Brierly Hill 90210

I got married in October of 1999 so much of the year was a bit of a blur as music and the outside world were things that happened to other people. The official wedding ceremony was in New Jersey but we then traveled, with a large American contingent, to the UK to do it all over again in the Cotswolds. It was one, long party and celebration.

While much of what happened in 1998 is well known, Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinski being top of the list, there is much in this episode that I wasn't aware of at the time. Things were “getting serious” with my girlfriend, we got engaged and built a house together. Maybe that whole “getting a life” thing is what shifted my focus from keeping up with music that was new and exciting....

The big news when I first moved to America two years earlier was the bombing in Oklahoma City. As 1997 begins, the court case against Timothy McVeigh is getting underway. Bill Clinton is starting his second term as president and, more personally, I started dating the girl who would become my wife. For some reason, she doesn't appreciate that I associate the occasion with the first episode of South...

I had just started a 3-year secondment to my company's office in the United States. My first assignment was just north of Los Angeles in California. That's where I came up with the name of my podcast, Brierly Hill 90210. It was an amalgam of old and new, moving from the West Midlands of England to the home of American television and movies. Episodes of shows such as Melrose Place, Power Rangers an...

As you look back on life, there are key points that you didn't recognize at the time because, of course, you can't know their significance on what is to come. This episode and the year of 1995 is, for me, such a moment of great personal change. You'll hear this in the stories and an accompanying soundtrack from both sides of the Atlantic. I started the year in Dudley in the British West Midlands b...

Early in 1994 I took a new job as a computer programmer for a company based out of Dudley in the West Midlands. At the age of 28, one would expect some maturity but, with incredible naivety, I went up to Dudley the weekend before my start date without anywhere to live. I spent a night or two sleeping in pubs and then ran into a guy selling watches from inside his coat who knew another guy who coul...

I moved house at the beginning of 1993. I was now living in the center of Cheltenham in a one-bedroom flat and, having only previously house-shared, it was the first time living on my own. It was awesome! The Swan was just up the road and was my new local and my favorite record store, Badlands, which had moved from the indoor market to a larger, more permanent home, was also in easy walking distan...

I've talked before about how putting this series together has presented some unexpected learning opportunities. Case in point, I'm not sure I had realized that the war in Yugoslavia was really a series of separate wars and conflicts. By the time 1992 came around, the Slovenian War of Independence was already over and battles for an independent Croatia were already underway. The Bosnian War would s...

We've covered nearly 40 years so far in this series and I have to say 1991 is probably the most monumental in terms of the sheer scale of world events. 1990 saw several stories left with cliff-hanger endings. Iraq has invaded Kuwait with the United Nations establishing international embargoes and resolutions that clear the way for a military intervention. Nelson Mandela has been freed in South Afr...

It's been over a decade since punk rock was introduced with a bang by Bill Grundy. Music has evolved from The Ramones and The Sex Pistols to James and The Happy Mondays, from Kraftwerk to 808 State. Bands have come and gone; The Clash, The Farmers Boys, The Smiths. While others remain; Cabaret Voltaire, The Cure, New Order. And so 1990 sees the start of a new decade. I'm still living in Cheltenham...

As the 1980s draw to a close, incredible events take place that loom large in memories and have a profound effect on the world for years to come, possibly forever. Those are grand statements to make as 22 year-old me certainly didn't see himself connected to such momentous stories. I'd moved to a different part of Cheltenham, still sharing rented accommodation. While the location and, therefore, m...

I was 21 as the year began and, since leaving school, had been buying music like crazy. That made compiling the soundtrack for the last 4 or 5 episodes very easy. But by 1988, the growth of my record collection had definitely slowed. I don't know if that's because the quality of music dipped. There was certainly a marked increase in manufactured pop in the charts. But I also suspect a personal shi...

In 1987, I moved from my parents in the sleepy Cotswold Hills into a shared, rented three-bedroom house in the sprawling metropolis of Cheltenham Spa. I wasn't earning much money but I found enough for beer, records, cigarettes, sausage & chips and watching the non-league football of Cheltenham Town. Luckily, this coincided with a golden age of live bands playing in Cheltenham. I got to see many g...

I was 19 as the year began. Technically an adult, drinking in pubs and even had my own car; a 1968 Mini Clubman estate, blue with fake wood side panels. I still lived with my parents even though my government training scheme placement had turned into a full-time job, albeit a very low paying one. I worked alternate weeks on a night-shift until 11pm but that was OK; I listened to Janice Long and Jo...

Stephen King said that, if you want to be writer you must do two things; read a lot and write a lot. The same is true with music. Any budding musician must listen to a lot of music. I'd been playing in a band for a few years but we didn't know what we were doing and weren't very good. But, in 1985, from listening to so much new, good music, something clicked. Stripped down to just the two of us an...

I had left school in the summer of 1983, a year early and to the disappointment of many, not going onto university. Instead, I became a “Computer Room Operator” for a replacement door and window manufacturer in Cheltenham, earning the princely sum of 25-pounds a week on the Youth Training Scheme. I was still living with my parents (apart from a brief period of roughing it in an old farm-house) and...

The episode kicks-off with the music that, at 10pm Monday through Thursday, signaled the start of the John Peel show on Radio 1. Pickin' the Blues by Grinderswitch. I had started listening to Peel's show the year before and absolutely loved the Festive Fifty at Christmas time, when listeners voted for their favorite songs of the year. There was so much good music delivered in a way that I'd never...

1982 was a significant year for me musically because it was when I started listening to the John Peel radio show and broadened my musical horizons. I'd been listening to late night radio for a while, with head and radio under the covers so that my parents couldn't hear. I'd tried Peel's Radio 1 show a year or two earlier but found it too frightening! I preferred the satirical humor and radio theat...

In some ways, 1981 was the last year of my childhood as, aged 15, I started 5th form. It was the last year of school for some of my friends. They would be going out to the real world while, though I didn't know it at the time, I had only one more year of education to go. 1981 was also the last year when my world of music was centered almost exclusively on what was in the charts. A group of us star...

There's a statistic about how the music you like when you're 13 will stay with you for the rest of your life. It was certainly a key age in my life and musical journey. As a teenager in the Gloucestershire countryside, financial opportunities were few and far between. The only way to indulge my fledgling love of music was to buy a handful of 7” singles a year with money saved up from birthdays and...

I became a teenager in 1979 and my passage to manhood was marked by switching my weekly comic subscription from Beano to The Crunch while still deciding if the world was better served by Match or Shoot magazines. Almost passing unnoticed to the young Miller, punk rock moved aside to make way for post-punk and new wave. Nobody knew what that meant then and nobody knows now. As happens most Januarie...

In 1978, James Callaghan was Prime Minister of Great Britain while leader of the opposition, Margaret Thatcher, hovered in the wings. The brutal Khmer Rouge regime led Cambodia under leader Pol Pot. But in the sheltered world of the Gloucestershire countryside, I was 11 and, at the turn of the year, had been at “the big school” for 6 months. I was becoming aware of the importance of music and that...

After covering the years from 1953 through 1976, it may seem strange to describe 1977 as the start of the story. But it was a true beginning for me personally. I turned 11 and, in September, left Northleach CofE Primary School to start Westwoods Grammar School. I made friends there that I discovered and created music with for many years to come. I often consider myself incredibly fortunate to have...