Authors Note: This was written on Monday 6th April 2015 on the way to Devon in the early afternoon.
I'm in the passenger seat riding shotgun in a car with my wife and recently born baby strapped into her car seat sleeping away behind me. We are in our Toyota Yaris which is bursting at the seams with baby related paraphernalia. For someone so small our baby requires a lot of equipment! Heading out onto the road for Devon my wife asks me to put on some music. Looking through the ipod I see some recent albums and artists, Adele-check, Emelie Sande-check, Ellie Goulding-check... Paul Oakenfold.... Check! This last artist was the one I selected and as Bunkka started it brought forward a wave of nostalgia.
The late 90s were an amazing time, after xxx years of Tory rule hope seemed to be in the air with the rise of Labour and Blair. It was a time of optimism as football was coming home in Euro 96 but the biggest area of influence was music. Britpop was in full swing with Blur, Pulp and Oasis battling it out in the charts. In fact London was cool as a whole, claiming the title of 'Coolest place in the World' in Vanity Fair magazine.
This time will stick with me and many of the people of my generation due to the incredible diverse range of music. Trance, dance, jungle and drum and bass would be battling it out in the charts next to the likes of Spice Girls and errr Aqua. The music hit the mainstream, so much so that when Sony were launching their Playstation console they promoted it alongside Wipeout with its cutting edge music tracks. There are many tracks created in this period that are stone cold classics; Beachball, For An Angel, 7 Days One Week and many many more. There are names that will stick out like Paul Oakenfold, Matt Darey, Tall Paul, Paul Van Dyke, Judge Jules, Fatboy Slim and of course Pete Tong. The music of this era had such a profound impact on my formative years that for our wedding playlist 50 percent was dance and trance, the other 50 was the usual pop fare. By far the dance floor was busiest when a pumping track came on, it felt like a club in the 90s.
Well now with broken dreams from Bliars Labour, the Middle East up the shitter due to continued interference from countries with their own agendas and the economy in tatters due to greedy bankers and unscrupulous businesses I do look back fondly at those times. They weren't perfect by any means but the times seemed simpler. At least we still have the music memories.