So we come to the golden summer of Britpop, when Cool Britannia was made manifest by
Boom Boom Boom - Outhere Brothers
Who were they? Were they out here, or out there? They were an American duo, and notwithstanding their pair of relatively benign Number 1s - this and Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle), a close inspection of their discography reveals song titles of unmitigated filth. Like, I can't even ... just look them up ...
Oh sure, Country House vs Roll with It was a couple of weeks away, and on the minds of the likes of me, but, really the charts were, for the most part, the usual stuff. Some indie bands were doing a bit better than they would otherwise, but it wasn't rampant menswear.
The biggest Number 1s that year were by Celine Dion, Robson and Jerome, Michael Jackson, Coolio and Simply Red. And Back for Good, by Take That, which people got very very excited about. I was a little sniffy about it, but am prepared to accept it has stood the time better than Oasis' Some Might Say, which replaced it at Number 1.
I started buying the NME in early 95, as well as occasional Vox, Q, Select, Melody Maker, so considered myself, at once, a fully fledged indie kid. I was also extremely Christian.
I was combining those two things seamlessly. As I practised them, they shared the quality of looking askance at the rest of the world with mostly gentle, occasionally vicious, despair. Perfect.
I remember 1st August, my 17th birthday, pretty well. For once I am not playing cricket. I start the day at Rotherhithe Youth Hostel, as part of the surveying week of the PHSP playscheme/Access guide and travel in the backseat a small car without AC on a very hot day with Mark and Martin up through northeast London, to survey various leisure facilities in the Lea Valley for disabled access.
In my head, I have marked this as a not-particularly-fun birthday, but I still remember a certain awe at the melting tarmac and the endless expanse of the city, with the northeast being the opposite of the part I knew well. There were so many wasps about, that's the other thing I remember.
I was certainly aware of those kooky Outhere Brothers. It was either on that Portsmouth playscheme or the next that a guy called Dan, who the kids called "Dantona" because he wore a Man Utd shirt and put his collar up, would lead the coachful in a rendition, singing "Boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh!" and the would all holler back "Way-oh!!" over and over again, and I understood at that point that the world of men was divided in two, between those who, when they sang "boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh", would be correctly confident that everyone would, indeed, say "way-oh!"; and those who, though their preference would be for never, under any circumstance, singing "boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh", if extreme events did ever force them to, then as they miserably finished their "now everybody say way-oh", they would know, in their bitter hearts, that people would not holler back "Way-oh!!". And I was, needless to say, in the latter category. And there have I stayed.
Britpop now! Cool Britannia! Champagne supernova! Mad for it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Polish,_2_Biscuits_%26_a_Fish_Sandwich
By the way, Boom is clearly a fantastic word to have in the title of pop songs, pretty much a guarantee of success - if you want to hit, call it Boom Crash, or something ...
Boom Clap, Boom Boom, Boom! Shake the Room, Boom Bang-a-Bang, Boom Boom Boom Boom, Boombastic, Boom Boom Pow, ... all ... bangers
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