Ocean Colour Scene - Hundred Mile High City

1997

Ocean Colour Scene - Hundred Mile High City (1997) Director: Tony Briggs Era: Britpop Peak (1997) - Height of mid-90s UK guitar rock dominance; Britpop at commercial zenith before cultural fragmentation post-Oasis/Blur rivalry High curatorial value as a confirmed, well-documented music video artefact from the peak of Britpop (1997), directed by a verified collaborator with a multi-year relationship with the band. The video's quantitative profile, fast editing, warm colour temperature, moderate brightness, high contrast, provides strong measurable anchors for comparative analysis against contemporaneous UK and US rock promos. Its subsequent cultural resonance via the Lock, Stock soundtrack elevates it beyond a standard promo into a document of late-90s British pop cultural convergence. Context: Released in June 1997, 'Hundred Mile High City' arrived at the commercial apex of the Britpop era, months after Oasis's 'Be Here Now' cycle and concurrent with a broader consolidation of guitar-led British rock in the mainstream charts. Ocean Colour Scene, rooted in Birmingham rather than London, occupied a distinctly Mod-influenced strand of the movement, drawing on 1960s soul and rock textures. The single reached number four on the UK Singles Chart and later gained a second cultural life when it appeared on the soundtrack to Guy Ritchie's 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' (1998), cementing its association with a confident, streetwise British cultural identity in the late 1990s. The video's warm, performance-centred aesthetic reflects the era's preference for band authenticity over conceptual artifice. Director notes: Confirmed director of the 'Hundred Mile High City' music video (June 1997, UK). Briggs also directed Ocean Colour Scene promos for 'Better Day' and 'It's A Beautiful Thing', and shot album covers for both 'Moseley Shoals' and 'Marchin' Already'. His long-term relationship with the band culminated in the 2017 feature-length documentary 'Scene: Ocean Colour Scene', described as an independently made film documenting a year with the band at home, in the studio, and on the road. His background in editorial still photography for major UK style magazines informs his naturalistic, high-contrast visual aesthetic in the video.