Terminally Groovie

In the evening of 29 July 2000, Dudley had rarely looked balmier. Headlining a mini-festival in the Castle's elegant grounds, three-fifths of Ned's Atomic Dustbin - band of 1000 T-shirt designs and Stourbridge scene stalwarts - were back. Exceeding all expectations, 5,000 fans had flooded the gig. At the sight of their old heroes, the over-excited crowd launched their full beer cans into the air, immediately drenching the band in foam and cutting a nasty gash in bassist Alex Griffin's forehead. "They're like that in Dudley," reckons surfboard-jawed singer Jonn Penney.
Performing a solos acoustic set earlier that evening was Miles Hunt, famously sneery former frontman of Black Country compatriots The Wonder Stuff. By the following December, the Stuffies (to use the familiar term) had also returned to fill a staggering five nights at North London's Forum. On the second night, the bar took £16,000, breaking the record long held by metal band Thunder.
But if two could be dismissed as coincidence, three is assuredly a trend, and this year also saw Forest Of Dean wild boys EMF reuniting to play a Portuguese festival in May. Afterwards, for old time's sake, bassist Zac Foley indulged in some trademark foreskin exploits, fitting the rider's smaller fruit items inside his old chaps inner recesses. "You walk into the dressing room and look around going, has Zac been in here yet?" comments motormouth keyboard-player Derry Brownson of his friend's unhygienic talents. "You know, everything looks like it's not been touched then it's, hang on, those Mini Mars Bars look a little mushy. But Zac's not the kind of guy who'll put something in his foreskin and then let you eat it."
In 1991, amateur cultural commentators would sometimes wonder what contemporary movements could possibly fuel the nostalgia of the future? Now that the future has arrived, the answer has become clear.

WHEN IT COMES to music, memories can be notoriously deceiving. Many urban sophisticates now genuinely believe they spent 1991 with Blue Lines and Screamadelica on constant repeat. Given the correct psychological guidance, though, they will actually discover themselves slouching around their local indie disco, mongrel mane flapping over one eye, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and calf-length baggy shorts waiting for Size Of A Cow to come on. Cue the inevitable rush onto the dancefloor where outbreaks of graceless bounding will occur.
If luck held, the Stuffies' Vic Reeves collaboration Dizzy would be close behind. Followed, perhaps, by EMF's Unbelievable. Or Sheriff Fatman by beatbox politicos Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. Or even Right Here Right Now by info-tech visionaries Jesus Jones. Defining Ned's moment Kill Your Television would then arrive to unmask the pretenders. During the stop-start chorus, only the real diehards could time their juddering lurches to perfection.
As scenes go, this one was far from stylish. Hair was not by Nicky Clarke. Indeed, in all pop cultural history, this was perhaps the only time boys and girls converged to look like something you'd ring up the council about. Appropriately, one of Ned's Atomic Dustbin was called Rat. "Actually, I do want to apologise to our fans for encouraging them to look so awful," Jonn Penney grins, magnanimously.
A satisfactory name for this conglomeration was never found. Grebo, coined by future Loaded founder James Brown, applied to the early Black Country wing and non-charting precursors Crazyhead and Gaye Bikers On Acid. Radio 1's Steve Lamacq, then the scene's chief journalistic apologist, labelled the Mega City Four/Senseless Things, transit van-dwelling end of the spectrum "fraggle" after the insult, derived from Jim Henson programme Fraggle Rock, hurled by Harlow casuals at their unkempt, short-trousered enemies.
Nameless and shameless, the scene nevertheless had it's own uniform, although not of the kind any military organisation would recognise. It had it's own rituals; Carter concerts were prefaced with chants of "You fat bastard!" (aimed at the group's portly roadie/mascot John Beast). It even had it's own Popstars-style televisual wannabes in FMB, the lamentable subjects of Channel 4's The Next Big Thing (they weren't).
Never deemed "important" - Factory and Creation never tried snapping up the key players - this scene was nonetheless crucial in re-energising such mucky musical arenas as the fleapit gigging circuit, Reading Festival and the indie disco. If not exactly offering such places a breath of fresh air, it certainly made them busier. If one totemic phrase summed up the prevailing ethos, it was: "See you down the front."
"We did owe a lot to those bands," agrees Neil Pengelly, band booker of The Mean Fiddler, who took over the reading Festival in 1989. "The Wonder Stuff played our first year and I remember that causing a real stir. It certainly helped set up the tone of the festival."
That three linchpins have chosen right here, right now - 10 years after peaking, roughly five after splitting - to return is curious. But one clue might lie in the sightings at the recent comebacks gigs of crumpled moshers, faces aglow, returning from the stagefront violence to their middle-youth partners and even children.
"My brother recently asked me to get Jim (Vic Reeves) to autograph a copy of Dizzy for two friends of his who were getting married," scoffs the fresh-faced Hunt, "because it was the first song they ever danced to together. I mean, Dizzy?!? How romantic!"

STOURBRIDGE MIGHT have given birth to Robert Plant, but preening rock gods have no place in the town's late '80s musical upsurge. Following the example of rap-rock trail-blazers Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff - Hunt, guitarist Malcolm Treece, drummer Martin Gilks and troll-like original bassist Bob "Bass Thing" Jones - formed in 1986, releasing debut album Eight-Legged Groove Machine in 1988 and Hup (featuring indie-disco fave Don't Let Me Down Gently plus newly joined Martin "Fiddly" Bell) the following year. Pop stardom of a sort followed but, in characteristic Black Country style, the group were shruggingly unfazed by everything that came along. "It was just as amusing to see yourself in the Stourbridge Chronicle as the NME, to be honest," Miles Hunt reckons.
After the Bass Thing's departure in 1989, (a hardcore hedonist, he died in 1993), the band effectively sat out the Madchester explosion, but their 1991 return could not have been better timed. Novelty-tinged single Size Of A Cow went Top 5 while jubilant students sent the more-than-novelty-tinged Vic Reeves collaboration to Number 1.
By then the final offspring of the Stourbridge litter, Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Penney, Griffin, second bassist Matt Cheslin, guitarist Gareth "Rat" Pring and drummer Dan Worton - emerged. The typically unglamorous gimmick of two bassists arose when a pissed Penney forgetfully invited two friends to fill the same slot. In contrast to the Stuffies' heavily Anglicised folk-pop, the States took to their thumping indie-rock almost immediately. 1991's debut album God Fodder sold 60,000 copies in it's first week and eventually sold 500,000 worldwide. The shorts and T-shirts merchandise, originally funding their early exploits, soon got out of hand. "We didn't sell more T-shirts than records, though," Penney protests. "It's a big, fat, smelly lie."
EMF, Ned's contemporaries from further down the M5, formed when Cheltenham-based Ian Dench by chance visited Derry Brownson's Cinderford clothes shop. With bassist Zac Foley, softly-spoken singer James Atkin and drummer Mark Decloedt, they became a textbook overnight success. Their debut single, Unbelievable, was a US Number 1 and the following album, Schubert Dip, eventually topped a million sales.
Now that America cares for British music roughly as much as it cares for Armenian ballet, it's almost stirring to recall that these grottily homebrewed talents were once corralled together to form a meteoric, if short-lived, British Invasion. In one short period in 1991, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, EMF, Jesus Jones were all simultaneously "buzz-binned" by MTV.
"American mates of mine still talk about the British Invasion and what a letdown it was," Miles chortles. "I'm like, what... The Beatles? And they're, No man, you guys... Shut up!"
But while the British might not have invaded, they certainly visited. not that everyone was pleased to see them. After playing at Prince's Minneapolis venue Seventh Street Entry, the Ned's were instructed by Keith Richards to "Fuck off, you Brummie bastards".
In Louisiana, all of EMF were arrested after handing hired instruments to their appreciative audience. Unfortunately, while handcuffed, the group started coming up on the chemicals they had previously ingested.
The Wonder Stuff's gobby attitude went down less well. Attending a syndicated radio show in San Diego, they were under management instructions to be on good behaviour so their latest record might be shifted up from medium to heavy rotation. A hungover Hunt eventually blurted over the airwaves: "Listen, if the only fucking reason we're down here is so you cunts put the record on heavy rotation, then we're out of here." The track was never put on heavy rotation.
But even by the following year, the momentum was ebbing. The explosion of US grunge had dampened interest in the far less iconic British equivalent. EMF sought to capitalise on the success of Unbelievable by issuing a series of soundalikes, the first was called I Believe. But both they and the Ned's suffered a classic second album slump. On UK campuses many former fans began shifting from the halfway house of fraggle towards a new, full-blown life of grime as crusties. Fearfully, 1992 would be the Levellers' year.
Following their poorly received fourth album Construction For The Modern Idiot, The Wonder Stuff played their final gig at 1994's Phoenix Festival. Not, however, before they had sold truckloads of T-shirts with the single word "Idiot" on the front. "We bought houses with the money we made from the T-shirts," notes Hunt, happily.
Soon after releasing 1995's third album Brainbloodvolume, the Ned's were dropped by Sony and the band broke up shortly afterwards. Following their widely-ignored third album Cha Cha Cha, EMF also drifted apart. But not before teaming up with Reeves and Mortimer to score a Top 3 hit with a cover of - arf! - The Monkees' I'm A Believer. "That felt like grasping at straws," Brownson admits.

QUITE WHY NOW is deemed the correct time for a return is puzzling. But then again, look at a modern rock audience and what do you see? "With all the moshing, stage-diving and crowd-surfing, there's certainly a similarity with the nu-metal audience," reckons Steve Lamacq. "And then there's shorts." Ned's Atomic Dustbin frontman Penney recently stumbled onto a fan website created by a teenager who was 10-years-old when the group split, [*look, look - It's MEEEEEE! I'm in a magazine :-D*] which elatedly proclaimed: "At last! I'm going to actually see the Ned's live!" Meanwhile, one young girl at EMF's Portuguese gig told Dench she remembered collecting their stickers in German Smash Hits equivalent Bravo when she was nine. Obviously, everyone is able to get nostalgic about their past, even of that past was in 1991.
Pop has always been eating itself (the early '70s witnessed a '50s revival and that didn't hinder the ensuing '70s revival). The terminally unfashionable nature of this scene makes it even more ripe for dewy-eyed reminiscence. After all, as the recent wave of nostalgia TV has proved, when it comes to looking back, it's the unsophisticated, silly stuff that wins out every time.
It obviously presents a golden opportunity to re-stock the coffers. Since The Wonder Stuff split, Miles Hunt's solo ventures - including an abortive spell as an MTV presenter and another fronting the band Vent 414 - have singularly failed to set the world alight. When first told of plans for five nights at the Forum, The Wonder Stuff thought it was a joke. Flushed with their success, they've issued a commemorative live album, Cursed With Insincerity, [*it's actually misprinted here as insanity*] and scheduled more gigs in London and Nottingham for August.
For Ned's Atomic Dustbin, too, reforming was an act of faith. Promoter Sam Jukes was convinced that a reformation to commemorate 30 years of local venue JBs would cause a local stir and set about persuading singer Jonn Penney. He in turn worked on Griffin and Warton, who both had studied music degrees at Birmingham University and now hold further education teaching posts in the city. The group printed up some new T-shirts for their return. The front declared, "One More"; the back assured "No More". This last statement was to prove slightly hasty. More shows at JBs and London's Astoria are booked for September.
So far both groups have fought shy of recording new material. However the just-released EMF greatest hits album Epsom Mad Funkers does contain two new tracks. One of which, unbelievably enough, is titled Incredible. Certainly the group has fewer financial incentives to reform than many. Regular TV airings mean that the royalty cheques for Unbelievable are still rolling in. This luxury has allowed former members to reappear with a number of groups including Whistler (Dench) and Cooler (Brownson). Atkin played on tour with Bentley Rhythm Ace and now DJs regularly.
"Of course, the money would be nice," Dench shrugs of the motives behind their return. "But we're also just in it to have a laugh. And we genuinely like being around each other."
Not that every leading light of the scene is so keen to hit the comeback trail. Clint Mansell, leering rascal of Pop Will Eat Itself, has carved a hugely successful niche as a film soundtrack mastermind, last year even collaborating with The Kronos Quartet for Darren Aronofsky's film Requiem For A Dream. "I spoke to him last week and was going on about how well it was all going for him," Hunt smiles. "He just goes, Oh, It'll all be over next year."
Everyone likes to get daft and dirty like they did when they were kids. The French call this sensation nostalgie de la boue, which roughly translates as either "nostalgia for the mud" or "longing to return to the gutter". First year students let off the parental leash to drown in pizza crusts and puke know it well. Young bands indulging in potty-mouthed bad behaviour far from home certainly do. But so too do grown adults facing their fourth decade on the planet and finding themselves - missing the pure and simple pleasures of bouncing up and down with your mates.
"I suppose looking back you do wonder, what were we thinking of?" Lamacq considers. "But at the same time, what wouldn't you give for a little scene like that happening now?"
Ned's Atomic Dustbin are promising a new T-shirt design for their forthcoming dates. One posited slogan is: "Oops, we did it again".