I was working in an underground mine in the early 2000s, I don’t recall the actual year, I reckon around 2001 or 2002. We drove around underground in the Toyota Landcruiser ute with cassette tape deck playing, someone had taped a radio show and that is what we listened to. Naturally, the AM radio did not work underground, as we were deeper than 1 km below the surface, there was no reception as soon as we drove through the portal.

So this cassette tape was played on repeat throughout the shift, I got to know the songs pretty well on this magnetic tape pretty well, it was taped off the morning show, so it was like FM radio. The song that really stood out for me was Something in the air, I knew the song, but I didn’t really know the band Thunderclap Newman all that well. I later learned they were pretty much a one hit wonder, what a song to score that status with.

Regardless, it had that late 1960s and early 1970s vibe about it, this song pretty much sums up that period for me. Pete Townshend from The Who recruited Andy Thunderclap Newman, a jazz pianist who was a friend of Townshend, Jimmy McCulloch who later played with Wings, and Pete Townshend on bass guitar. Pete Townshend also produced the song, this was a band with three dissimilar members who came together as a project band and scored big.

So when I was able to view the video on YouTube, I loved it. The song improved as the fashion, the life, the style of London in the 1960s just came to life. The drummer Speedy Keen wrote Something in the air, the song transitioned from the hippie 60s to the political activism of the 1970s. The revolution was not about a violent uprising, liberation and the change that was coming.

The dissatisfaction, unrest and flower power movement during the Vietnam War era. There were race wars with the race riot in Brixton, and the civil rights movement in the United States provided plenty of upheaval. They were looking at social and cultural change in the 1970s, the attitude was changing, I never recalled the Vietnam protests as I was too young, I have read about and whilst I do not condone the methods, I appreciate the sediment.