"Re-issue! Re-package!"

I couldn't tell you exactly how or when I came by what knowledge I have of the history of popular music. Like a lot of people, I think that I just picked it up as I went along. To start with, it was by reading the NME and Melody Maker cover to cover, each week, gradually building up a picture of the events that were chronologically local to me.

And it wasn't straightforward; Imagine, for example, being in such intellectual isolation in those pre-web days that one had to divine how Joy Division became New Order solely by reading interviews that assumed the reader was already au fait with that story.

Over time, perhaps in my later teens, my interest extended out more academically and I would read about bands and parts of musical history that didn't necessarily feature in my record collection. Thus, my pre-Beatles knowledge blossomed from knowing who Bill Haley was to encompass, for example, Elvis, Sun Records, Little Richard, and Johnny Cash, and then there was the surprise realisation that Frank Sinatra wasn't just some old crooner but actually a pivotal and exciting part of the story.

Thus, I had a knowledge of the trends that went before the time when I fell in love with pop music, such as rock 'n' roll, Merseybeat, Mod, psychedelia, prog, glam, pub rock, and punk. And then I came onboard in the late seventies with Two-Tone, quickly moving on to become a New Romantic/Futurist.

Whatever I thought of all of these genres, one thing was for sure; pop music was constantly evolving. Even the bands I loved - Simple Minds, Japan, Gary Numan, Duran Duran et al - clearly developed their sound from album to album. Compare, for example, Japan's 'Quiet Life' and 'Tin Drum', recorded only two years apart but on different continents musically.

But somehow, around the mid-eighties, the impetus seemed to wane; there were no new genres apart from perhaps grunge. It's tempting so lay this at the doors of both dance music, with its more generic sound, and the commercialisation of pop via outfits such as Stock Aitken and Waterman.

By the mid-nineties, the independent faction of pop was not only stagnated but looking backwards: The Stone Roses, Blur, and Oasis are all evidence of this. Where music was moving forward, it appeared to be away from the charts and in the clubs, within the ever dividing sub-genres of dance.

And I was thinking about all of this today because of the box of gum in the picture. The world of confectionary seems to be a stuck in a similarly retrospective rut, where there are no new products, just ongoing variations on what has gone before.

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Reading: 'Mayflies' Andrew O'Hagan