Big Point Mississippi

It still hurts you know. Looking back on those halcyon days, with the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom that age brings, it’s so easy to see where it all went wrong – but we just couldn’t see it at the time. Call it the arrogance of youth, call it naivety, call it what you will – I still can’t listen to the first Big Point Mississippi album without experiencing a sense of sorrow, a sense of regret. Yes, we were young – we were just teenagers for God’s sake – but does that excuse the attitude, the posturing, the misogyny, the dwarf baiting? I don’t think so.

And we were so full of our selves – the rave reviews, the tours, the drugs, the women – it seemed like we could do no wrong. Barely three months after the release of ‘The Brain Is An Educational Toy’ we were back in the studio recording the follow up ‘All Bow Low’. Who did we think we were? More to the point, who did I think I was? Sure, I looked good on the cover – good? I looked magnificent! – but what was the whole George Michael beefcake thing about? (By the way, the suggestions that the torso wasn’t actually mine have never been proved.)


I suppose this was the turning point – the album didn’t do as well as expected and the tensions within the group began to come to the surface. Steve, the guitarist, left to join American League Division Series Broadcasters and I persuaded Tim and Rich to take Big Point Mississippi in a whole new direction, changing the name to BPM on the way.

The third album ‘Avoid Confrontation’ (see what we did there?) heralded our second coming. At the time I kidded myself that this was what we wanted but it’s obvious now that without the cutting edge that Steve brought to the band we were just another sugar-coated bubblegum pop band.


Initially, though, the new image brought us more success than we could have dreamed of. The sound was much more commercial – we were MASSIVE in Japan! – and I suppose I was just seduced by the glamour of it all. Three top ten singles (including the platinum selling ‘Something To Give In Return’) a sell-out world tour, and, for me, a life-changing relationship with StripeyBrat from Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So) led to a hectic year for all of us and ultimately to my own drug-induced descent into obscurity.


Tim and Rich had had enough by now and wanted to make ‘real music’ so I was free to do my own thing. Unfortunately for the rest of the world my ‘own thing’ was my disastrous solo album ‘Incomprehensible’. God knows why I chose that title but it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody understood it, nobody liked it and most importantly, nobody bought it.


Big Point? No fucking point at all...