The Word

90s house was great. 'Laddism' was great. The Word was great. In fact, everything about the early 90s with it's centre partings, energetic dancing, baggy suits, and 'in yer face' attitude seems like so much fun to me.

I guess it's because I'm too young to have been part of it myself (in fact, I was quickly put off becoming any part of it at school by the constant reminders of Leah Betts dying on ecstacy) but it happened at just the right time to stir an interest in me that sex and drugs and rock and roll realy existed. Sitting in my pyjamas, this whole world of raving every weekend and then heading out to Ibiza with 'the lads' seemed pretty far off, but at the same really pretty fucking attractive. My one point of access for this was The Word, which I used to watch religiously every Friday night.

Even now, it looks like mayhem, with the crowd shouting over the top of interviews and bands coming on only to be given the most half-arsed interview of their life (see below), but all in all it makes the world 15 years ago looks like a hell of a lot more fun than anything that's happening now. All we get is Alan Fucking Carr and that cunt with the long hair who's running joke is that he's the only person on TV with a West Country accent (the joke's running a little thin by now surely?).

It irritates me that you can't read about the 90s and the ecstacy explosion and laddish culture and raving without the cause being cited as Thatcherism, and the young people of Britain making a conscious reaction to it through going out and getting fucked on pills. But if that was the case I hope this current recession gets really bad and forces kids into something a lot more interesting than rehashing old trends, I've had just about enough of 'Retro' as a concept. To think there's so many kids at Art School these days and no one can do anything original.

Anyway, some killjoy has really not grasped the carefree spirit of The Word and made it so that clips of the show uploaded to YouTube can't be embedded in other websites, so click on the links if you want to see:

Snoop Dogg being interviewed by Mark Lemar (whilst Snoop was still on trial and before Mark Lemar made it 'his thing' to be really grumpy)

Faith No More being interviewed by a man who clearly hasn't heard of them before

Tories fighting Miners

There's also other great clips of the show and some other clips yet to come, I hope.