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Six bands to never admit you were obsessed with as a teen

EVERY teenager goes through a period of being far too into entirely the wrong band. These are the musical dead-ends 14-year-old you believed you would follow forever:

Then Jericho

Slick 80s New Wave act who sat neatly in the gap between the second-hand overcoats of Echo and the Bunnymen and the jumpers-around-shoulders of Haircut 100, they gave an enigmatic teen an air of superiority that soon dissipated when nobody else was into them or had heard of them. Their posters were removed leaving only Blu Tack behind.

Kula Shaker

Your football mates were into Oasis. Your arty mates were into Blur. You took the Britpop high road of spirituality with the borrowed Hindu mysticism of Crispian Mills’s band. Your Rizla-paper-thin Eastern philosophising bored the shit out of everyone and was soon dropped, though friends still say ‘remember when you were a hippie dickhead?’

Wheatus

Teenage Dirtbag was a f**king great song and perfectly aligned with your fantasy of the hottest girl in school being secretly in love with you. It plunged you full into Americanisation, wearing a backwards baseball cap, saying ‘Sweet, dude’ and offering high-fives. Wheatus had one other hit and it was an Erasure cover. You became British again.

The Hoosiers

Pioneers of the landfill indie movement whose gigs were full of fans in fancy dress, meaning you got to go out without the crippling fear of not having the right clothes. It was such fun that you became an ardent Hoosiers fan, yet to realise that one great gig does not a great band make. When you hear Goodbye Mr A today you shudder.

ZZ Top

As hair sprouted proudly from all areas of your face, it seemed only natural to follow these bearded Texan blues rockers, trailblazers of the modern hipster. You put them on the jukebox, ordered a double underage Jack Daniels, and couldn’t drink it because the fumes alone made your eyes water.

Coldplay

Now, in your thirties, you look back at your teenage obsession with one of Britain’s most beloved bands as mere folly. You loved their green credentials, their open-hearted embrace of good, their singalong melodies. Today you see the BMW advert with Higher Power in and a little bit of sick comes up.

Scottish man had forgotten his country's tradition of fervent religious bigotry

A SCOTTISH voter had almost forgotten his country’s long-held tradition of cold-eyed religious bigotry until Kate Forbes came along. 

The leading candidate to become first minister informed Scotland that the gays should never have been allowed to marry, while adding unconvincingly that it was too late to stop their sinful antics now.

Will McKay said: “Oddly, I’d got used to thinking of us as an open, tolerant country with liberal views, rather than a nation of narrow-minded puritans. Foolish of me.

“We’re on the same latitude as the Nordic countries but we’re nothing like them. We’re flint-hearted bastards who believe the only true route to God’s grace is suffering, especially for the poor.

“Look at our history. We’re mental for a bit of religious persecution up here, from wicker men to Presbyterianism. There’s nothing more attuned to the Scots heart than thin-lippedly savouring the pain of the unrighteous.

“Honestly we deserve Kate Forbes. Hopefully she’ll raise an army and launch crusades south of the border to smite the unholy in their blasphemous revelries.”

He added: “Prohibition, church attendance, compulsory Sunday closing, the outlawing of gaming and sex for procreative purposes only. Scotland’s back, baby.”

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