208. The Wurzels
The Garage
14 December 2022
There are many ways to bond a new team. Some choose trust exercises. Others opt for strategy off sites in conference rooms with bad pastries. I, however, chose The Wurzels. This was my first Christmas outing with my newly formed team, the one I’d built after leaving two decades of boardrooms for the wild frontier of tech. We were still getting to know each other, finding our rhythm, and then, somewhere in a haze of December exhaustion and team spirit, I booked us into The Garage in Islington to see The Wurzels.
It wasn’t entirely my idea. One of my new team members, a Kiwi I had worked with for three years prior, had never heard of them. I tried explaining: “They’re… well… imagine if The Clash had grown up on a dairy farm, drank industrial quantities of scrumpy, and sang exclusively about tractors.” She blinked. “Sounds brilliant,” she said. “Book it.” And so, I did.
The Garage that night was rammed with a crowd that looked equal parts Christmas partygoers, like us, and genuine Somerset export. We arrived as the lights dimmed, and then, like time-travellers from a happier, simpler England, The Wurzels shuffled onstage, part band, part pantomime, part national institution. They opened, inevitably, with “I Am a Cider Drinker,” and within thirty seconds, The Garage was transformed from a North London music venue into a full-blown West Country harvest festival.
There’s something miraculous about The Wurzels. On paper, they shouldn’t work, agricultural parody folk songs performed by men who look like they’ve been living in a barn since decimalisation. And yet, live, it’s pure joy. Their mix of banter, bawdy humour, and genuine musical craft is irresistible. They play their instruments with more gusto than most indie bands manage in a career, and they do it all with grins wide enough to light up the M5.
The hits came thick and fast: “Combine Harvester” (of course), “Drink Up Thy Zider,” “Blackbird,” and “I Got Me a Tractor,” me and my team were barn-dancing to “Brand New Combine Harvester”.
By the encore, everyone was soaked in cider and goodwill. The Wurzels left the stage to deafening cheers and a chorus of “Ooh-arr!” that echoed down Upper Street.
There was no forced fun, no awkward Secret Santa, no corporate karaoke. Just a pub full of strangers singing about tractors at the top of their lungs. It was ridiculous, cathartic, and exactly what we all needed.