It's only rock and roll...

I - unashameably - love rock music. Everything from Avenged Sevenfold and 30 Seconds to Mars to Led Zeppelin. I also like country music. I've seen Martina McBride twice and think Sugarland are brilliant. I have even got Billy Ray Cyrus's autograph and know the line dancing moves to Achy Breaky Heart. (Okay, maybe I shouldn't be proud of that last bit.)

But rock music is my first love and I get incredibly annoyed when people say that, at my age, I am too old to like it and waaay toooo geriatic to go to any gigs!

When one of my friends turned forty she was told by her mother that she had to stop listening to that silly top forty rubbish and listen to classical - as was befitting her age.

Dear me. Are we supposed to reach a cross roads in life where our musical tastes are cauterized and we're reprogrammed to listen and, worse still like, Daniel O'Donnell?

I once sat next to an old aged pensioner, with a grey-haired perm and a long-suffering husband, at a Squeeze concert and she was having a ball. Her husband told me she loved New Wave music and dragged him to all the gigs. I watched her singing along - she knew all the words - and thought I want to be like that when I'm old. I wanted to go to gigs with my kids and keep up with new music and I'm proud to say that I do.

I never wanted to get stuck in an era of music. Some people do that. I know, I'm married to one. My other half is still firmly in the 70s. 'The best music was in the 70s' he says proudly (yeah, like 'Agadoo')

I know someone else who got to the 80s and stopped dead in their musical tracks and from then on didn't want to listen to anything else. And that's fine - if it's what you like.

But some of us have gone merrily through life adapting to musical changes quite happily, adding new bands and songs to the ones we already love. I'm not very keen on rap or crap with a missing C as one of my customers insists on calling it! But I get it.

I just get really angry when I'm told that I should 'grow-up' and stop listening to bands that kids are listening to. Why not???

I have dragged my son to concerts where he has turned to me and said. 'I bet everyone in here thinks I've brought you when really it's you who's brought me.'

Of course, I have also been known to be the kiss of death to some bands. There was a time when one of my other sons was listening to a band and I said I liked them. He recoiled in horror, looked at the CD as if it was covered in anthrax and never listened to it again. There was no way he was going to listen to the same stuff as his mother!!!

I suppose I understand that. If my mother had said she liked the Beatles I would definitely have thought twice about having that picture of Paul McCartney on my bedroom wall.

But I'm not my mother. I like to think I've got my finger on the pulse. My favourite music channel is SCUZZ. I've got a 30 Seconds to Mars T-shirt and an MCR button-badge.

Music is so important, whatever it is. An old lady told me she remembered the day when people were always singing and there isn't nearly enough music around us today. And I agree.

We were cleaning at an old people's home last week and could hear an elderly man singing hymns in his bedroom and boy, was he singing with gusto. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Everyone should definitely sing more. And listen to more music, too. Whatever you like, whatever age you are. Explore music. The site 'Spotify' has opened up a whole world of different genres of music to discover.

And if anyone says 'hey, aren't you a bit old for that stuff' just tell them this: