The Fly’s Noughtie Streak: 2000

It’s January: Ah, the year 2000. Halcyon days indeed. Parting the sludgy mists of time reveals an innocent January, groaning to itself as it awakes with a massive Millennium party hangover, crosses its fingers, and switches on its brand new Pentium III, hoping against hope that it won’t think it’s the year 1900 and delete everything from the hard drive. Naïve? Us? PIFFLEPIFFLE. There’s plenty of reasons to be cheerful; that gaffe-prone goof in the White House is leaving office later this year, meaning a fresh start for everyone. Yup, we can rest easy that there’ll never be a more embarrassing US President than Bill Clinton, eh? And if there’s one thing you can rely on the yanks to do, it’s run an election properly. Aside from that, our economy is rock-ruddy-solid, Tony Blair seems like a nice fella, and the horizon has never shone so brightly with the firmament of opportunity. Sure, we need to sort the ice-caps out, but we’re doing a great job of saving the Pyrenean Ibex, so fixing a few clumps of frozen water should be a piece of piss. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to see my trusted GP, Dr. Shipman.

HI! Bands who formed in 2000: Animal Collective, The Darkness, The Futureheads, Hope Of The States, Hot Chip.

BYE! Bands who split in 2000: Smashing Pumpkins, Skunk Anansie, Rage Against The Machine, Ben Folds Five.

Album of the year: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ – No singles, no videos, no guitars, no logo. How the hell did this go to number one in America?

Mercury Prize winner: Badly Drawn Boy – ‘The Hour Of Bewilderbeast’

Unsung heroes: Elliott Smith delivers the excellent ‘Figure 8’ (out April 18th), which tragically turns out to be his final fully-completed album. Idlewild continue to tip-toe towards an assault on the mainstream with ‘100 Broken Windows’ (May 9th). Doves’ ‘Lost Souls’ (April) makes beards and prog-indie cool again, while At The Drive-In’s post-hardcore bluster is reaffirmed with their third full album, ‘Relationship Of Command’ (September).

The Fly covers: The Fly has been national for one year, and boy, it’s been great. We’ve even managed to fit Ultrasound, and their massive cross-dressing frontman Tiny, onto our miniscule A5 cover. Wowsers. Here’s how 2000 shaped up month-by-month:

January sees a picture of Mani from Primal Scream looking a bit he’s swallowing his own sick. February is Mark Morriss from The Bluetones drinking a Ribena, March is the guy from Babybird eating an apple (not keen on this kids’ lunch theme we had going on), April, four months into the new decade and The Fly decides it’s time to tip the bands who might be big this year, despite the fact that there are only eight months left; Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble, Doves’ Jimi Goodwin, Davy Crockett from The Crocketts, and Chris Olley from Six By Seven all appear side by side on a cover that looks a bit like the opening credits to Dallas. May arrives and with it appear a still-actually-reasonably-good Travis, who’ve had a quote pulled from their interview to go alongside their mugs on the cover; “We’ve always known we’re the best band.” – they don’t move any further to qualify that statement, though. The best band in what context? A competition to find the best band called Travis with a lead singer called Fran? LITTLE HELP? Luckily for them there’s no time to debate this as June is here and we’re eyeball-to-eyeball with Bentley Rhythm Ace. July brings a really good early call on a band called Coldplay, an annoying mixture of Title Case and sentence case, an attitude towards digital music downloads that is an early premonition of how the race of man will react when aliens finally arrive on Earth, and a mention for Mo*Ho*Bish*o*pi whose frontman Martin Bimrose now sits in our office. I’m waving at him now. HELLO BIMMER! He’s a good lad. Next comes August, plugging The Barfly Sessions, a late night Channel 4 telly show presented by some young presenter upstart called Dermot O’Leary – he’ll never make it – and featuring the likes of JJ72, Muse, Coldplay, Doves, Idlewild, and Badly Drawn Boy. Who was that last one? Badly Drawn Boy did you say? Well here he is on the September cover, which came out mere seconds before he snaffled the Mercury Music Prize for his debut offering ‘The Hour Of Bewilderbeast’. Unfortunately, for years after this, editor Will Kinsman will dine out on tales of Damon Gough’s great triumph, boring peaty-smelling pub locals and co-workers alike for nearly a decade to come. October boasts the year’s most abstract concept of a cover, declaring boldly as it does, “The Return Of The Album Band”, to confused looks and shrugged shoulders across the nation. November wears Doves on its cover, who are playing pool in a pub with their bare hands (obviously our budget wouldn’t stretch to putting a fiver behind the bar for a cue), whilst At The Drive-In’s blistering return with ‘Relationship Of Command’ also earns a nod, a raised eyebrow, and a knowing wink. Finally, it’s December, and the cold is playing havoc with our editorial team’s brain, as the cover has fictionally pitted the U.K. against the U.S. in some sort of totally unwinnable band-off to the death. Seriously, this is The Fly at its most Field Marshall Haig, as Team U.K. comprises of the not particularly terrifying Badly Drawn Boy and well-known pacifist Chris Martin, who are going head to head with At The Drive-In’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Casey Chaos from Amen. What were they gonna do, bore them to death?

By December the world seems at its end because…
America has elected the son of a war-hungry moron, who just happens to be a war-hungry moron. Plus Brian Marshall quit Creed.

But the saving grace is…
Hey, there’s a Dum Dums single due in February…