The kids are solid gold: do the indie kids care about the homeless?

So the other evening I'm idly looking out of the window of the bus when I see a large crowd outside one of Hackney's many new/newish record shops. It's a tiny shop (invariably empty) and this was a pretty hefty crowd, maybe 75 people. "OK, something's going on", I think (I'm astute like that). Was it an in-store? Yet another thing I've missed because I wasn't sufficiently plugged-in? So I gaze at this motley group of bottled beer-drinking music-appreciating types. People not unlike me (though younger). Hmm. Hang on though, what's happening now? There was a bloke going from small group to small group, apparently asking for money. A bit dishevelled, with a fairly hopeless, crushed demeanour, like he's not really expecting anyone to give him anything. And they don't. Apparently no-one's giving him a thing, they're barely even responding to him. And these are people not unlike me. They've got their bottled beers (probable cost: £4 each) and they're there for good times. Music and good times. And they might have picked up a record or two (probable cost: something astronomical, as they all are these days). So the desperate dishevelled bloke's a faint annoyance. They try to pretend he's not there. Er, so what's my point? That they should all have dipped into their pockets and given him a pound or whatever? That it's disappointing that people who go to indie record shops aren't more generous to desperate/homeless people? Yes, both of these, I suppose. And maybe I shouldn't generalise about "people who go to indie record shops" anyway - sure. I think my main point is that it was just ... depressing. Another reminder that music is so often about consumerism, money, status, fashionability etc, but not necessarily kindness or decency. Or at least that's the way I chose to interpret this little vignette from the increasingly "cool" streets of my patch of east London. If this wasn't quite the huddled-up homeless person snootily ignored by bejewelled opera-goers on their way back to their mansion houses in Kensington, it was a very low-key Hackney-in-2019 version of it, one with an indie vibe. What am I looking for here - more charity? As it happens, I'm not massively into the music + "good causes" formula through which music often projects itself as a "force for good". These initiatives, worthwhile though they may sometimes be, feel so artistically deadening. Instead, personal efforts to show some humanity strike me as being more important and more admirable. Obviously I'm not so naive as to think that all the musicians I like are kind-hearted people. And the same goes for the audiences who go to the gigs I attend (in fact, minor misanthrope that I am, I'm always complaining about the annoying behaviour of people at gigs). But ... shunning a homeless/desperate person? Because you're too busy with your record shop get-together? I dunno ... Back in the day (the heyday of so-called "indie", really), there was a song called The Kids Are Solid Gold, by the excellent Sportique. A great song and a great thought. So yeah, maybe - just maybe - I got it all wrong. Perhaps a few minutes later, after my bus had moved on and I'd stopped looking, the record shop kids the other night suddenly realised they'd blanked a poor homeless guy. They hurriedly got a friend to hold their beer and went running down the street to catch up with him. They apologised for their earlier rudeness, and emptied their pockets and gave him everything they had ...