Green And Pleasant Land

The Top Of The Pops repeats on BBC4 have reached January 1996. The two episodes that were shown last Friday night contained the usual mixture of good, bad and awful- the number one single in the 4th and 11th of January editions was Michael Jackson's Earth Song, surely one of the worst records ever made. The merely bad came in the form of The Outhere Brothers, Boyzone and a Shaggy song where he included this rhyming couplet- 'I treat you like a Queen, you treat me like  peasant/ Why do you have to treat me so unpleasant?'. Babylon Zoo were also present.

The good were represented by Everything But The Girl and Missing, and three singles from mid- 90s bands that all struck chords with me in different ways while watching. From the 4th January episode, welcoming in the new year, there was Dubstar and their single Not So Manic Now. 

I always liked what I heard by Dubstar but I never bought anything by them. This song was from their debut album Disgraceful, a cover of a song by an obscure mid- 90s band from Wakefield, Brick Supply. The vocal by singer Sarah, her north east accent and flat delivery, the synth strings and indie guitars, all slightly distracting from the song's lyrics that detail an attack on a pensioner (written by a mental health nurse who presumably with some experience of this). Leaving the topic of the song aside (and I didn't know this was what the was about until I started writing this post) the idea of not being so manic now was one that stuck with me. 

A week later (or about ten minutes later on Friday night with some judicious use of the Fast Forward button) we had an episode presented by Lisa I'Anson, much preferable to Nicky Campbell who presented Top Of The Pops the previous week. The show paddled through some filler- Judy Cheeks, Tori Amos and Baby D before we arrived at Gene and For The Dead. 

Again, like Dubstar, I liked what I heard by Gene but own nothing by them. I don't think I was looking for a new Smiths in 1996 but the song cut through on Friday night, the guitars chiming and swirling and singer Martin Rossiter looking every inch the mid- 90s indie rock star, a growl in his voice on the chorus and a good turn of phrase here and there- the song's title stayed with me for a while, as Dubstar's did. 

I do have this song by Gene, also a single and from their debut album from 1995, and I'm hearing this in a new light now too.

Olympian

The third band that lit up January 1996's first two Top of the Pops was Dreadzone and their single Little Britain. Dreadzone formed from the ashes of Big Audio Dynamite, drummer Greg Dread hooking up with Tim Bran and then recruiting former BAD mates Leo Williams and Dan Donovan. Little Britain became one of the crossover hits of 1996- I think one of the TV channels used it for their football coverage during Euro 96, a bit of a cultural dissonance as the St. George's flag flew everywhere and a supposedly new friendly, modern English nationalism was born. 

With lines like, 'Say no matter what your colour/ Your race or your culture/ This is our inheritance/ To lead you on a merry dance' and 'This is our land/ This is your land', Dreadzone were surely promoting immigration and a multi- cultural society, the waltz time strings of the song crossed with reggae, raga and the black British experience, and the power of music and dance to bring people together. 

Little Britain

As well as a couple of things that struck me personally, between them these three songs seemed to offer up something about the times- a sweetly sung song about trauma, an ode to the departed, and a celebration of black Britain and dancing. The then government, led by John Major, staggered on from one crisis and scandal to another for another year and a half after January 1996, until Labour landslide of May 1997 swept the Tories out of power for the next thirteen years, the TV coverage showing one Tory MP after another, standing in leisure centres and halls across the country as the results were read out by the returning officers, wiped out at the ballot boxes by voters who had finally become sick of them. Last week's election results- the local council elections, the Blackpool by- election and the mayoral elections- all seem like steps in the right direction for 2024.