Sheffield! City of cutlery. For centuries in England, the proud purveyor of shiny steel for all your fine restaurant, home dining table, and back alley Jack The Ripper reenactment needs — and now known famously as a city of the grandest greens, boasting 4.5 million trees and more than 250 parks and gardens.

Sheffield, a city on the. . . grow!

[Disclaimer: the Sheffield tourism board did not pay me to write those words, but I’d happily accept first-class tickets and accommodations for a week. Fischer’s Baslow Hall looks lovely. Okay, okay, economy tickets.]

But back to the business at hand: The All Seeing I — an electronic music trio featuring Dean Honer, Jason Buckle, and DJ Parrot — got their beeps and beats together in 1996. Can you guess where?

The trio initially met with limited success until their cover of Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” hit #1 on the UK Dance chart in 1998. At this point, the group had carte blanche to invite whomever they wished to feature on their debut album — a Spice Girl, a Gallagher brother, Tony Blair — but instead they chose hometown heroes (including Jarvis Cocker from Pulp and big-voiced 70’s pop singer Tony Christie) to perform guest vocals over The All Seeing I’s musical backing.

Tony Christie reached his peak in the UK in 1971 with the hits “I Did What I Did For Maria” and “(Is This The Way To) Amarillo” — this also marked his peak in the US (more of a molehill really) as “Amarillo” reached #121 on the pop chart that year, the only time he would appear there. For the next 25 years, he actually found bigger success in Europe, particularly Germany, where he recorded nine albums exclusively for the Deutschland audience. With his career at a full stop in the UK, Christie emigrated to Spain — allowing him convenient access to record and tour the Continent — which is where Jarvis Cocker tracked him down.

Jarvis (whom we met over here) liked the idea of an all-Sheffield collaboration and wrote a song specifically for Tony Christie, with lyrics referencing his big hits, and even sharing a title with a song Christie recorded back in 1971. Tony exhibited some reluctance at first, but eventually perambulated like a jungle cat into the recording studio. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of his career.

The drama-filled “Walk Like A Panther” was released as a single in 1998 and hit the UK Top 10 early the following year. The All Seeing I soon split apart into separate projects while Jarvis Cocker continued to gain fame and acclaim being Jarvis Cocker. Tony Christie, meanwhile, actually reaped the greatest rewards of the Sheffielders united — in 2005, a reissued single of “(Is This The Way To) Amarillo” reached #1 on the UK pop chart, as did a career-spanning greatest hits album released that same year.

So don’t shed a tear. Leap like a salmon. . . with The All Seeing I (and Tony Christie).