Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

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. :-)