My first book, Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall, ends in 1997 with me teetering on the precipice of mental ruin. For the rest of the country this is a brief period of optimism and inclusion; after 18 years of Conservative government the British public have voted themselves ‘in’. I have been voted ‘out’. Three years before reality television bites and I am already ahead of the game. Never mind, the margins are good. No-man’s-land is all right. It’s easy to laugh when you’re on the outside – and I rarely take the easy option – but just this once please forgive me; after all, being on the outside is what this book, Post Everything, is about.
After the commercial and critical success of Black Box Recorder’s second album I backed away from the edge of ‘the fantasy’. It was the second or third time that I had grasped the nettle – but this time, with no small amount of self-knowledge, I let go. Most of the ‘action’ in Post Everything takes place in London; I had by the end of the century pretty much extricated the act of ‘touring’ from my life (Black Box Recorder over a period of six years probably played no more than 20 gigs). This book is about self-imposed exile on the fringes of the ‘music scene’, and sometimes even further out than that …
I still manage to have about five feuds a year. As a man in his early forties I no longer wear each feud as a badge of honour. I am in fact mildly embarrassed by these skirmishes. Many of the deposed of Bad Vibes have gone, and in this book there are many ghosts, and despite what they try and tell you, rock music itself, in the ‘Post Everything’ age is a spectre.
First, a little scene-setting: Britain in the late 1990s. Post Britpop. The dawn of the rock ’n’ roll apocalypse. Post Everything. If it feels like there’s nothing new under the sun, that’s because there is nothing new under the sun. The 50s and 60s marked the end of post-war austerity and the beginning of cultural enlightenment. The 70s ushered in the first true age of rock, as well as its first self-conscious year zero – and by the 80s depression, ennui, and irony tumbled over each other to create an accelerated culture. At the turn of the new decade, brass bands and morris dancers were more subversive than rock music. The only way forward was to pretend that nothing mattered. (Everything mattered?) After the death of Kurt Cobain popular culture entered, and is still in, its final phase: Post Everything – where the phones don’t ring any more and conversation is silent. Post nostalgia, post reason, post memory – memory replaced by a collective memory for an age that did not exist; we can all pretend to remember communally that episode of Bergerac that we didn’t watch – y’know, the one where Liza Goddard didn’t give old Jim that filthy am-I-or-am-I-not look before she failed to fall through the trap door. Post rock. Post Top of the Pops, post Gary Glitter, post the charts, post hit singles, post pop, post modern, post irony, post David Bowie ever making another album. Post albums, post archives, post hard copy, pre-ephemera. Post (real) fame, post real celebrity, post Warhol, Post. Any. Fucking. Good. Post film, post telly, post millennium madness; pre-millennial mumbo jumbo, post millennial mumbo jumbo, post God, post science – does rationalism have to be so damned anti-poetic? (I mean, Richard Dawkins isn’t exactly Voltaire.) Post literature – post pens, post paper, post ink, post letter writing. Post romantic – what was your last romantic gesture? Post London – young couples with children leave the big city, the countryside groans with the strain, man, it’s like the fucking blitz. Post class system – leisurewear for the new white trash. Post fucking shoes, post leather uppers, post style – wear a good suit well and it can hide a multitude of sins, but don’t let a suit wear you. Post suits. Post hats apart from weddings and funerals. Post comedy – Bill Hicks has got a lot to answer for. Post imagination – try taking a surrealistic leap of the mind. Post. Avant. Garde. Post shock – comedians tell rape jokes, M. McCann jokes, wife-beating jokes and paedophile jokes under the auspices of saying the unsayable, safe in the knowledge that the aforementioned won’t or cannot make themselves known. But post-political-correctness race jokes are still a no-go area – there may be foreigners in the audience, you might get lamped. Post child catcher, post flashers – what happened to all those harmless old perverts who used to lurk in parks and under railway bridges? Post starving for your art – real artists are just compelled, regardless of whether there is any fiscal demand. They just get on with it, it’s a curse, y’know? Post art. Banksy, fucking Banksy telling you what you already know. Post drinking – what exactly is binge drinking? Has everyone forgotten we are a northern European country? Post geography. Post smoke-filled pubs; pre health consciousness, interesting people used to smoke cigarettes. It’s getting hard to be interesting. Post interesting. Post fags, post drugs – the older generation, though barely acknowledged, look on aghast at the younger generation’s casual acquaintance with altered states. Post old people. Post AIDS. Post Labour, post Tory, post right wing, post left wing. Speaking of angels, where did all the Hell’s Angels go? Post national mourning. Post intelligence – human intelligence isn’t what it used to be, according to a survey that no one took part in. Military intelligence isn’t what it used to be either, according to a dossier that everyone ignored. Post all’s fair in love and war. Post world war veterans. Post birth, post generation gaps – where did all the Teddy boys go? Post teenage, post 20-something, post 30-something, post life begins at 40, post middle age, post midlife crisis, post old age – total inability to accept the ageing process. Post age. Post death. Post apocalypse. I’m going to go bleeding postal any moment now – Post. Everything.