Lately I'm been getting the feeling, that I came in at the end, the best is over.

The Flaming Lips - 'Sleeping On The Roof' (The Soft Bulletin - 1999)

For me, the header quote above is one of the most critical lines in the pilot episode of The Sopranos (1999). As viewers at the time or even now, we immediately jump to the idea that Tony is vocalising a sense of drift her feels with being a middle manager¹ in The Mafia or possibly even referring to the Italian/American immigrant journey of the the 20th century. Disregarding the notes she got from Soprano’s neighbour, Dr Cusamano², Dr Melfi answers like she isn’t aware of Tony’s “waste construction” job and replies,

Many Americans, I think, feel that way.

The implication is that while the USA got more prosperous over the previous fifty years, plenty of people could point to a morale/community/religious/spiritual decline that took place alongside it. (I will come back to this later.)

It is the same in The Matrix (also 1999), which implies that the end of the 20th century was a peak in human civilisation. This pervasive feeling of transition—of being caught between past and future—is a key hallmark of 1999. For me, this period carried personal meaning.

In 1999, we all felt caught between the fading century and a future that couldn't arrive fast enough. Not to be overly dramatic, but as a 16-year-old in 1999, you could be forgiven for thinking like this. For me, the 20th century meant childhood, school, school friends, children’s TV, time with family.³ 21st century for me meant school exams, sixth form, ordering a pint, university, first loves and first jobs and knowing that I would never see a century turn over again as, in the extremely unlikely outcome of living to 116+, I don’t see myself being as aware of my surrounding as supercentenarian. It was impossible not to feel some of the weight of a once-in-a-lifetime transition as the century turned. Reflecting on this period, my connection to music—and how it framed my understanding of culture—was beginning to evolve.

In 1999, I had quite a small record collection; the first few tapes I owned before I had my own CD player were things like Now 18, Smash Hits Poll Winners Party 91, and a Jive Bunny album. After that, I spent the early mid-90s getting into football and the late mid-90s getting into TV and comedy (my love of The Simpsons, Alan Partridge, Seinfeld and so on came before music).

Going into 1999, I had albums like Beavis and Butthead Do America OST, Bob Marley’s Legend and South Park: Chef Aid as Christmas presents. By the end of it, I was reading about the end of millennium/century/decade takes in movies and music. This manifested across 1999 and 2000 as keeping with contemporary pop and indie music as well as “the canon” via The Box, MTV, VH1, MTV|2, The Evening Session, Xfm, John Peel, NME, Melody Maker, Uncut, Mojo and Select and several books like Colin Larkin’s Top 1000 albums. All this meant I spent birthday money and paper round wages at Woolworths, V Store (Our Price) or WHSmith in Chatham, HMV and Virgin Megastore in Bluewater in 1999 on records like Sgt Pepper, Nevermind, Dark Side of The Moon, The Stone Roses and Blood On The Tracks as well as 1999 records like Surrender, Midnite Vultures, Head Music and The Soft Bulletin⁴.

For me, The Flaming Lips are an odd band. I admire, without overly revering, their pre-99 work. I enjoyed Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots without thinking it was one of the best of the year then or now; I found some interesting bits on At War with the Mystics, especially ‘Pompeii am Götterdämmerung' and by the time of left-turn Embryonic, I was off the train⁵ again. I went to see them at their 20th anniversary shows for The Soft Bulletin in London in Sept 2019 and wondered whether I’m a fan of The Flaming Lips or a fan of The Soft Bulletin?

The Flaming Lips - Brixton Academy, Sept 2019. - Writer’s photo

The pandemic-delayed 20th anniversary shows for Yoshimi talked me out of this idea to a degree. Still, the band certainly doesn’t feel like one where I can, hand on heart, say that everything they’ve done has held my interest across their career.

The Flaming Lips - Troxy, April 2023 - Writer’s photo

‘Sleeping On The Roof’ itself is both a coda and an exert, much like my experience of the 20th Century; I was only able to pay attention to it from around 1987 onwards consciously, and it was at least 1992 before I had some sense broader of the world around me. It was only in its last few moments I was paying any attention to the culture 20th century as it was happening around me. Like the song, it is a gentle coda rather than a spectacular finale, drifting in like a dream and fading just as softly. Built around a droning piano and shifting synth tones, it doesn’t quite need that title to evoke the serene ambience of lying on a rooftop at night, gazing at the stars; it has that going for it already. ends.

The song's origins are more in keeping with the band’s experimental nature before this lush end-of-the-century Pet Sounds wannabe. Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd created it by drawing a musical staff, flipping it upside down, and placing random dots on it to form a melody. Initially conceived as part of a sprawling piece titled Should We Keep the Severed Head Awake??, the track was trimmed and reimagined in collaboration with producer Dave Fridmann, resulting in the 'excerpt' heard on the album. ‘Sleeping on the Roof’ offers no grand answers from vocalist and lyricist Wayne Coyne but invites a moment of stillness. The calm before another storm.

I am now closer to being 60 than the age I was in 1999, and I now see a clear pattern of how nostalgia works in a Western country 25 years into the 21st century. From all the studies and surveys I’ve seen, I think it is clear that people ascribe too much stock in the culture that existed when they were teenagers. You name it, great chunks of people believe that whatever was going on when they were about 14-21 was the best of times.⁶ and it takes 25-30 years for culture to seem like it agrees with you. That article also shows that large proportions think that everything now is terrible.

From here

I think that the 90s are having a new moment in nostalgic terms because, even with the best will in the world, those elder millennials who were there, even if it was right at the end, are now in early middle age; I’m fully aware that an average man in the UK aged my age is 50% along on the progress bar. I think that The Social Network in 2010 was the first time I’d seen other adult millennials on screen as the protagonists of a film. Over the last fifteen years, that feels like it had moved to shows like Pam and Tommy or Impeachment: American Crime Story, including the sound of a dial-up modem to wink at the considerable, though ageing, cohort of people who used the internet before at office/home Wi-Fi became widespread. The people who make these programmes are my age or slightly younger, and more importantly, the people commissioning them are somewhat older.

This is then coupled with your Oasis reunion, Labour coming back into power in the UK, the sad deaths of people like Matthew Perry and reboots of Frasier, as well as the stagnation of the blocked arteries of culture at the moment. Bands from the 60s and 70s are still touring the most significant arenas, and sportspeople like Jimmy Anderson, Cristiano Ronaldo, and LeBron James see their careers stretching out towards a third decade at the top of the game. The worldwide box office so far this decade can be read as 2, 27, 2, 2, 1, 2, 34, 6, 1, 4, and 28 - with Barbie and Oppenheimer as the two ones in that list and the rest sequels or late franchise entries. The Honest Broker covers this expertly here.

Despite my best intentions, I can’t say I’ve been immune to this. In the last few years, I’ve seen bands play 20th, 25th and 30th-anniversary full album shows, been to see Blur, Suede and The Manic Street Preachers, watching re-released films from the 1990s at the cinema. I even drag my wife into this; since 2019, we’ve had a box-set Sunday night, which has seen us get through The Sopranos (5th time I’ve watched the show all the way through), The Wire (3rd) as well as the second run-throughs for Game of Thrones and Mad Men. We have plans for The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad that will last for the rest of this decade’s Sunday evenings. I’ve also recently read Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties, Accelerate: A History of the 1990s, Chaos, Controversy and THAT Kung-Fu Kick: 94/95 The Premier League's Most Dramatic Season and am about to start this.

When I turned 40, I suggested watching a film a week from each year of my life we hadn’t seen as a project for 2024, but this morphed into watching a film a week from 1999. - I managed 54 and my wife fifty-three (I steered her away from Audition). Ludicrously, this was actually quite hard to achieve; despite having a DVD player since 2000 and a collection of 400 films that ended up in a giant CD wallet when we moved house, I assumed that the 40-odd films I didn’t already own from 1999 would be easy to view on the various streaming platforms we have access to. The reality was that my DVD collection had more 1999 films at the onset than Disney+, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, BBC iPlayer, and NowTV added - I ended up buying a further 10 DVDs and renting 11 films on YouTube, meaning of the fifty biggest/most acclaimed movies of only 25 years ago 20-30 of them weren’t available across the biggest streaming platforms in the UK for free. Which is all the evidence you need for the thrust of this piece.

This is a stark reminder of how subscription culture prioritises immediacy over preservation. While I want The Run Out Grooves to engage with the now of 2024 and 2025, I want to ensure that all eras and genres are represented in the index.

Let ‘Sleeping on the Roof’ be a gentle reminder that cultural moments, however fleeting, leave their mark. As nostalgia continues to dominate, it’s worth considering what we preserve while forging ahead. Hold on to the cultural coda as much as we do the turning points and big bangs.

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2025.

This is a quick New Year mention for my wife’s new venture. If you are having problems with an infant’s sleeping patterns or know anyone who is struggling, she is offering a 25% New Year discount at her sleep consultancy, Celestial.

1. At this stage, Tony is a captain underneath Jackie Aprille Sr, the “acting” boss of the DeMeo crime family since DiMeo’s incarceration. The family had ties to the Lupertazzis, one of NY’s big five (in the show).

2. Later in the episode, she explicitly references that she knows who he is and what he likely does.

3. We aren't going down that road today without drinking from the hose and proper binmen.

4. I can make no reference to The Soft Bulletin without referencing the preceding NME Album of The Year, Deserter’s Songs, which, given their similar aural soundscapes and overlapping personnel, is a connection others likely don’t make between some other records that won the same accolade from Beck, Tricky, Spiritualized, Queens of The Stone Age and The Strokes.

5. I’m sure part of this was an intensely irritating troll on a message board I frequented who would go on about them and Pink Floyd on a daily basis, regardless of the context.

6. See also here, here, here (the AGE section), and here.