They Joined Together And Decided Not To Fight

More music from Merseyside. The Farm were Liverpool's own indie-dance band, on the go since the mid-80s, into football, trainers and cagoules and responsible for a pisstaking fanzine called The End. The single Stepping Stone and appearance in A Short Film About Chilling put them into the music papers and the clubs and in 1990 Groovy Train sent them into the charts. A head of steam built up towards the release of the album Spartacus in 1991- one of the most disappointing albums I've ever heard. Luckily they found something from somewhere to write All Together Now. The lyrics were based on the Christmas truce of 1914, written by singer Peter Hooton years earlier. Hooton wrote a song that could have been corny but he'd managed to sidestep it to write something that was poignant and inspiring- a call for peace and unity, brotherhood and not following orders. The video's touching as well, filmed in the local pub with older regulars mouthing the words.



For Hooton growing up in Liverpool in the 80s, the city Thatcher wanted to destroy, politics was a passion. Groovy Train was about a girl he bumped into in the late 80s, a former politico and activist, who had got into clubbing and E and wasn't into politics anymore, she'd got on the groovy train.