Baby, Bring Back 1997 by Scott Laudati

Bottlecap Press, 2022

Baby, Bring Back 1997.

1997.

1997.

For most British readers, the title of New Jerseyan (is that the right word?) Scott Laudati‘s 2022 prose chapbook may bring to mind something completely unintended, as 1997 was *the* year:

Our year

England’s year

1997 was the year Princess Diana died, the year Channel 5 launched, the year of The Teletubbies and The Spice Girls and the launch of Harry Potter and Mad Cow Disease, and the year that the rebranded “New Labour” party son a landslide election victory, with their charismatic-for-the-nineties leader Tony Blair marching onto stages and screens across the country to the repeated needle drops of a pop song with the refrain (and title) “Things Can Only Get Better”.

1997.

Nineteen Ninety Seven.

Yes, 1997 in England (UK) was a big deal.

The future was back, baybe, the “left” was back in power (don’t worry, though, cashfans, the Reagan-Thatcherite economic order was still wellll in force and so this was a “liberal” not a leftist “left”), and everything was to play for.

1997 was England’s first 2012 (that was when we had the Olympics), but better, rawer, harder, faster.

Britpop and Union Jack dresses; sleazy tabloids and sleazy politicians and sleaze sleaze sleaze.

And infected beef and divorcé royals dying with their boyfriends in a hail of paparazzi (remember them???) shots…

It was our time. England’s time. Things before May 1997 could only get better. And maybe they did. Maybe they did.

“Goodbye,” sang Elton John, “England’s Rose.” England’s Rose was 1997.

…

1997

…

Anyway, that’s a total fucking tangent as Scott Laudati’s Baby, Bring Back 1997 has absolutely nothing to do with Oasis and Blur soundtracked rainy England, so all of the above is mostly irrelevant.

The text does, though, also skew towards nostalgia, reflection, glimpses and evocations of the past, so actually all my opening crap was tonally appropriate, even if mostly an aside.

1997. 1997.

…

There’s five stories in here.

Are they memoir, are they fiction, are they somewhere in the liminal spaces between the two?

I honestly don’t know and I largely believe it is none of my business to ask or even wonder. Fuck off, scott manley hadley, it’s five stories. That’s all you need to know. That’s all I need to know.

Yes yes yes, they could of all conceivably happened to the same person somewhere inbetween ~1995 and ~2008 (i.e. no smartphones (except in one story) but you get the impression that computers exist), but they also didn’t necessarily. But maybe they did.

Maybe they kinda did.

Maybe they exactly did.

It really doesn’t matter.

(in my opinion)

–///–

There’s a couple of pieces here about being a kid and the rigours/losses/frustrations/dangers of friendship and ageing and how sometimes people get hollowed out by the experience of puberty and never quite reappear to those who knew them before and maybe, also, maybe not even to themselves…

There’s a piece about getting a dog as a balm to a failing relationship and the risks and dangers of this, but also the benefits of canine affection, the fears of canine disappointment and the often-neglected truth (especially in post-Catholic (or still Catholic) and old-school Protestant circles like we got in England) that not all romantic relationships are worth being worked on when they seem to be on the rocks.

There’s another one that’s about being a “merch guy” for some touring post-punk bands (which I imagine is a horrible style of music to listen to – I’ve heard punk music and I don’t know of any examples of music nomenclature where “post-” means anything other than “a less listenable version of”) but I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, and about the hangers on, the status chasing, the hedonism, the cruelty and the casual misery of touring music shows, with a focus on a couple of meetings with a woman who may – or may not – have ended up dead through excess or just graduated out of the “scene” into something healthier, maybe, hopefully… We don’t know.

Oh, and there’s another one about making a viral video of a Pomeranian doing a back flip while working a terrible retail job in a Barnes & Noble in a retail park.

–///–

Baby, Bring Back 1997 is pieces about not having any money, about not having any hope, about not having any future and not having any present, but also sometimes about having the best possible present you could possibly be having.

Yeah.

It’s pieces about youth, about regret, and about the complete fucking opposite of regret, about not regretting things you feel like you should regret, about not really knowing what to like feel about like… Aaaaanything

It’s energetic, energised, fun, powerful, emotive, human, grimey, slimy, sleazy, meaty, hefty, silly, serious, yeah.

It’s great stuff.

Good stuff.

I enjoyed the read a lot, and think you probably would do.

Especially if you remember 1997.

Cuz if you *do* remember 1997, were you really there???

Baby!

Order direct from Bottlecap Press (if any copies are left)