It’s the summer of 1992 and an impressionable 14 year old is watching ‘Top Of The Pops’ and a band called Ned’s Atomic Dustbin are performing their new single ‘Not Sleeping Around’.
I’d heard it on the Top 40 countdown the previous Sunday and liked it, this live performance was something else. They had two bass players, one playing normal bass, the other playing at the higher end like New Order, but they don’t sound like they’re copying Peter Hook, no no no, they sound better than New Order. This would lead me to the album that was part of my formative years. The band was named after an episode of the legendary Goon Show, who couldn’t like that?
I loved the songs, the artwork, the band’s logo. I’d listen to it on repeat for hours. I wished I could see them live. It would be another 26 years before I would do so, and they would not disappoint!
That didn’t matter though because this, this was the 2nd album, that meant there was another album with songs to unearth out there. ‘God Fodder’ was a cracking album, but it wasn’t ‘Are You Normal?’. Was it because it was my introduction to Ned’s or was it because it was a more evolved and matured?
Listening to this again, it doesn’t sound dated, it sounds fresh and exciting as it ever did. Go hunt it out and listen to it, from the opener ‘Suave and Suffocated’ through to the closer ‘Intact’, via ‘Legoland’, ‘Tantrum’ and ‘Spring’. It’s a soundscape that never fails to impress. My favourite Ned’s song ‘Who Goes First?’ also lives here, when the guitar changes on the middle eight, I get that looping in my head for hours.
Who Goes First?
The energy of this song resonates with me and makes me want to pick up an instrument and go come up with a tune with similar energy. When did a song last make you feel like that? Ok, it was ‘Wiggy Giggy’ by the Lovely Eggs, but I’m focusing on Ned’s Atomic Dustbin here! To me, they sounded like no one else, yet other people seems to think ‘they were alright’, but never quite got it, probably in the same way I never ‘got’ Nirvana.
Are You Normal? Thankfully not.
dougie
Old enough to know better, young enough not to care.
