Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.
#43: The Mission U.K. “Deliverance”
Last week we bemoaned the lack of a Bad Religion tell-all, and this week we can’t believe one actually exists for the decidedly holier-sounding Mission U.K. (Religious iconography in band names used to be huge in the late 20th century, by the way: just ask Jesus Jones.) Yet there is a contentious creation story where Leeds, England’s Mission U.K. is concerned; the group led by Wayne Hussey formed in 1986 as tossed-aside members of goth-rock kings the Sisters Of Mercy, and the Mission’s mere existence became a thorn in the side of Sisters frontman Andrew Eldritch. (“This Corrosion,” from the Sisters Of Mercy’s Floodland, is an apparent excoriation of Hussey.) Naturally, the two bands shared fans in the small sandbox of capable goth bands, and the Mission hit a high mark with 1990’s Carved In Sand, from which “Deliverance” originates. Things went quickly downhill for Hussey and Co. after this; stopgap outtakes album Grains Of Sand—with ridiculous covers of John Lennon and the Kinks among the travesties—revealed the Mission as closeted classic-rock longhairs. Not cool. Not goth.
