I’ve Got My Mind Made Up, Got My Fingers In My Pocket

To this day, Supergrass remain the only band who have convinced me to change the way I look. Picture the scene; it was 1994 (I think? Perhaps early 1995?) and, reader, I was hairy. To paraphrase They Might Be Giants, I looked like Jesus, so they say, but Mr. Jesus was very far away; I had the long hair, reaching down to the curve of my back, and I had a scruffy – and surprisingly red – beard. This wasn’t through any kind of true aesthetic choice; I simply had decided that things like shaving weren’t the kind of things I was interested in at some point, and suddenly I looked like a crazy hermit mountain man. Until Supergrass entered my life.

It’s one of those things that you can’t really explain, the way that I was listening to Steve Lamacq and Jo Wiley on the Evening Session – and for those my age from Britain, that probably takes them back – and “Alright” (A song that, these days, seems trite and cliched, one that ended up getting overplayed and misunderstood) came on and I just knew that I had to shave, and look my age for once. It didn’t rid me of insecurity or self-consciousness or any magical moment of epiphany, but it made me want to be young, run green and keep my teeth nice and clean.

Supergrass are one of those bands who never really lived up to my potential; I always thought they ended up becoming a jam band too early, and that the promise of that first album – punky, poppy, sharp and alive – never really went anywhere beyond three or so songs from their follow-up, In It For The Money. But that won’t change the memories of dancing to “Mansize Rooster” in a club instead of feeling sorry for myself because the girl I liked had just introduced me to her boyfriend, or the feeling of strange, unexpected freedom I still get everytime I listen to “Going Out,” one of the few good songs from that difficult second album.