Ashes 2019: Australia's thrashing of England reminiscent of the 1990s
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Highlights: England skittled as Australia win at Edgbaston
There is a nightclub on Broad Street in Birmingham that plays tunes from 30 years ago in decor from 30 years ago while people in pastiche 30-year-old clothing enjoy it all with a knowing air.
On Monday it felt as if The Reflex had opened a pop-up branch a few miles down the road at Edgbaston. Everything was on point: cackling Australian bowlers rampant, England top-order batsmen spending less time at the crease than those Australian bowlers had when they were batting, a half-empty stadium on a Monday in high summer when going into work instead suddenly looked the better option.
There can be something comforting about these nostalgia joints. You know how the melodies go and you know the dance moves. Wallow in the cheese and the comedy and the deliberate awfulness of it all.
So it was at times with England - chasing a fanciful 398 for the win, looking to survive for 90 overs, staggering instead to 97-7 as lunch was still being digested, shaking hands with the delighted tourists with enough time left for a day trip somewhere else in the Midlands.
Welcome to the retro Ashes. Never mind the new narratives or stars not even born in the bad old days. Sample the old hits. Parody the rest.
But it wasn't supposed to be like this. This was the series that was too close to call. This was a match where Australia were 122-8 on the first day.
This was Edgbaston. No starting this series in Cardiff, or at Lord's. A leaf instead from the Aussie cookbook, a cut straight from the Gabbatoir: lure the opposition to your fortress, send them packing, spend the rest of the summer chasing them home.
Before this week England had notched up 11 straight wins across all formats at this ground. Australia hadn't won here in any format for 18 years. In their last visit, the World Cup semi-final, they lost by eight wickets. In the preceding Ashes Test here they were hammered by the same margin.
The fortress has been sacked. Only twice before have Australia won an Ashes Test from a worse position. Both were in the 19th century, when pitches were curated by grazing livestock.
England never got close to saving this one. There are reasons they have only drawn one of their past 30 Tests, some good, some bad, and these ones all stank.
Desperate rearguard days bring to mind Paul Collingwood at Cardiff, at Centurion and in Cape Town. A flinty look, a minimal backlift, a perverse pleasure in eschewing anything attractive or attacking in favour of boring the opposition into next week.
You think of Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar clinging on for 11 overs at the death in the first Test a decade ago, Graham Onions and Graeme Swann keeping Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel at bay at Newlands six months later.
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Here the backlifts were expansive and the attitude carefree.
With 78 overs ahead of him Jason Roy danced down the track to Nathan Lyon and tried to clatter him into Solihull.
Joe Denly - poor, lost Joe Denly - decided to review a bat-pad catch that every fielder within 30 yards had heard.
Jos Buttler, averaging 3.75 in Test cricket at Edgbaston with a top score of nine, going back to Pat Cummins when he should have gone forward and seeing the top of his off stump pinged back.
The bad news for England - the bad news once the bad news of this day, and this match, have been swallowed - is that the team winning the first Test of the series have gone on to win the Ashes in four of the last five editions. The exception, Brisbane in 2010, is barely an exception at all; England declared in that game on 517-1.
On the bright side, on the two most recent occasions England have lost the first Ashes Test and won the series, Lord's in 2005 and Trent Bridge in 1981, they turned out to be the greatest Ashes series of all time. If the comeback happens it'll be a classic.
It will also be the most remarkable surprise, and not just because the next Test is at Lord's, where in the previous Test between the two sides England lost by 405 runs.
There have been patterns that have defined these five days at Edgbaston that may define the four Tests to come.
England were fatally weakened here by the absence through injury of James Anderson, the greatest fast bowler in their history. To play again in this series, having pulled up in his first spell after believing himself fit, he will have to get through a first-class game first. That rules out the second Test and probably much more.
His likely replacement, Jofra Archer, had a fabulous World Cup but is yet to play a Test. Chris Woakes bowled only seven overs as Australia made hay on Sunday at his home ground, either an ominous indication that he too has fitness issues or that his skipper does not trust him when the need is greatest.
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Australia are far from flawless. Neither of their openers made runs in this Test. Their number three has seldom convinced.
But they have the finest batsman of his generation scaling fresh peaks. They have an off-spinner with 350 Test wickets; England have a spinner who is currently an all-rounder in the worst possible sense, in that his batting is in as much of a crisis as his bowling. They have a pace attack that is quicker, more consistent and currently fitter.
Gallows humour was always part of the England retro Ashes experience. So it was that the final chant from the Hollies Stand, as Australia's fielders converged on Steve Smith as he took the catch that sealed this thumping, rang out: "We're gonna win 4-1, we're gonna win 4-1…"
They are nice numbers for England supporters to cling on to in the next few days. More pertinent are the nine wickets their team lost for 86 runs in slightly more than two hours of play on Monday.
A short day, in what could become a long, long series for the home team.