Britpop Survivor

On Sunday night I stepped into my TARDIS to see The Bluetones and Dodgy play a charity gig at the sticky-floored London Scala.

It was proper time travel odd to see The Bluetones again. I used to be quite obsessed with them: I (very briefly) appeared in one of their videos, and many years ago wrote a choose-your-own-adventure style website based on how I imagined day-to-day life to be for my favourite mid-tier indie band.

Depending on which link you pressed, they got up to all sorts of exciting things. I can’t really remember much of it, except one storyline ended with them being put on trial for racism at Nuremburg. All depending on which link you pressed.They all lived in a blue house, and slept in the same room, in blue hammocks. Mark was the cheeky one, Scott the tough bruiser. Adam Devlin had severe psychological problems. Unfortunately I never finished it; it’s my Last Tycoon.

With all this in mind, it was quite a shock to discover Mark Morriss admitting, live on stage, that they used to share a house with Dodgy back in the 90s glory days. Maybe everything I imagined was true.

The second surprise was how young they were looking. It was almost as though they’d entered a faustian pact, to never sell very many records and to never grow old. Else, they’ve paid Dodgy to do all their ageing for them. While locked in their (blue) attic.

The third one was how brilliant they were. There were classics aplenty: Solomon Bites The Worm, Marblehead Johnson, Slight Return, and a mighty Bluetonic. They were on wonderful form, with Mark singing beautifully as well as excelling in borderline offensive betwixt-song banter. It was always Mark’s yearning voice that separated them for the cloggers of the age – they flew, while the others plodded.

The audience were fantastic, with the imaginative terrace chants of “Bluuuueeee-tones!” and “*Blue Army!” still intact after all these years. They greeted the new songs with frantic glee.

And by new songs I mean anything The Bluetones have released since the 20th century. The deftly appropriate** Keep The Home Fires Burning, Surrender and, particularly, motown stomper Never Going Nowhere got a lovely reaction, given that the vast majority of the audience clearly hadn’t heard a Bluetones song since 1999; by the inevitably set-closer If… I was jumping up and down like a man who doesn’t worry about his knees.

Dodgy, now looking approximately 400 years old (see above), had a hard act to follow. And they followed it by playing two of their three hits (In A Room and Staying Out For The Summer) in the first ten minutes of their set. Mistake, I thought. We left straight after.

On the way out, we saw two female Bluetones fans chanting “Bluuuu-tones!” at Bluetones bassist Scott Morriss, stood ten feet away at the bar.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to just talk to him?

*Remember The Chart Show, and the speech bubbles that came up to tell you exciting facts about the bands? One of them once simply read: “Bluetones fans sometimes attend gigs dressed entirely in blue”.
** The gig was in aid of homeless charity Shelter