Oliver: First Offence - Round 'n' Round (28 December 1991)

We're back and we're married!

Yes, on the 28th of August, I tied the knot with my partner of 13 years and it feels fantastic.  I feel elated, loved up, very happy and ready for new challenges and fresh starts.  I'm returning to the blog with energy replenished and with loads of Peel selections to share and write about.  At time of writing, I am listening to the 25 January 1992 show and have a few choices already made.  Life couldn't be better and with this in mind, I return to my list of selections from the 28/12/91 Best of the Year show, ready for something to match my life-affirming mood.

A plasticine person with a plasticine life
With your plasticine kids and your plasticine wife.

It's a feeling of strife when you look at the wife
And she's laying next to you on the bed.
You think "Damnation, I want to start over"
And wishing that she was dead.
Lay back on your pillow and reminisce on the time you were young and free.
Never a thought of marriage and kids, now you have a wife and three.
(Lyrics - copyright of Steve Harris and First Offence)

This is a hard track for me to review at the moment.  When you're happy and you know it, you can't fully embrace a misanthropic track about marriage and the daily grind of work, regardless of how brilliantly done it is.  Nevertheless, I am conscious that a week from now "The six o'clock alarm call smacks you in the head" will be all too true.  It would have definitely made it on to a mixtape given its relevance to the school experience too.

First Offence were formed in Little Hulton near Salford and their story seems to be one of those terribly sad ones that litter the music industry of a group picked up and dumped just when they were ready to properly get going.   After releasing three singles, they were all set to release an album; the Fawlty Towers riffing, Flowery Twats, when in the words of vocalist Steve Harris, in an interview with Manchester Evening News in 2010, "Everything was on the way up then everything kind of folded really".  When listening to a track like Miracle on Kenyon Shops, which sounds at this distance like an ancestor to Thou Shalt Always Kill by Scroobius Pip and Dan le Sac, we can only lament the loss of a potentially wonderful album.  Happily, First Offence have a YouTube channel with most of their released and unreleased material on it.  Harris bounced back from the disappointment of First Offence's demise by going into stand-up comedy.  As these tracks show, his sour, quickfire delivery made it an ideal career choice.



Videos courtesy of FirstOffence.