone knows the singles Another Brick in the Wall and Comfortably Numb have become part of the standard bar-band canon. But what about the rest of it? Let me tell you, it was fookin’ brilliant in 1979 (the same year the Cure released their first record, if anyone’s counting) but in 2007 it reeks like the cheese that got lost in the back of my refrigerator two years ago and I only just found. Roger Waters moaning about his father dying in the war as if he was the only one and Bob Ezrin’s huge sound-effects-laden over-production just added up to one big headache for me.

And then, without even thinking about it, I flipped over to a 1973 Lou Reed album, Berlin, also produced by Ezrin. Most people hated this album when it first came out, hard on the heels of Transformer and Walk on the Wild Side, but I’ve loved it from day one and am pleased to see that it has continually grown in stature, to the point where Lou Reed has been playing it in its entirety in 2006 and 2007 shows around the world. The lyrics are stark in their portrayal of domestic violence and drug use, and ‘adult’ in the way that, no matter how often you hear them, they never sound phony or dated.

To be honest, some recent records I’ve liked, some I plan to spend more time with, but these days too many I listen to once and realize I have no need to return. Okay, I know it’s not fair for me to expect to have the same sort of emotional connection to new stuff as to albums I’ve been playing continually for 30 or 40 years, but that’s just a fact of life. At least I still think Kokomo is one of the worst records ever. And if you ever hear me say differently, please put me out of my misery.