Francis Drake's Pop Armada

Francis Drake Pop Armada

I have been cast adrift onto a tiny floating island made from Adidas popper trousers, Fat willy t-shirts and Sony Walkmans. Stretching out into unknown, uncharted, mythical waters, away from a mainland that was once so familiar. Forced into a maritime exodus all because of the Pop star and fellow seafarer Sir Francis Drake and his recent seizure of the Music charts, which has now become a distant sun to me. 

For how the hell have I not heard a song that has been No1 for 16 weeks. How? How can the most popular song in the country that has surely been played thousands of times on the radio, that has been sung along to on mobile phones at bus shelters, that on the evidence of a 16 week chart domination, a sizeable chunk of the population must know and love. How have I not come into contact with it?

Have I been counting Acolytes in deep caverns for the past 4 months? No. Have I spent the last four months inspecting my ears with my fingers while humming the Coronation Street theme non stop? No. Have I been in a coma after a foolish decision to ride a baking tray down a flight of stairs? No

So how has this happened? How could I be that much out of the loop of popular consensus? Surely a 16 week no1 song is inescapable, unavoidable slipping perniciously into the public consciousness like a celebrity sex scandal. Played relentlessly in every shopping centre, television montage and aerobics fitness class.

How have I missed this and isn’t Francis Drake dead? I thought he died of dysentery, fending off the Spanish navy somewhere near Panama? When did he launch both a thousand ships and a hit record? When?

It’s not that I’m immune to historical figures having smash hits. I remember the Robin Hood song. I remember it well. Massive it was, everyone sang it, you couldn’t escape it. 18 weeks at No1. ‘I know it’s true, everything I do, I do it for you’ ruining every 90’s wedding going, but I knew it.

Also it’s not that I’m adverse to the big hits. I was there with the Wet Wet Wets, ‘Love was around me’ that summer. Four weddings but the song refused to die. And I knew Rhianna’s song about selling umbrellas. All over that like a rash, bought a ton of umbrellas that summer, and a Parasol.

And it’s not that I was completely out of touch with the Modern charts even without Top of the Pop tarts I still had a foot in.

I knew the recent Justin Bieber songs. I may have hated myself for liking them so much, but fling enough shit at someone and eventually they forget their own smell. So, Why am I not covered in the content of Drake’s dysentery ridden bowels? Why?

And why sea shanties? How did that become the latest music trend? Maybe I could learn, ‘Ro Ho Ho, and a bottle of Rum’ and all that, I could try.

Oh who am I kidding? I’m a lost dog holding his missing poster, there’s no hope left. I’m so far off the musical map now, I buried deep in the page crease.

All because of a Sailor, a dead sailor, whatever next?

The only option now is to drift off to find new shores. Search for a forgotten time. Where hopefully there are people that when you ask them do you know Timmy mallet, they don’t look at you perplexed that there was once was a man that hit you with a foam hammer and that was children’s entertainment at it’s finest. Somewhere faraway where Robin hood is still No1.

Look back in Anger.

Out they shone, like two silver bullets, irreverent and derisive. Poking through the see through black shirt that barely covered the torso. Two small round nipples on Brett Anderson's pasty, lithe body that announced the arrival of Brit Pop.

Suede's 1993 Brit Awards performance was, apart from Jarvis cocker's mooning of Michael Jackson, the defining image of Britpop. Forget Liam and Patsy in a bed sheet. The dangerous, androgynous sexuality of Suede, gloriously perturbed much of Middle England. Here was a new generation, confident, sexually ambiguous, and definitely not the Beatles.

Sadly, Suede's beautiful revolution was overtaken by the louder, more obnoxious Oasis, who brought with them a barrel of tedious guitar bands all with shaggy haired, gobshite, lead singers, that flooded the pop charts.

Lad culture was born. Where emasculated males caught in arrested development prolonged their eventual decline into the morose responsibilities of adulthood. Instead opting to suck Hooch up through a straw out of Bozzer's backside. While their mates belted out 'Wonderwall' and tossed each other off to FHM, or other PG pornography, claiming 'it's all banter'.

The great dawn it was not.

I wasn't old enough to be Mad for it. I just remember wearing a shirt that nearly reached my ankles, purchasing a bucket hat and doing a Jimmy Saville impression, before we knew the horror, but looking back most of the Brit pop music was a great turd sandwich, that left kernels between the teeth.

So many dodgy bands, including Dodgy who were dodgy. If you want proof that it was all ass treacle just think of the last time you actually pulled out an Ocean colour scene CD, or a Shed Seven, or a Cast. Your brain knows even if you haven't caught up.

However, there is a saving grace, and that's the criminally overlooked female indie groups that were the real heroes of Bripop.

In the 90's you were spoilt for choice for fantastic girl indie rock groups from Elastica to Sleeper, Echobelly, PJ Harvey, Catatonia, Bjork and so many more. All with these ballsy, grungy, punk inspired lead singers in men's shirts. Singers that weren't made up models doing pretty dance routines, these were real women with wit and gusto and 'I couldn't give a fuck', air about them.

Writing songs that challenged patriarchy with umbrageous self- assurance; Garbarge's 'Stupid girl', Hole's 'Celebrity Skin', or even Shania Twain's 'Man I feel like a woman', where the video inverted the Robert Palmer 'Addicted to love' video by having all the male backing musicians being fawned over instead.

These were indignant women re-defining their gender roles. Taking big doctor martin boot strides towards equality while men cowered. Trapped in a Lost boys escapism. Looking to Liam Gallacher for inarticulate yob, guidance.

Unfortunately, like all subversive movements that look to unsettle the apple cart, the initial angst driven energy is soon subsumed and mollified by the mainstream. Just like when they started selling ripped safety pin t-shirts in BHS and you knew that punk was officially dead; it was inevitable that this movement would meet a similar end.

So it was that this new empowerment was cast off as 'Girl power', and the Spice girls were born, a sugared down form of protest that was easier to market and less incendiary than the female indie bands.

'Girl Power', which proudly declared that women could be whatever they wanted as long as they fitted into a tight British flag dress and an easily recognisable category that succinctly wrapped up their entire personalities.

The rightfully angry female voice became infantilised in the form of Baby spice, or made a parody of with Scary spice.

All fitting in line with male fantasies, and we all too quickly returned back to standard gender roles; Christina Aguilera ass chaps and boys in leather jackets chugging their guitars, a distant world apart and utterly dull.

Now watching X-factor and seeing the lengths that women have to go, or the items of clothing they have to loose still to have a hit records you can't help but wonder what could have been.

When Oasis return to the Brit awards wearing see through tops and g-strings then I'll no longer look back in anger.