Brierly Hill 90210

As a small child, I remember driving with my parents to Evesham to visit my grandparents and seeing a hill completely covered with trees except a small clearing in the middle and down one side. I recall thinking that it would be an ideal place to build a perfect house, white and with a majestic view of the valley below. I only realized relatively recently that childhood memory stayed with me and subconsciously resurfaced when we saw a Victorian gothic revival house for sale in Pennsylvania. As 2008 began, our second child was born and our offer on the house was accepted. The high-school drop-out from the Cotswolds, survivor of Cheltenham's drug-fueled excesses of the 1980s and 90s, was happily married with two kids, working in Silicon Valley with more stock options than he new what to do with and, by April was living in his dream house, perched on a hill overlooking the Pennsylvania countryside. The job in California still meant traveling out there once a month and the first monthly trip after we moved was

Being a first-time parent with a 1-year-old is thrilling, frightening, fun and exhausting. With a life that revolved around eating, feeding, sleeping, doctor's visits, social interaction with other toddlers and their parents, much of 2007 is a blur. You'll notice an increased focus on kids TV in these episodes! But I continued to record weekly podcast episodes and they seemed to be popular with a small but loyal following. Some of the artists I featured recorded special “station IDs” for me which always made my day. I featured several last time and there's one more here. See if you can spot it.

Becoming a first time dad at 40 was exhausting. I felt too old for it yet knew I had been too immature to have done it earlier. Our son was NOT a good sleeper. My recollection of that time was sitting up all night rocking him to sleep while listening to Shitmat and This Morning Jacket. Surprisingly the boy liked the Killa Babylon Kutz album and it would put him to sleep! People often asked how I had the time to record a new online radio episode each week but it was the perfect thing to do during those sleepless nights.

Does any day, week, month or year feel like the end of something as it's happening? It's only in hindsight that, usually as the result of a new beginning, you see the previous end for what it was. Even then, it's mostly like a gradual evolution, not a sudden end. But in looking back, 2004 is an ending. There's personal sadness that goes with it which, while devastating at the time, gains clarity later as the necessary metamorphosis into something new and glorious. We were trying for a family and, as for many others, it wasn't as easy as one thinks it will be. There were some heartbreaking moments along the way. In retrospect, with two normal, healthy, annoying, teenage sons, the pain of 2004 seems worthwhile. There was also the pain and sadness shared by others in the loss of a national hero and musical legend in October and the loss of so many lives in December. The musical metamorphosis starts in 2004 with the shedding of musical skin, made more necessary by the shock in October. This really was a year w

I switched from Windows to Mac in 2003 and bought by first iPod. It was still the early days of online music and Apple had “New Music Tuesday” when they would give away a newly released track and would list all of the albums that had been made available in iTunes that week. It was a small enough number that I could scan through each Tuesday to see what was new. Looking back, it was probably the start of my rediscovered love of new music. There's a large list of music from 2003 in my library! In fact, there's too much for me to include in one episode, so creates a dilemma. Do I play the music I listened to at the time or music released in 2003 that I only discovered later? Do I include the music that I liked back then but not so much any more? That's a question that's come up for previous episodes but with the large selection available for 2003, there were some tough choices to make but I tried to mix up some things I've only recently discovered and kept in some originals I'm less keen on but that feel more r

The year started with America still coming to terms with a new world after September 11th the year before. Everybody was getting used to new security restrictions, myself included as I continued working in California, traveling from New Jersey once a month. If I was lucky enough to get an upgrade, I'd have to eat my deluxe airline meal with a plastic knife and fork! Oh the humanity...

I started my new job in January and began a new routine; 1 week in the office in California and the rest of each month working from home in New Jersey. That suited me, greatly reducing the amount of time spent in airports and on airplanes. There was still a 12-hour round-trip once a month and it's hard to imagine now that was pre portable MP3 players and smart phones so I read a lot. The 3-hour time difference usually meant that, by the time I got home on a Friday night, I couldn't sleep so took to catching new music on late-night MTV. Music on MTV was still a thing back then.

This new year heralded not just a new millennium but many new things on the personal front as well. We had been married 6 months and I broke out on my own to become a self-employed software developer and consultant. My first gig was in the US mid-west where Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota all meet. Not only is that part of the world incredibly cold in January, I was working in a meat processing plant and slaughter house so it smelled awful too. The people I worked with were terrible and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Luckily, it only lasted a few months before I was able to escape back to work with old friends in Columbus, Ohio (so could take in more Columbus Crew games in Major League Soccer) and Silicon Valley in California. Semi-conductor technology does not smell as bad as cows and death.

In the second episode where music and the outside world were things that happened to other people, I got married in October of 1999. So a big chunk of the year was spent gearing up for that. The official ceremony was at my wife's church in New Jersey but we then travelled, with a large American contingent, to the UK to do it all over again in the Cotswolds. We then honeymooned in the Lake District and Scotland. An indicator of how small the country now felt, we bumped into my wife's family 100s of miles away from where we left them... twice! But I hear you asking, “What if I don't know any of the songs in this episode?”. And... er... and...

This is the start of a period when I took my eye off the ball that is music and it smacked me square in the face... or it went sailing over my head or hit me in the groin, depending on how you look at it. 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. It would really be another 7 years before I got that love back again. But have no fear... the nice friends of this podcast (and a little Googling) have filled in some of the gaps (maybe between teeth from being hit in the face by my previously mentioned music ball... or maybe I'm taking that metaphor too far). I'm getting off topic here... 1998...

Two personal highlights in 1997... I saw the Lollapalooza tour three times in Dallas, Columbus and Philadelphia. It's on record as not being one of the best but I loved it, getting to see The Prodigy, Orbital, James, Eels and Summercamp. It was also the year I first dated 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 Park; a group of us were watching and giggling childishly downstairs while she was getting ready for us all to go out. Something else of significance that I'm only just realizing as I put this episode together... it was the first year America felt more like home. Some of that is down to the personal experiences I just mentioned. But, while my taste in music is still relatively anglicized, what I'm following on TV and in the news is definitely more American.

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 and Beverley Hills 90210 were filmed in the office complex where I worked and one night, after one too many margaritas, I imagined how different these shows would be with a Black Country accent, and the Brierly Hill 90210 brand was born! There were many such drunken nights, frequently with coworkers but more often on my own, as I traveled America through work assignments in Columbus Ohio, Phoenix Arizona, Chicago and Oklahoma City. I had rented an apartment in southern New Jersey, just outside Philadelphia, and the year started with me trying to get there from England but running into a spot of weather...

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 but took a temporary work assignment in Chicago, in the American Mid West. My work permit only allowed a 3-month stay so I had to return for the summer back in the UK. My company opened an office in New Jersey (in the American North East) so it was back state-side in the fall. But, having to go where the work was, I was hustled off to my next assignment on the west coast, just north of Los Angeles. I was flying back to New Jersey every other week, getting myself an appartment and a life sorted out. To give you an idea of scale, that internal American flight from west coast to east coast is further than from America

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 could sub-let a room in his council flat. That at least gave me a base to impress my new employers from and surprisingly it worked. I did well and by the end of the year had upgraded to a flat of my own. Dudley had some good, old-fashioned pubs, great takeaways and a decent second-hand record shop where I spent most lunch-times. There was also JB's, a music venue where I got to see the likes of Chumbawumba, Shed Seven, Nilon Bombers, Supergrass, Dr and the Medics and Bad Manners. I would take the train back to Cheltenham most weekends to watch my beloved Cheltenham Town and would buy records in the center of Birmingham

I moved house at the beginning of 1993. It would turn out to be my last move within Cheltenham and I would only be there one more year. I was now living in the center of town 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 distance. That may explain why I discovered so much good music in 1993 and why I'm going to cram so much music into this episode. But there are also a lot of “ear worms” from The Swan's video juke-box. It had a limited selection and the same few songs were on a constant cycle. Because the music for each episode is based on when it was released, not when I first heard it, there are tunes starting to sneak in that I only discovered later when I moved to America. The idea that that was where my path was heading would have blown my littl

In some ways, 1992 feels like the start of something. Looking at what's lined up in this episode, there are a lot of new beginnings. John Major has replaced Margaret Thatcher as leader of the Conservative Party and a general election looks imminent with Labour leading in the opinion polls. In America, under a different system of course, the exact date of the next election is known with George Bush in the final year of his first term. Will he continue or do the Democrats have somebody new waiting in the wings? Throughout eastern Europe and beyond, new countries are coming into existence or old ones are being reborn. Unfortunately, there is “history” between old clans and the old animosity has an opportunity to resurface. In South Africa, apartheid nears it's end while, back home in England, the national sport is about to get it's own new beginning. Welcome to 1992.

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 Africa but the system of apartheid is still in place. While the Berlin Wall fell and Germany re-united, many other nations from the old Eastern Bloc continue the struggle of replacing fascist leadership with new, democratically elected governments. Several states prepare for independence from the Soviet Union. The UK response to all of these important international events will be provided by a new leader, John Major having replaced Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. And so the story continues...

For those that missed the beginning, this series started in 1977 and the last episode saw the end of a decade with 1989. In 13 years, music went 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 into the 90s. I'm still living in Cheltenham (in the Hatherly area), still at the same job I had upon leaving school 7 years earlier. I'm probably partying too hard, but was in my early 20s so it would have been rude not to. The Iron Curtain is, if not completely dragged wide open, certainly open half-way with disobedient children unashamedly peaking through. At home, like the Iron Curtain, the Iron Lady sees challenges that appear to signal the beginning of the end. A build-up of violence at football matches saw an increased caging-in of fans which results in the tragedy at Hillsborough. Apartheid remains but, in South Africa, just as e

In the last episode, I made the correlation between the lack of good music and an increased number of Australian actors in the charts in the late 80s. Don't get me wrong... I have nothing against Australians and there's some excellent music in this 1989 episode. But there's a musical shift afoot; for one example, think of the lack of electronic music in the '70s episodes (apart from Kraftwerk) to now where it's pervasively in the hands of the mainstream. Personally, there'd been some change by the time 1989 came around. I'd moved to a different part of Cheltenham; another shared house but a different local pub. A slight aside to a disturbing trend; The Bass House is one of many personal historical landmarks destroyed by fire! If you listened to earlier episodes, as the '80s draw to a close, there's been increasing violence whether that be Irish terrorism, football hooliganism or race riots. Thankfully the later is something we don't see these days. That would be your “irony” there. But as we sit on the prec

For the previous episodes in this series, I've only used music from my existing record collection (or whatever the digital equivalent is called these days). For this episode, that bucket came up from the well a little short and I had to go hunting for some. I don't know if that's because the quality of music dipped in 1988. There was certainly a marked increase in manufactured pop in the charts, including many former Australian soap stars. But I also suspect a personal shift in focus; spending more time involved in drugs and alcohol than in music. Amphetamine sulphate (or speed) was my drug of choice and I saw it as bringing me out of my shell, making more of what I wanted to be. In hindsight, it probably made more of what I wasn't. It's the start of a period of my life that I'm not particularly proud of but it certainly had a formative impact on me and where I ended up. So I refuse to be ashamed either.