You Realise You're Old When....

You realise you're old when... you pick up a CD and the band on the CD case looks a tad too immature for your liking.

Seriously, I was browsing through some CDs in search of a particular one I had read good reviews about (I'd forgotten which one it was, another sign of old age) and picked up this one from Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (or something like that). I had had thought the name looked vaguely promising, and the kind auntie salesperson had put it in the CD player for me; the songs I had listened to (about 20 secs each) had sounded OK, if not that exceptional.
And then I turned to the back of the CD case (heretofore unseen) and saw this obscene picture of the band members standing on some cliff (or something) trying to look cool. Seriously, it was like a rip-off of the Linkin Park Hybrid Theory album, come to think of it, except that they had applied some Photoshop effects, probably to hide the acne and hide their teenage youthful faces.

OK I'm probably exaggerating, and I'm not saying young people can't make good music (I know I'm a dinosaur with the face of a kitten), but seriously, that image was enough to make me put down the CD (after thanking the salesperson of course), and scramble out of the CD shop. You should have seen my expression then - or ask the salesperson, she looked at me oddly when I did that.

Up till now, I had never fully appreciated the marketing power (I'm sure some teenage girls would have gone goo-goo-gah-gah over the suave young men in the picture) a CD sleeve could harness until now.