Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

And what were the worst albums/bands of the era.

1994

I f-ing hated the britpop music culture 94-96.

Catergories - Monkey Resemblance, Number of videos with a budget above the bands station, Union Jack bandying, Current obscurity and Degree of monobrow.

So did Brit-pop's best band, the Boo Radleys, who annihilated their own career with the so-called screw-you-all anthem C'mon Kids. Careericide is cool, especially when it's built on great songs and an uncanny Liam imitation telling everybody to reject Liamism.

Heh heh heh. Always loved that man's writing when he was in a mood.

Menswear were still great, though.

with any "scene" there are always going to be mediocre artists following behind the front-runners - hence menswear, shed 7 etc.

I think I quite like Britpop. I think I can understand why many people didn't.

Geir will answer that question over the next couple of days!

To which this US resident says, "Big deal. People wanted to be proud of England, let 'em. At least we got Teenage Fanclub out of it." (Yeah, I know, they weren't Brit-pop. But would they have found a rabid fanbase without it? I dunno....)

Plus: XTC/Who as spiritual godfathers = better than any two movement spiritual godfathers I can think of.

Britpop = bunch of British bands using very British influences and addressing very English issues in their lyrics: but i'm not sure it threw up any more great British music than any other stage of the 90's. Just that a lot of the good bands were related (vaguely, at least).

My fave bit in the Stubbs article is where he talks about British music being in the doldrums in the early 90's ("Suede, Massive Attack, MBV - rubbish like that.") There was always great music (and crap music) coming out of Britain, just it was more focused during that period.

Remove the sarcasm and you're on the money!

i do.

ned, i KNEW you were going to post that post. you are a swine and a half ;-)

For starters 94-96 [just limiting it to British artists]

great music was made by:
bark psychosis, laika, o'rang, scorn, techno animal, The aloof, tricky, anaethma, slam, underworld and the year of 1995: jungle music one of most exciting British music cultures of alltime - was in full flow - the NME and MM virtually ignored it, apart from the odd column from Simon Reynolds. every thursday on Radio 1 at 9 - 10 - essential listening in 1995.

what fucking annoyed me was the overwhelming suffocation of NME, MM and music on TV at the time - that music revolved around a bunch of shitty conservative trad retro bands peddling melodic songs crap. The two media henchmen: Lamacq and Chris Evans were responsible for the utter mess.

the britpop/ladrock that i refer to, that stank of trad retro-isms: Shed 7, Cast, Bluetones, OCS, Oasis, Kula Shaker, Supergrass, Dodgy and Paul Weller.

I remember picking up the MM/ NME in 94/ 95 and 96 and shaking my head - how utterly wrong-headed they were each week.

all released at least one song i like! ok...not Shed 7...or OCS...

This is still true! In 6 years time are people going to be talking about the Vines, Datsuns, Libertines etc as the most exciting music being made in 2003? Er....bollocks are they.

But re: Tom's point - the pop is the important thing. Pulp & Blur especially released fantastic pop records during the 'Britpop' period that would have sounded fantastic regardless of whatever scene they were attached to. Obviously most of the really good guitar music being made 94-96 wasn't considered 'mainstream' Britpop - eg SFA, Boo Radleys, Gorky's - but what's new? At what point in the last 25 years has there not been great British guitar music, and when has the best stuff ever been the most widely celebrated?

So: Britpop as a 'scene' or 'movement' is worthless - a marketing device, basically. Some good records were made, lots of shit ones were too. It is entirely unremarkable.

the thing that annoys me the most about the 'Live Forever' film is how the makers are repeatedly quoted as inferring that the 80s were just awful and Britpop/the 90s made everything better again and i just want to slap them for being so fucking wrong

looking back on Britpop some terrific singles came out, a few great albums but for 'rock critics' its albums that count. But i guess its the whole flag waving thing that embarrasses everyone. I just wonder how Scottish people felt about 'Britpop'. I cant imagine scots waving union jacks with vigour somehow (or the welsh)
Steve M , the 90s and the 80s had as many great singles/bands/albums as the 60s & 70s. And the same amount of rubbish. Sometimes you just need to dig deeper. Clearly the person responsible for 'Live Forever'film didnt.

I wonder why Britpop remains so unloveable. Similar scenes like Merseybeat and Glam (if you discount the great groups involved in both) had loads of chancers and mediocre music, but they had some kind of charm, some sense of fun. I think Britpop is hated for its cynicism, the blatant but ironised careerism of the participants. Nobody was grateful.

i'm trying to disprove thi, but no joy yet...

Stevem I mean they're inherently good even if the record is rubbish - they're like tiny micro-universes of pop where you can glimpse strange alternate realities in which the usual rules do not apply.

ha, never mind that Chandrasonic was a fan of The Byrds at this time (according to NME end of year singles round-up panel)

It will be interesting to see how much junk in the past decade makes the 100.

last time around they did it was October 93 http://www.rocklist.net/nme_writers.htm

[i,e pre britpop era, i define the Britpop era as April 94 onwards (death of Cobain, focus on Britain: first Oasis single and the english culture of Parklife)

i quite like the idea of Britpop as Messiah/sacrifical lamb - crucified for our sins...but that needs developing.

Anyway, weren't Echobelly Britpop? And Sonia was GREAT and 'Call me Names' is a top song, and far better than any ADF song on the same subject. So they are talking bollox.

Britpop wasn't flag waving anyway. I was there. And from what I remember it was people of all creeds and colours dancing to Sleeper in the indie discos. In fact, I was the only Brit in the student flat from January - May 1996, so any notion that Britpop was racist is ignorant pish.

And the 'new lad' thing... well fair enough, but that was just Oasis and don't think many of their beer guzzling, lardass fans would have been into the effetism of Pulp, The Divine Comedy, Suede et al.

I have fond memories of the period. I enjoyed many of the bands (yes, as it has been well documented, even Sleeper) and still rate Pulp as one of my three fave bands of all time. I agree there was a lot of toss came from Britpop, but so what? Cherish it for albums such as 'Coming Up' (the only Suede that is likely to be classed as 'Britpop' IMO), 'Definately Maybe', 'Different Class' and '1977'. I still love The Bluetones as well. I thought 'Science and Nature' was a great album.

But anyway, I'm sure many will want to rip me a new asshole for defending Britpop. But that article is toss. Chris Evans may have been many things, but he was not Howard Stern, who is as bigoted and fuckwitted and pig ignorant as even the more braindead George Bush voter.

Shed Seven get a hard time of it, and although I'm not too familiar wasn't Chasing Rainbows quite good? Better than Coldplay anyway...

Try to remember Nick Berry's "Every Loser Wins", which is always handy in such moments.

Simply know what I like - and like many of the songs and albums from that period. It reminds me of a pretty special time in my life so, oh, please forgive me for not being all snobbery and instead relying on some 'excitable sweariness'.

I hope one day music will mean the same to you - be it good, bad or indifferent.

and Dave M, understand that the hatred for Britpop is more to do with the fact that you were buying into this idea of 'Brit Culture' that didnt include a whole load of other things that were arguably just as important, meaningful and reverential as 'Cool Britannia' e.g. the development of club culture in the UK following the illegal raves fallout and urban dance genres, rise of garage etc. - fair enough if thats not your bag tho, but if you were only into it for the 'whole Anglophile trip' then itd be shame if you had not realised there was/is a lot more to youth culture in Britain than whatever bands were being championed by NME and Radio 1 at that time

D'oh! *flees* ;-)

I bought The Libertines album to day and, erm, contrary to what was said earlier... I think it sounds really good. Pretty much builds on the singles I had heard. The Vines are cack and despite what NME might tell you they are a poor live band that drove people away in their crowds when they played Gig on the Green (they have to be one of the worst live acts I've ever seen).

these people did not know about: bark psychosis, laika, scorn, o.rang, flying saucer attack, insides, disco inferno, techno animal etal as championed by the Lizard and The Wire magazine.

the younger britpop generation knew nothing about the late 80s music as documented by Simon Reynolds in Blissed Out book, their music experiences/ knowledge did not include post-punk /industrial music.

Who cares? How snobby and elitist can you get? I know nothing of the bands you mention - but big fucking deal. I bet you know very little of cinema history does that mean that I have a write to castigate you for enjoying the latest Hollywood blockbuster when you may be unfamilair with the work of Kurosawa, Welles, Hitchcock, Lang, Griffiths et al?

And for England please dig your head out of sand and read Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into that. Hence BRITPOP. Christ, there are four countries in the UK you know.

"Britpop failed because it was a misguided and futile attempt to ignore the fact the the Rolling Stones were the only thing of any worth to come from Britain in the last 50 years"

Hmmmmmmmmm. I can't be arsed answering that actually.

You spelled 'writ' wrong.

It began in weird places. All the bands from London (and waving a Union Jack around is seen abroad as a signifier of London) were people who'd spent the mid-late 80s in art/architecture/humanities courses; some of them had been going to gigs in the capital since they were in high school and were fanzine people, lots of them packed boxes in Rough Trade, and answered phones in recording studios and record companies (yo Damon, yo Emma Anderson). They were friends with the shoegazers and 80s indie people and had lots of post-punk records, Smiths, Cure, Bunnymen, 4AD, Creation, Rough Trade. American stuff mattered too - Pavement, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Happy Flowers, Bikini Kill. They also knew their Bowie and Roxy and could find a backstory of influence going back 30 years without hitting geezer-record territory (that came later when it was trendy). They were not averse to acid house, no siree. Everyone clubbed at Syndrome and Kinky Disco and went to see St Etienne, Pulp and the World of Twist. Blur were no longer Seymour and had a GIGANTIC live following.

In about '92 Blur were having Cornershop and Huggy Bear open for them - after plasticity of debut, they wanted to be more indie-arty - and Graham went out with Jo Huggy for ages. Justine was watching carefully (I met her for the first time at the Astoria for the Blur/Cornershop and the second time at a Bratmobile show). Suede were Britpop from the second they broke; intelligent application of influences and a mouthy interview. Everyone went to Blow-Up and Smashing and that's where Pulp started meeting fashionables and Menswear were recruited by Smashing's promoter Adrian.

Monobrow came from the North in 1993 and the Oasis element is really the second wave with yer evil Wellah thing going on and OCS and beer lads. Blame Johnny Marr's little brother Ian for getting them to his brother's manager before AMcG ever got hold of them. Understand why Damon made fun (he's wanky) and everyone else just yawned and passed the tinfoil (when it started going wrong for wave one, in 95/96).

There's a lot of truth in that, I think. It's true of me actually, except I'm older not younger! I came from a dance and black music background, having detested most of the indie music of the 1980s (although I find I like some of it now). The (better) Britpop I found refreshing because it reminded me of '70s stuff (incl. punk) - in terms of the energy not the retro-ness - and because a lot of the music I'd been into just before (house, r&b etc.) seemed a bit tired and stagnated at the time.

No, Terry: it wasn't about the Northern thing as the Boos and the Verve were in the loop I'm talking about, more when marketing people who read Loaded started smelling money in selling a concept of Northern masculinity filtered through a) slightly patronising Southern take and b) James Brown types discovering their inner pie and chips man as nostalgia for Northern childhood.

Your musician/artist circle somewhat different to the rank and file, I think. This is always the way; eg punk (Lydon keen on Can, Peter Hammill etc. whereas his 15 year old fans would probably not have heard of them).

David, the youngest of us were teenagers, the Creationists from groups were about to be 30, and the vast majority were undergraduates at the time. Tons of these people also worked at MVE and through underhanded means got loads of vinyl at 18. My editor had been working for NME since she was 15.

Can't EVEN begin to guess who this might berenyi.

And thankfully it isn't dead yet. Coldplay, Travis, Doves and Electric Soft Parade are brilliant examples of recent Britpop. Only they aren't called Britpop, but they are. And they are just as brilliant as Blur were at their best.

oh i definitely became aware of all these things, but again i got it through someone else's media filter because i discovered electronic music through the Prodigy/Chems 'Electronica' push, which mostly left out jungle (though i discovered it very shortly afterwards).

my point was that it's kind of ironic that a big part of what appealed to a North American teenager (me) about Britpop was the idea that even the 'laddish' and populist side of British culture seemed more intelligent and alive than my own (eg. lots of grunge leftovers; no rap or electronic music on suburban radar screen quite yet). now i see my affinity for Britpop as the kind of low-Other fetishizing of foreign culture that Edward 'Orientalism' Said had a field day with. meanwhile, the people who lived through Britpop detested much of it, and perhaps rightly so. all i want is to go back to my fantasy London!

GH: Those ravers came from council estates (Carl Cox, Deja Vu/Dub Pistols one estate specifically, Rounshaw in Carshalton) and worked the door on the Cafe de Paris (my first flatmate, who also worked at Tony Coulston-Hayter hangar raves screamed about in The Sun) before going out to Spain and making balearic; they were soul boys on their strain of American urban imports. Soul II Soul, hello? Massive Attack and the whole Bristol colonial legacy? E came into London cheers to a torch singer initials MA and granny's fave BG who had a friend called Marilyn. Also the free party/beginnings of anti-cap protest scene did teknivals all over, and people were only too happy to march against the CJB. All of this is as British as the Hippy Trail, Chris Isherwood and Morris dancing.

Heroes and gods both. :-)

so britpop is now carl cox and billy childish and lush and mbv and jungle and shoegaze? isnt the workability of it as a genre completely destroyed by by this? i'm relly not a fan of the idea that world of twist, st etienne etc were britpop or that the 92 era indiepop stuff was britpop. so some of the prime movers in the london axis of britpop were into doc scott, this doesnt make doc scott britpop though. there may well have been a great london scene of early 90s where people were equally into suburban base and nancy sinatra equally, but i dont see that time as britpop.

also, when were these jungle nights and where? i cannot accept any definition of jungle pre94 (or very late 93)

Good Mixer drinking started in 1990; their extra half-hour made it popular with people who'd gone to see/been in gigs in other pubs in Camden. We listened to pirates when we weren't going to see PJ Harvey and Pulp but that was ages before we went to clubs; I went to one called Paradise in the Angel in late '93 *actually with Simon R* and wrote the first article abt. jungle for US mag; friend who later got together with record company boss worked in a shop with Kemi from Kemistry and Storm and both flipped out when Kurtney popped in the night after Syndrome with FAT? on their mind for my pal.

Whoa, I'm beginning to Zelig out EEEEK.

yea, i know about paradise, you are right that that is the very beginnings of jungle as its own genre rather than hardcore or darkness. any earlier and it wasnt jungle (ok ok, i'll go as far back as possibly accepting summer 93 as jungle as separate from hardcore but even then it was not separated from hardcore properly at that point)

i just think your definition of britpop is too broad. broad enough to lose its defining characteristics, i mean if you're going to throw in st etienne and boys own why not terry farley, acid house, right back to danny rampling and shoom?

i see britpop as a rejection of 88-93, or at the very least, a whittling down. you mention creation records, and how they fit through the preceding period and into britpop, but look how the creation roster changed from 93 to 94. that was quite a shift, how can it all be britpop, across the big change? a lot of people by the wayside, a lot of new people, the aesthetic so oppositional to what went before?

i just think you are describing a london scene that had intersection with britpop, partly because of an industry perspective where people would continue to be involved, but in the music and in the social context britpop ripped up what had gone before

"But he's a 28-year-old man with a beard." "Just look at my fixed smile."

Reminds me of Gareth.

Not Britpop. But the rave culture was.

Oh . . . I thought Jerry was talking about something different:(

The other thing that the whole Britcentric attitude threw up was that unbelievably exciting moment in late 1996 and 97 when it looked like the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers and Orbital and Underworld and Leftfield and Goldie and The Orb and the rest of them were all going to go overground on a major scale in the US, which now seems a bit silly and naive but I still treasure that feeling that something was about to happen. It's weird that a lot of the Britpop-bashing ravers tend to overlook that nowadays when they highlighting the failure of Oasis or Blur to make much of an impact on the US.

What do I know anyway... I hated nine-tenths of Britpop and was into the Afghan Whigs and Sebadoh at the time anyway.

Then again, yer basic teen pop never really went away; Take That and Boyzone were massive all the way through Britpop - and don't forget that both "Common People" and "Wonderwall" were kept off number one by the Waterman-produced, Cowell-managed Robson and Jerome.

Gareth is correct: 'London scene 1990s' != Britpop. He is correct as well to see Britpop as a rejection of 1988-1993, as much as a continuation.

Who cares? How snobby and elitist can you get? I know nothing of the bands you mention - but big fucking deal.''

well I think most ppl who were into britpop were 13-17, say.

Everyone when they get into music starts buying pop, which would include britpop at that time but it is not snobbish to go and buy some TG recs and prefer that to say, oasis or sleeper.

and they've managed to make a couple of decent singles so ADF wins!

FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY LETS NOT GO THERE!

They are the worst kind of reactionary politics IMO.

I would take an ADF interview any day!

(a) Skiffle was over by 1958.
(b) No skiffle = no Britpop (from Cliff/Shadows/Beatles onwards). An absurd and ridiculous statement.

well I can't remember that anything they said could be 'racist' but I'll pull out a couple of the old NMEs and check (I prob won't do this actually).

plur!!

PLUR!!!!!!!!1!

do you see!!1

It's important to highlight the connection between the British/London riot grrrl scene and Britpop. When Blow Up (then Londinium) first started the main attendees were members of Comet Gain and Huggy Bear. Paul Tunkin would always play Stereolab's "Ping Pong" and JSBX "Afro" at the club, nowhere else in London would do this. I started going there with a mate of mine who eventually formed Menswear, he also used to attend lots of riot grrrl gigs with me. The original Menswear was a 4 piece, their drummer at the time now drums for The Beatings via Heck and a few other bands whose names escape me. All of them, except for my mate, came from Southend, they went religously to The Pink Toothbrush in Raeliegh and saw tonnes of great bands play there. They weren't clueless fuckwits (well, maybe Chris was).

Suzy seems like she was right up there with the head scenesters, I on the other hand have never been. But I've been at the right places at the right time.

They're overlooked but Smash were a very important bridge between Riot Grrrl and Britpop. You have to realise, for a year or so before 1994/5, there was no indie, just bland pacific northwest inspired metal like Alice in Chains. Seeing Smash play for the first time at The Monarch was one of the most exciting things in my life (at that time).They ignited sparks for everybody that being political, being British, providing your audience, this was so important but nobody did it. TNWOTNW was quite a limp scene, it never took off but I'll stand by it, no Smash = no Britpop. You could say, No riot grrrl = no NWOTNW = no Britpop.

On the dance music side of thing, lots of people were going to Megadog at a pub in Seven Sisters (can't recall it's name) and The North London Polytechnic. I'm not sure how many of these people were also going to Blow Up, Smashing or Fantasy Ashtray but I couldn't have been the only one. London was a million times more exciting a decade ago than it is now, everything going on now, in my opinion, just seems derivative of that moment in time.

I liked The Heavenly Sunday Social, it was like the grand celebration for a clique of people who'd been broad minded and gone out of their way to experience different aspects of London. It was the first place I'd ever been to were you could have a chat at the bar to a guy wearing a Pastels t-shirt whilst a DJ was playing Masters at Work. That seems like nothing out of the ordinary now but back then it was mind-blowing, like there's loads of musically broadminded people out there and they all seem to have decided to come here.

Then the drugs kicked in and people suddenly seemed to care more about how much they earned and what they could spunk their money on rather than the music.

But shit, nothing will beat hearing "Cigarettes and Alcohol" being played at The Albany for the last Sunday Social, it was amazing. As with any scene, the build up was fantastic and I doubt the film will cover that because there was no scene to categorise at that time, just satellites that converged into one horrible monster.

I'm sure they mean well, but having a rant at Britney for not being poitical enough is beyond silly.

hahahaha!!!!!!!

this thread is a gift!

Yeah, cheers Gareth, it turned into The Powerhaus for a bit after the one in Angel shut down. Saw The Make Up and The New Bad Things play there but not much else.

Ohh I never liked SMASH or These Animal Men. No matter what they said were still too much like Camden Lurchers for me.

Silverfish to thread! Whatever happened to Milk, anyway?

Mr Shields was misquoted, there - he was in fact talking about the early sixties trad jazz movement.

Yes and no. Skiffle, in its original form, was certainly over by 1958. BUT... Skiffle's main performer, Lonnie Donegan, started the 60s by releasing heavily Music Hall influenced singles like "My Old Man's a Dustman" and "Does Your Chewing Gun Lose It Flavour" - songs that were a lot more typically English-sounding than skiffle ever was. The Music Hall influences that were later to appear in the music of The Kinks, The Beatles, Queen and Madness (and, ultimately, Blur) may not have happened if it wasn't for those hits.

Sure, the British has Music Hall top hits like Mike Sarne's "Come Outside" and Temperance Seven's "You're Driving Me Crazy" in the early 60s too, but those were seen as one-off novelties, while Donegan was actually a major and important innovator name in pre-Beatles English popular music.

1) Dog Man Star - Suede
2) Different Class - Pulp
3) Vauxhall and I - Morrissey
4) The Masterplan - Oasis
5) Elastica - Elastica
6) Parklife - Blur
7) The Sound of McAlmont and Butler - McAlmont and Butler
8) Tellin' Stories - The Charalatans
9) 1977 - Ash
10) The It Girl - Sleeper

1. Free Peace Sweet - Dodgy
2. Radiator - Super Furry Animals
3. Homegrown - Dodgy
4. The Great Escape - Blur
5. Parklife - Blur
6. It Doesn't Matter Anymore - Supernaturals
7. (What's The Story) Morning Glory - Oasis
8. Moseley Shoals - Ocean Colour Scene
9. Fuzzy Logic - Super Furry Animals
10.Coming Up - Suede

Note that I don't count Radiohead as Britpop. If I did, then "OK Computer" would be at the very top of the list - beating even Dodgy at their best.

in America the only people who possibly cared about these acts effected bad English accents and dressed badly

Have we met?

You mean, just like several of the earliest Nuggets bands 30 years earlier?

But those guys were emulating the Rolling Stones, not bloody Blur.

Not at the start. The earliest Nuggets bands were emulating The Beatles. Listen to The Knickerbockers, The Gants or The Choir. Not a lot of Rolling Stones there, for certain.

not bloody Blur.

Sadly not, as 93-95 era Blur was clearly much better than 63-65-era Stones. :-)

Anyway, the Britpop bands didn't emulate Blur either. In fact, apart from obscurities such as Menswear and Octopus, no other Britpop bands sounded quite like Blur.

There were a lot of Oasis copycats around though.

The silver age was 1988-1991 My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, etc.

After the death of shoegazing, lo there was a famine in the land of British pop. And into the valley of death stepped the Melody Maker, with their feeble attempt to manufacture "Suedemania". But the kids saw that Suede were shit, and a feeble attempt to copy the Smiths to boot, and then Bernard Butler quit the band, and the future of British pop looked bleak indeed. And into the valley of death stepped Blur, whose debut album was a weak blend of shoegazing and baggy/Madchester. But then Damon bought a Kinks album and declared that modern life was rubbish. And then Oasis appeared. And Blur and Oasis begat Pulp, and Sleeper, and too many other boring bands to count. And then an era of mediocrity reigned across the isle of Albion from 1994 - 1997.

Hopefully future generations will look back and realize that Massive Attack, Bjork, the Chemical Brothers and the entire dance scene was what was really happening during the Britpop era, and not the idiotic "feud" between Blur and Oasis.

*hums "Losing My Edge"*

shoegazing is getting much better press

Goddammit! I should have written that article! But that would have meant pitching to Hilburn and there are things I will not do.

I'd actually forgotten about The Bends. I'd have that in my top 10. so scrap Sleeper from my list.

who are you and what have you done with Calum?

No, I've settled on "you weren't"

No, I am completely indifferent when it comes to the rhythm section (unless it gets so dominant that it starts dominating - then I hate it). A drummer's only job is to keep the pulse.

Dodgy was the best band of that era, not the worst.

However, saying that Dodgy was a product of Britpop is wrong. They started out before Britpop started, and it would be more natural to compare them to acts like Lightning Seeds, Crowded House and Jellyfish - bands that already in the dark ages of music (1987-91 was the first period for music since before The Beatles) decided that they disliked the current unmelodic trend and settled for something classically melodic and influenced by the great 60s music.

I am not trying to defend Cast, because Cast just didn't have good enough melodies. Their choruses didn't stick in one's head like they should, and they were too harmonically boring too, sounding more like The Searchers than The Beatles.

The Levellers started out already in 1991 or so, and were never Britpop.

Duh!

I am not saying I dismiss all music from that era (for instance, Crowded House and Jellyfish made their best records then)

But out of the ones you mention Primal Scream, and to some extent Massive Attack, are the only ones I like. Generally the 87-91 era was too much about rhythm and noise and not enough about melody and harmony.

Dodgy never changed their musical style. Blur did. Blur more or less "invented" Britpop on "Modern Life Is Rubbish" (although Suede should get some credit for that too)

As for Pulp, well, maybe they weren't really Britpop. In fact, they were just playing the kind of Bowie/Roxy Music-influenced style that was so popular when they started out in the mid 80s, and for some reason they never broke through until that kind of music became fashionable again because of Britpop.

Someone may already have asked this but do you tap your foot or nod your head at all when you listen to music? If so, why?

(I am playing find the unconvincing, hastily concocted pseudonym)

Your definition of what was "really happening" in the mid-90s couldn't be any more Britpop if it tried...

'87-'91 was for me the most exciting time for music in my lifetime in terms of innovation and experimentation, perhaps not so much melody and harmony and quality MOR/AOR (tcha, big loss eh?). Geir's conviction that melody and harmony are automatically superior to rhythm and noise by definition do not match my own views obviously.

the way the big dance-based acts are attached to the Britpop concept is irritating, partly for me because i felt it was very much a 'them and us' conflict that prevailed throughout most of the 90s i.e. there were indie kids and there were ravers and never the twain shall meet, until the Chemical Brothers broke thru i guess. it was good that the likes of Tom n' Ed broke down that pathetic barrier but it always felt like it was more a case of the rockist indiekids finally starting to 'get' dance music rather than ravers discovering guitars (dare i say the dance fans were that bit more open-minded, given they were into what was genuinely a new thing? i would but its a horrendous generalisation on both counts)

Balls. That whole rock/dance thing was dead and buried by 92 - I remember bumping into loads of the britpop lot on the Brighton scene in '91 - and going to Trance Europe Express a bit later. The line was totally blurred - especially as britpop came out of Sarah, to some extent, and most of the Sarah fandom were loved up by the turn of the '90s (at least round my way).

the tone seemed weirdly spiteful, beyond all other considerations.

Is it the geyser who played guitar for Motorhead?

If so, he looks to me as if the requirements of his lifestyle actually require extremely substantial subsidy.

http://www.nolifetilmetal.com/images/motorhead_wurzel.jpg

Albeit briefly.

I clicked on the link, but I couldn't be arsed to read the article, I'm afraid.

haha, pash, i didn't actually read it either!

What did they make of the latest Sleater-Kinney album?

(xxxx-post)

I can't really think of anything to say about it, though.

Hahahahahaha

The drummer from dodgy just complained about being grouped in with Menswear and Sleeper. Hahahahahaha

Hahahahahaha

oof, haha.

that athlete single, as mentioned at the end of the harris piece, ir really fucking bad.

'At the end of the day it's just whether it was good music'

The drummer from dodgy is a rockist!

I thought that myself.

Well, that and the fact that the EQ's absolutely dreadful.

(x-post)

From the youngsters who've just learned to shave
to the oldsters raving on their graves
it's the same old story, England's glory,
claiming back the union jack, my arse!

Far more so that I was of Menswear or Sleeper anyway.

x-post - the shame of admitting it, but that "water under the bridge" tune they did was pretty nice IIRC.

8:30 pm The Britpop Story

John Harris charts the rise of Britpop, its brief romance with New Labour, the emergence of the 'new lad' culture, and the legacy Britpop has left behind.

9:00 pm Britpop Now

Damon Albarn presents a compilation of live performances from Britpop acts originally recorded on 16 August 1995, including Blur, Supergrass, Elastica and Menswear.

9:45 pm Live Forever: Storyville

Live Forever charts the sounds that defined the real mood of the 90s, offering an alternative history of the period and a more intriguing vision of Britain and its music. Strong language. [S]

11:10 pm Pulp: No Sleep Till Sheffield

In 1995, the BBC followed Jarvis Cocker and Pulp as they charmed their way around Britain, having finally become popular after many years of trying.

11:45 pm The Britpop Story

John Harris charts the rise of Britpop, its brief romance with New Labour, the emergence of the 'new lad' culture, and the legacy Britpop has left behind.

12:15 am Later: Stanley Road Revisited

Ten years on, Paul Weller reflects on what he considers the high point of his solo career, the million-selling Stanley Road album. Strong language. [S].

Once again They seem to have mistaken 'Live Forever' for the Channel 4 docu 'A London Sumting Dis'

-- Sociah T Azzahole (stevem7...), August 12th, 2005.

well, there is no 'defining' sound. i reckon pop house and rnb outsold both britpop and the often-touted better music we Should All Have Been Listening To (jungle, dnb, trip hop, etc etc). it's wrong to say any musical form is a 'more valid' index of 'where britain's at' than another.
and at least britpop did have a major public following.

yep, and that's what Britpop Night will be doing.

such a banal choice. blur vs oasis. rank piss vs shit.

i think it's kind of trying it a bit hard to say, because britpop musicians were all white (in a 95% white population) and were not influenced by post-hip-hop/acid house black american styles, they are necessarily racist. i don't hear a big 'black' influence in the sex pistols either.

difference was - dnb came up with some astonishing records. britrock rubbed its cock in the slim up'n'down camdon lock.

-- mullygrubbr (fan...), August 12th, 2005.

yeah, well, that just like, your opinion, man.

also: no media push for trip hop and dnb? ahahahahahahahahaha!

xpost: bullshit, britpop was not from the start a media invention.

and...ah?

but the concept of " grassroots expression of creativity " as opposed to OH NOES CORPORATE THROAT-RAM is like, totally, not adequate.

Seems to me that the problem people have is not with the bands lumped under Britpop per se but rather the media's coverage of it to the exclusion of all else. Until we have enough distance to seperate out the records that Blur, Pulp, Elastica, Supergrass, Boo Radleys, Oasis et al made from the media bollocks that surrounded it they won't be fairly judged on their musical merits.

grassroots = just me knee jerking to an argument you weren't actually making i guess.

xpost

Spice Girls & co may have knocked Britpop out of the mainstream, but the retained the pop melody. Which has never disappeared afterwards. Britpop put a definite end to the era when a "pop song" was supposed to be something made around a repetitive synth theme, adding a thumping bass drum, a gospel influenced female vocalist in the chorus (who was not allowed to appear in the video because they'd hire some model instead) and some rapper in the verse. That era has never returned.

END OF THREAD.

PLEASE PUT HIM OUT OF MY MISERY

Paul Edward Wagemann OTM.

People act like traditional pop wouldn't have existed anymore if this (bowel) movement hadn't come along, it's ridiculous.

Thank god for guerilla gigs or we'd all be listening to minimal house & crunk'n'b obviously...

also, traditional pop - wossat then?

-- stevem

I do too.

All-time greatest Scot contender Edwyn Collins did a song about it at the time:

"Its the same old story,
Englands glory,
Claming back the Union Jack my arse"

It never rang true from the start for me, and it felt like CLEARLY announced from the start too, unlike the natural progression of Madchester etc.

It also bugged me how it led to Northerners being thick monkeys and Southerners being clever cockneys all over again.

Of course it's totally fair to point out that the US "invasion" was waning, and yes the guitar element of the "summer of love" did seem to have fallen apart rather, as did the Hacienda dream.... still a moment of weakness hardly excuses a vicious ideological pounce & reinforcing of some *very* dubious 'values' I hardly feel any more refreshed by in the 00's than I did then.

Anyone sick of their Cigarettes and Alcohol yet?

I'm nostalgic for the early 90's too, but Britpop's "nostalgia" felt poisonous and manufactured from the word go.

Something does occur to me though... "Blinded By The Lights" vs. "Sorted for E's & Wizz"?

Maybe these thigns do come in waves but I'm wondering what exactly DID give the Britpop 2.0 movement such impetus? What was THAT reacting to? Destiny's Child?

I'm dying here.

Was, like, the Merseybeat groovy guy geezer guy geezers really the sound of the young Britain what I was grooving away to in them days of dearie Lord dearie Lord? Were there any ace records from the hit paRADE of the time? Would you 'ave got like ten points if you recalled the Trem El Oes, Billy J Kramer and like what his DaKOtas and grooviest of all groovy guy geezer guy geezers, Swinging Blue Jeans The?

why people would be looking at guitar-based music for 'forward-thinking/innovative' generally anyway because of it's age and ubiquity.

a) which innovative metal bands are British again?