On Saturday I Said My Goodbyes

Back when it was all happening, the Bluetones were one of those “also ran” Britpop bands. The ones who made the agreeable singles, but none that I felt were particularly noteworthy or exciting; I remember them most, from that era, because my friend Hannah loved them, and would make a point of playing me their singles when I’d be visiting her flat, trying to convince me that I should give them another try.


(That’s not to say that I didn’t like them; I did. I even owned “Slight Return” and “Cut Some Rug” as singles, even if I preferred the B-sides to both, because I was/am contrary like that.)

It took years, the death of Britpop and an unrequited something to get me to give them another chance. In an effort to spend more time with a friend whom I may or may not have had a crush on (I was never quite sure myself, to be honest), I agreed to go to a Bluetones gig one night, half-expecting disaster but found myself converted. Where, I wondered, had my brain been before? Sure, they may not have been the smartest, the sharpest or the funniest band of the era, but there was a solidity and sincerity to their songs that I had somehow missed before, and through the prisms of an enthusiastic Glaswegian crowd and heightened emotional somethings, that suddenly became enough to turn me around on their value.

These days, they’ve become this weird hybrid band – One that evokes some kind of second-hand nostalgia, for things that never happened and lives that weren’t lived, and also for the days when songs like this were ordinary enough to be ignored.