Gay Dad - To Earth With Love

The 90s were a strange time in the UK, a time of cultural revolution where we shed the weird coupling of melancholy and excess that had dominated the previous decade, and replaced it with or more back to basics, fun attitude.  Whilst America was busy doing Grunge, the UK had Britpop and Girl Power.  We were cool Britannia, youthful, open and full of energy, tearing up the rulebook and starting again.  Even the mainstream radio got in on it.  Gone were the standard morning shows just playing the charts, replaced with edgy prank shows and gimmicks, with every DJ seemingly trying to prove they were the wildest mad lad in town.

Wanna know how to really test the limits of a middle aged 'tool cool for school' radio DJ?  Give your band a name that they definitely aren't comfortable with, then put out a hit.  And whilst the name wasn't even really that controversial at the time, hearing them either stumble over or conveniently avoid saying the name Gay Dad, or announcing it confidently in the same breath as a still too soon Princess Diana joke was the real litmus test to whether this DJ played by the rules or not.

So that really long ramble brings us to our pick of the week.  Gay Dad were one of the more interesting bands to emerge from the Britpop / indie rock scene of the time, blending upbeat rock with a solid dose of funk and pulling influences (including a bit of gospel) from all over the place.  Paraprhasing their own words from the time, as quickly as they rose up, they crashed back down, releasing just two albums in 1999 and 2001 before calling it a day.  But if there's one band from that era that I'd like to see reform and put out a modern day album, it's these guys.

People are more familiar with their track Joy! since it was everywhere for a while (including in a FIFA game), but for our pick, we're going back to the beginning with their debut single To Earth With Love.