So 69 weeks after the UK first went into lockdown I am finally bringing Covid Island Discs to an end. In theory the last lockdown restrictions in the UK were meant to be lifted on 21^st of June 2021 although the new delta variant of the virus, which is incredibly contagious and is leading to a new increase in hospitalisations in the UK, delayed the final removal of restrictions until the 19^th of July. This final release is occurring despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the UK being driven by the delta variant. It looks like we will be in for a 3^rd wave this summer but hopefully it will be less lethal than previous waves due to the over 50s now being mostly vaccinated.

Anyway, for better or worse, whatever the outcome, it is just a simple harsh truth that we must now get used to living with this horrible virus in our presence because clearly it is so widespread throughout the world that it is never going to go away. Even if we do get a new lockdown in the future, I shall not restart Covid Island Discs as I did last summer because at some point things must return to a new normal.

So choosing the song to close Covid Island Discs was not difficult because Jesus Christ Superstar was one of the first pieces of music that I fell in love with as a very young child when my sister Julie took me to see the rock concert in Sydney in the early 70s. I can’t remember how old I was but I could not have been much older than 5 or 6.

I was a crazy child and so began learning and singing the whole rock opera. My family still have photos of me with my arms stretch out in a crucifix position such was my obsession with the Musical and gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth. Not only did I fall in love with the musical, but this also led me to the Christian faith and I was about 8 years old when I committed my life to Jesus of Nazareth who was born around 4BC and who was crucified around AD 33 under the reign of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas who would die some 6 years later. So I guess when all is said and done, Jesus Christ Superstar as a piece of music has had the most significant effect on my life out of all the music I have cited in Covid Island Discs

It is my hope that someone reading this final post in the future will find joy looking through the 484 songs (very early on in covid Island Discs I did a Midnight Oil bonus track) I have collated during the 69 weeks of this twilight zone living in some form of lockdown due to Covid-19. In some ways this song also captures that universal longing when things go horribly wrong of wanting to rerun history so we could have a better outcome. In relation to Covid-19, if we could start again then obviously the thing we would do differently is lockdown much harder and sooner before the virus became so ubiquitous in the human population. Once the virus had spread far and wide in the human population, the chances of new more virulent and contagious variants of the virus arising was only a matter of time and such variants are now preventing us ever being able to completely eradicate Covid-19, even with a widespread vaccination program. Whoever you are reading this, as I say when I sign off in my Youtube videos: ““I hope your body and mind are in a good place”.

Yet the creators of Crash Bandicoot inadvertently spawned a type of dance move which mimicked the Bandicoot’s move of pelvic thrusts and spinning rapidly with arms outstretched to hit those who were in your reach. Now until I did some reading around the history of this song, I thought the song was a protest against this type of dancing (hence the title safety dance) but in fact I was wrong. The origin of the song is a protest against bouncers who threw out the lead singer Ivan Doroschuk because he was doing a form of crash dancing known as pogoing.

Anyway, my brother was always very bemused by this song and thought it was the epitome of pop music’s collapse in the 1980s (if only he could see what was coming in the teens of the 21^st century). He particularly found the lyric: “you can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your hands” as highly amusing as in his mind it kind of captured the type of folk that would like this song: a little Neanderthal-like as they obediently look at their hands on the dance floor in amazement as a response to the song’s command. Still it is a great one hit wonder in my view and well worth adding to my Covid Island Discs collection.