Exploding out of a tunnel

Julian Cope makes it onto the list as part of the Teardrop Explodes and solo.  (His first group was the Crucial Three with Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie – Echo and the Bunnymen and The Mighty Wah! Make the list too, in one way they may be the most influential band of that period).

Julian Cope made three albums as The Teardrop Explodes – Kilimanjaro and Wilder were released in the early 80s and 8 years later everything left was put together as Everybody Wants To Shag….. The Teardrop Explodes.  Meanwhile Cope went through a period of heavy drug use and a couple of alright albums before making a trilogy of albums in the early 90s that are of staggering brilliance and prescience.

First was Peggy Suicide, about how we are destroying the world.  Then there was an album about the pernicious effect of religion – Jehovahkill (and try playing that in the office with Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses) and finally Autogeddon about over reliance on the car.

All three have several candidates for my favourite track – Don’t Call Me Mark Chapman, S.T.A.R.C.A.R., Fear Loves This Place, Julian H. Cope, Pristeen and Double Vegetation.  These aren’t albums of pop songs but they do repay repeated listening.  I once had some colleagues from my work in the car and Autogeddon was playing, by halfway through S.T.A.R.C.A.R. they were demanding to have the radio on.

My favourite track is Safesurfer from Peggy Suicide.

Safesurfer was very much of the time.  It is about the guy at the party telling women people that sex him without a condom is fine, he’s clean, they have nothing to worry about.

This was the AIDs period when the government was putting out the message that everyone was in danger from unprotected sex.  Now this was not entirely accurate as exchange of fluids was much lower risk than types of sex where there was the risk of bleeding.  It tied in with the aims of the Tory government of the time to try and turn back the changes in society’s morals that had started in the 1960s.

The invention of the female contraceptive pill and the rise of the hippie movement in the 1960s had led to a much more relaxed attitude to sex, especially sex before marriage.  Thatcher hated this (and the Major government did too).  They explicitly wanted to wind the clock back to before the 1960s societal changes.  The Tories constantly claim to occupy the moral high ground, yet their governments are riddled with immorality.  Now politicians appear to be no better, and possibly worse, than most of society.  The problem is that the Tories are the ones trying to claim they are moral.  In 2020 they have not even withdrawn the whip from an MP accused of rape.  Of course he is innocent until proved guilty and his identity has not been disclosed to protect the victim.  Yet, in any other work environment, he would have been suspended pending the outcome.

If you want to claim the moral high ground get your own house in order.  John Major was committing adultery with another MP in the 90s – they denied it at the time.  The Tories had Jeffrey Archer as an important party official – a man who perjured himself and went to prison.  So did other MPs from that government.  I am not saying other parties are blameless, but they do not try and exert the same moral authority.

In the late 80s and early 90s anyone who wanted to go without protection was not someone to sleep with – if they would do it with you then they would do it with anyone.

I’m a Safesurfer darling……..