"Any quarter-decent three-chord knobheads could and did get a deal in the ’90s." POLL

is this Powder the same white-power-looking Powder I found on Spotify? because fuck if I'm gonna listen to the Spotify thing I found

iirc this was their album

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/725/MI0001725114.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

so... no

wins otm

Am I reading this right? Was there really a band named Salad?

Am I reading this right? Was there really a band named Salad?

Indeed there was. If memory serves, the singer was an MTV Europe presenter (or something like that)

yes. they werent very good though.

On the 2nd day of titp 95 i walked past her in the street on my way down to strathclyde park. Also bumped into Martin Carr and John Power (who said "alright La" ).
Also saw Rick Witter and Joe Strummer walking past me inside the festival.

i'm not big britpop dude but ride fucking rules

Ride seem quite out of place in this list, but then again he mentions Hurricane #1 in the same breath. I think it's an Oasis thing

Of course Williams' old drummer is now in BDI with Bell

I still have a Powder single but that's only because no-one will buy it off me.

I seem to remember really liking the main Powder single at the time, but I'm sure its actually terrible. I think a lot of my admiration was for how the singer looked as well.

yeah. Ride don't belong here.

sorry, but rudebox is way better than anything these bands released ..

I really love Echobelly's second album "On". I never saw a video until tonight, and never heard them on the radio. I must have bought it from clearance dollar bin of Columbia Record Club. Really good CD.

It's one of those records that I like in a vacuum.

lead singer of powder

http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/bwe/images/2011/01/Powder.jpg

aw, I haven't heard motorbike to heaven since the 90s... it's so nice! lyrics are complete cocaine nonsense.

Never cared for Ride. Liked Echobelly at the time and they sound OK this evening via Youtube. Liked "Daysleeper" by Menswear and that still sounds OK this evening too, though nothing else by Menswear ever has.

Went with Adorable in the end. "Homeboy" got a lot of play on the olde walkman back in the day, though it's a bit soft-loud-soft-loud innit.

At least Robbie had the good sense to leave Elastica the fuck alone.

Kula shaker obv

There are at least 5 artists with the name Powder:

1) Britop, 1994-1997

Fronted by Pearl Lowe, with songwriters Mark Thomas on guitar and Tim McTighe on Bass. They released three singles, “20th Century Gods”, “Afrodisiac” and “Deep Fried” in 1995, and toured in the UK. They released a retrospective album, MCMXCV in 1997 before breaking up.

2) Californian Turbo-Pop, 2001 onwards

Formed in 2001, they appear to be a two-piece made up of singer Ninette and Guitarist Phil X, they are still active as of July 2009. The albums Sonic Machine, Powder and nothing are theirs.

Official site: http://www.powdermusic.com/

3)Mod, 1967-1968

Formed in San Francisco in 1967. They’re early power pop band which influenced by The Who and folk rock. The album Biff! Bang! Powder, released in 1993.

Others?

4) rapper from Long Island, New york

5)An English Drum and Bass artist from Bristol

Released one album named sense in direction(1999) and did the production on a number of artist Roni size’s albums. Sadly he remained undiscovered as his trance influenced D&B is unique and soothing.

Kingmaker had that 'Queen Jane' tune which sounded like a bit of a steal from the Hard Rain version of 'Shelter From The Storm'. That's pretty much the only thing I know from any of these bands and it's not completely awful so I spose I'll vote for them.

Where do Animals That Swim fit in with all this sort of stuff? I quite like 'Faded Glamour' but haven't heard anything else remotely encouraging from them I don't think.

The only Kingmaker song I used to hear a lot was 'Saturday's Not What It Used To Be', did not make the top 40 despite being played a lot on daytime Radio 1

No room for Thousand Yard Stare, NME's "brightest hope for the future" in 1990?

Who could turn down that body.

http://www.rockofages.uk.com/stock/20262.jpg

Love those also rans to the side there too. Wonder what became of those bands?

Band photos where one member refuses to play along... unfortunately

No "public burning" option, no credibility

Chapterhouse have a "Best of" album with more than two songs on it o_O

I think I've spent money of 6 or 7 from the list.

Voted Curve.

I can't hold it in any longer - imo there are a handful of decent songs on the fourth kingmaker album. Not that I expect anyone else to believe me or give a shit or even know that there was a fourth kingmaker album.

Perfectly willing to take your word for it; just a little unclear on what you made give Kingmaker's fourth album a whirl in the first place

i have looked at this list long and hard and decided that i would much rather listen to rudebox than any of these bands ..

I was just talking about Kingmaker today. I've only heard shit from them and don't really wanna investigate further, but from what I remember their general approach and attitude (and song titles and pretend-smart lyrics) would've fitted in better with Britpop than the kinda grebo look (and names - e.g. Loz) that they had when they came out. Would've been better for them if they'd held off a couple of years, but by 1995 they were forever doomed as embarrassing.

just a little unclear on what you made give Kingmaker's fourth album a whirl in the first place

So am I. It's not as if I'd given any time to any of the first three.

i have looked at this list long and hard and decided that i would much rather listen to rudebox than any of these bands ..

I listened to Rudebox about five weeks ago and it is indeed great, but I listened to Pubic Fruit about 20 minutes after reading Bob's blog and it's slightly better.

just a quick straw poll here, if you're American and reading this thread, raise your hand if you had ever heard of this band Salad before today. Ned sit down, I know, but the rest of you...Salad??

Ned doesn't read poll threads so you're safe.

I read The Big Takeover in high school, it was full of bands like Salad.

Their debut album was called Ice Cream iirc

ride and curve are great. chapterhouse has that one album that's really good iirc. echobelly's 'on' lp was totally ok imo, some good cuts on there. not good enough in the right ways for me to seek out their follow ups or the debut though.

neither American nor britishes, have heard of Salad and own >0 recordings by them

Voting Echobelly mainly because of On, which somebody mentioned upthread. Trying to remember how I became aware of them, oh yes, Addicted To Noise.

Sure I remember hearing about anther Salad, a bunch of hippies whose name stood for Sex And Loving All Day and who sued indie Salad over the name, but Internet has NO RECORD.

Salad's first album was in fact called "Drink Me" because I owned it! Unlike Lush and Ride, they never made it to Texas.

Echobelly - Only really remember the singles from the second album like Great Things and King of The Kirb. Think they released a couple more albums after people gave up caring. I think they went in a brave dance direction for those albums.

Shed 7 - Their first single Mark is great song but nothing of any worth after that, maybe Disco Down if I'm being very generous. Changing the lyrics of Speak Easy to "At the link it's easy" for an advert was probably something they'd like to forget.

Symposium - Andrew Lloyd Webber was a big fan of them apparently. Three of them went on to form Hell is for Heroes who were a poor man's Hundred Reasons.

Menswear - Loved them at the time, most of the first album still sounds good today (especially The One and the bonus track) Second album as terrible, I paid a fortune for it back in the day. What the hell was their last single, We Love You? (I bought it on all formats)

Sleeper - I can still enjoy Sale of the Century today but nothing else. She's a writer now and I've read her first book which is about an indie band trying to make it big!

Hurricane #1 - "These days you gotta kill yourselves just to stay alive" I do feel sorry for them as Alan Mcgee forced them to use that song for an advert for The Sun which completely ended their career.

Ride - First two albums and their early EP's are classic, seriously Robbie why are they on the list?

The Bluetones - First and third albums are really good, they have a few other decent songs spread out over their career.

Northern Uproar - Loved their attempt to go Motown for their second album, poor sods.

Chapterhouse - One great single, not much else.

Curve - Never really heard them. Didn't people say Garbage sounded like them when they first came about?

Salad - First album was okay. Drink The Elixir remains a brilliant single. I had a big thing for the singer when they came out.

Adorable - Just listened to one of their albums recently, I don't really remember anything about it right now.

Cud - Never heard them.

Spacehog - They were from my hometown (Leeds) the singer married Liv Taylor which was just strange. The singer's brother had a band called Cube who were equally useless.

Kula Shaker - Nothing really to say about these guys that hasn't already been said. I will say that I did own some of their singles and a B-side called Crispian Reading From The Mahabharata is the funniest song ever recorded. He reads it over the music from Tattva.

The Audience - Still like the Pessimist is Never Disappointed single but the album was rubbish. The guy doing the songwriting was majorly creepy, especially him writing "If you can't do it when your young, when you can do it" for a 18 year old Sophie Elis Bextor to sing.

Powder - I loved that first single she did as Lodger with guys from Supergrass and Delicatessen (where are they on your list Robbie?) Only remember Afrodisiac which they did on that Britpop Now show presented by Damon Albarn. That show is well worth a watch by the way.

Kingmaker - I rememeber a couple of their singles, Queen Jane and Ten Years Asleep. Didn't Justine from Elastica have an affair with the singer when she was still with Damon? Maybe that was one of those odd Britpop dreams I keep having?

Geneva - Loved them at the time. Second album was total nonsense but the singles on the first album remain great, especially Tranquilizer and that bassline on Into The Blue. I always thought JJ72 were really stealing their sound but with much worse lyrics "boo hoo why won't it snow" etc.

Funny that Robbie slagged off all these bands as his first album was probably influenced by him trying to sound like at least half of these bands. Lazy Days, Old Before I Die and fucking South of the Border would fit in with the worst of Britpop. He toured with The Supernaturals and the reason he fell out with Sophie Elis Bextor was because he was desperate for The Audience to support him but she slagged him off calleing him a tart, he went and had a big cry and called her a moon face in repsonse.

So in summary, Ride by a mile. I do still like most of his Robbie's Rudebox album though and No regrets.

Curve is so much better than Ride it's not even a contest

Saw Marion sometime in the past... 7 years? when they had their massive comeback

― kinder

Here is more about their massive comeback.

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&title=whatever_happened_to_marion_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I still like most of their album and the comeback single from their (quite shit) second album was rather excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ER_g3VYBI

Oh man, that's grim reading. Feels almost wrong to let him say all that stuff.

Curve - Never really heard them. Didn't people say Garbage sounded like them when they first came about?

they said this because it was enormously true

Didn't Justine from Elastica have an affair with the singer when she was still with Damon? Maybe that was one of those odd Britpop dreams I keep having?

they were flatmates (post-Kingmaker I think, and writing songs together that never came out, probably bcz drugs)

Curve is so much better than Ride it's not even a contest

'Strue

quarter-decent three-chord knobhead sampler - a spotify playlist

http://open.spotify.com/user/onimo/playlist/7Cwanv1rx9W9EtZotmZe1T

spotify:user:onimo:playlist:7Cwanv1rx9W9EtZotmZe1T

(three or four artists not available on spotify)

That Marion interview is pretty grim, but the most startling revelation is that he still gets four grand a year in royalties.