1997

There was a show on the BBC the other night, "Summer of 1997", very strange looking back on that year for me. Tony Blair swept into power and a strange mass psychosis spread among the people of Britain, convincing them that New Labour would be a good and fair government, everyone rendered blind by the euphoric relief at the fact that the Tories had finally gone. Blair would be the anti-Tory, a decent and true politician. One person who emphatically didn't buy it was Greg Palast, who swiftly set up an elaborate undercover sting that blew open the "cash for access" scandal and ended Blair's honeymoon with a sleazy squelch the next year. Should have brought his government down.(The cash for access story is genuinely chilling - read Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy").
Then we had "Cool Brittania", where music, art and politics desperately attempted to collide for mutual benefit. Suddenly it was most embarrassing to be British. Noel Gallacher met the PM, the Spice Girls hilariously claimed that it was fantastic that "British music was finally being recognised"(the Beatles? Pink Floyd? Bowie? Led Zeppelin?). Radiohead refused to buy into this shite and instead released the album of the decade, the bleak and frightening OK Computer.
Oh, and Diana died. Mass hysteria followed, suddenly our fragmented and atomised population found a reason to cry in each other's arms...
A year of delusions and hallucinations on this oddball island.
I went nuts at the end of that summer, that's why '97 sticks in my mind...looking back on it kind of makes me wonder how many other people lost their minds that year. Everyone?