green day
― flappy bird, Friday, 11 September 2020 05:49 (four years ago) link
Cigarettes and Alcohol
best Oasis song, basically perfect tune
― naked and sexually active alien (rip van wanko), Friday, 11 September 2020 05:55 (four years ago) link
DL, yes, that's the one. 1993! And Play Dead right after So Natural!
― kinder, Friday, 11 September 2020 07:45 (four years ago) link
I swear I will take some of those Now tracklistings to my grave. Have we ever put lord the UK Nows? Vaguely remember a US one happening
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Friday, 11 September 2020 07:54 (four years ago) link
“Put lord” = polled
I went through a phase of listening to them all in order until it hit approx the year 2000. The year 1999 was the absolute nadir for chart music.Madonna never on any Now btw. Probably other obvious exclusions too?
― kinder, Friday, 11 September 2020 07:59 (four years ago) link
Suede or Electronic probably.
Never particularly cared for Suede but saw what must have been several of their earliest gigs when they'd be first on at the Bull & Gate with about five people watching. Then very quickly they'd have this posse of enthusiastic female supporters who'd stand by the stage even when the place was mostly empty, which was pretty unusual for third on the bill, or.indeed any 'indie' groups then.
― grebo shot first (Noel Emits), Friday, 11 September 2020 08:06 (four years ago) link
Madonna never on any Now btw. Probably other obvious exclusions too?
Think Michel Jackson only has one appearance for similar reasons
― groovypanda, Friday, 11 September 2020 08:09 (four years ago) link
Yeah, was thinking of MJ. I revise my former statement btw, I think I only listened to all the Nows of the 90s.
― kinder, Friday, 11 September 2020 08:15 (four years ago) link
The Hits Album often featured songs by artists such as Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and other big international artists that did not appear on rival Now compilations, and it was probably for this reason the albums were equally popular throughout the 1980s.
― Kim Kimberly, Friday, 11 September 2020 14:40 (four years ago) link
i think "getting away with it" just edges out "regret"SameSameSame
Same
The opposite
― daavid, Saturday, 12 September 2020 04:20 (four years ago) link
"Getting Away With It" is the dictionary definition of "less than the sum of its parts"
― 这是我的显示名称 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 12 September 2020 07:42 (four years ago) link
Yeah, but those are big parts
― Mark G, Saturday, 12 September 2020 07:44 (four years ago) link
CAAL's top five looks spot-on, but I voted Suede of course
― imago, Saturday, 12 September 2020 08:05 (four years ago) link
Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston
That's one hell of a five to have locked in.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 12 September 2020 10:04 (four years ago) link
The song here I loved the most at one point is How Soon Is Now but I can't bring myself to vote for anything Morrissey-related at this point.
CAAL's list is approximately right but I never need to hear Parklife again and *whispers* I quite like Size Of A Cow (I don't expect anyone to agree with me on this) so I have mentally swapped them - though even I will concede there is no way the latter should be above Weirdo. Don't really care about the Charlatans but I could listen to the intro of Weirdo on loop for hours. Shame he starts singing.
Going to leave it to a last-minute whim whether to vote Pulp or Elastica.
(OK I just watched the Size Of A Cow video on youtube and maybe now I understand why everyone else hates them, that is one annoying-seeming bunch of people there)
― scampus unrest (a passing spacecadet), Saturday, 12 September 2020 12:56 (four years ago) link
I never bought any Shines because the tracklistings seemed too obvious to spend money on, plus my friends had a bunch which I could've just asked to tape except I was too much of a snob, but I did have Steve Lamacq's "Weekenders" compilation so yeah, I lose.
(I think I got it for a quid, tbf, plucked out of a bargain bin because a couple of the otherwise quite obvious tracks appeared in a remixed form which sounded potentially interesting, but I still lose)
The Indie Top 20s were mostly before my time - think the last came out in '96 so Shine (1995-1998) may even have killed them off, though I didn't really notice them pre-Shine so they may already have run out of steam or marketing money - but I have the '88 one (Wire! Cardiacs! HMHB! ACR! Sonic Youth! The Shamen, hi Branwell; that explains why I knew "Jesus Loves Amerika" already) and it is bronzed to hell now, one of only a couple of bronzed CDs I've noticed in my collection. Hope the whole series didn't do that.
― scampus unrest (a passing spacecadet), Saturday, 12 September 2020 13:05 (four years ago) link
'Weirdo' made me think the Charlatans were good
― kinder, Saturday, 12 September 2020 13:56 (four years ago) link
they're not a bad band necessarily, but Weirdo is definitely one of their very best
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Saturday, 12 September 2020 14:47 (four years ago) link
I secretly thought Size of a Cow was an out of character good song at the time but he wasn't called Hunt for nothing
― how do i shot moon? (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 12 September 2020 14:52 (four years ago) link
Yeah, the Indie Top 20 series started very indie and gradually got more & more mainstream although even the later volumes would still throw up the odd track by the likes of The Cramps or Urusei Yatsura xps
― groovypanda, Saturday, 12 September 2020 15:08 (four years ago) link
Hi, Space Cadet! Wow, that sounds like a great compilation. I have weird feelings about Jesus Loves Amerika, but it makes sense that's where you encountered it.
After going down the memory hole of YouTube over the past few days, I'm very sheepishly admitting that I kinda wanna change my vote to Jesus Jones not Electronic. (Especially after seeing how much love the latter is getting on this thread.) Yes, they were a shameless Shamen rip-off act, but that was some Pavlovian nostalgia to hear them again.
I wasn't fond of Size of a Cow, but going back and listening to the singles from Eight-Legged Groove Machine, I did kind of recapture the frothy joy of what I liked about The Wonder Stuff. Were The Wonder Stuff Grebo? Should I start a Grebo thread to hash out what Grebo was, because Stirmonster never told me anything except what Grebo *wasn't*.
This stuff is silly pop joy:
https://youtu.be/cY446CO6USQ
https://youtu.be/7Aw-JYtdW4o
But listening to this with an adult's ear rather than a teenager's, the monetary preoccupation in these singles really kind of stands out - like at the time, it really passed me by, but now I'm really wondering if this is unironic celebration of Thatcher-era 80s greed, or if it's a politically charged lampooning of the attitudes expressed in the songs. They never struck me as a political band, far more a silly jokes bants-type band. But looking back on it now, I don't know?
― Specific and Limited Interests (Branwell with an N), Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:07 (four years ago) link
I sometimes wonder about Jesus Jones. What we're they about? What were their hopes and dreams? Was it baggy? Was it industrial? Was it grebo? Indie? Pop? Were they more like PWEI or more like EMF? What exactly were they going for? Just what was the deal?
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:19 (four years ago) link
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/27896382e82c4ea7e34e2c4fda97d92f8a152c96/0_529_3564_3969/master/3564.jpg
this reveals little
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:22 (four years ago) link
haha especially if the photo worked
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:23 (four years ago) link
It's weird because Jesus Jones were so astonishingly successful - especially in the States but seemed to fit nowhere in the UK music press's plan for what music was doing at the time.
It wasn't that they didn't come from a scene - as I said on the Shamen thread, they shamelessly piggybacked off the Shamen's work. It was more that they weren't legible as belonging to a music press standardised Thing - the way that the music press presented Baggy, or presented Shoegaze or Britpop or The New Wave Of New Wave as being "a-ha, we, the music press have spotted The Next Trend".
They just combined a bunch of stuff that was zeitgeisty and popular, and combined it with a heartthrob looks singer, and had this skyrocketing success that the Uk music press didn't know where to assign.
― Specific and Limited Interests (Branwell with an N), Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:27 (four years ago) link
I'm just glad the Tatu cover of How Soon Is Now exists
― boxedjoy, Sunday, 13 September 2020 08:51 (four years ago) link
WTF is “grebo”???
― Mr. Snrub, Sunday, 13 September 2020 14:58 (four years ago) link
WTF is "grebo"? Obviously it is the music favored by diving birds of the order Podicipediformeshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grebe?wprov=sfla1
― velcro-magnon (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 13 September 2020 15:03 (four years ago) link
No one knows what Grebo is, or where it came from, or what it means. They will only ever tell me what it isn't.
― Grebo X Performance (Branwell with an N), Sunday, 13 September 2020 15:08 (four years ago) link
How Soon Is Now came out like 10 years before all these other songs so im assuming it's some remix from the grosse point blank soundtrack or something
― billstevejim, Sunday, 13 September 2020 18:47 (four years ago) link
it got reissued in 92 with a fancy 2cd single package when the label released a greatest hits set
https://www.discogs.com/The-Smiths-How-Soon-Is-Now/release/490493
https://www.discogs.com/The-Smiths-How-Soon-Is-Now/release/490503
― mark e, Sunday, 13 September 2020 18:51 (four years ago) link
Also I feel like this series always had a side strategy of padding out new tracks with indie disco classics.
― 这是我的显示名称 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 13 September 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link
xps The Smiths singles compilation came out in 1995.
― visiting, Sunday, 13 September 2020 18:55 (four years ago) link
Oddly Pulp's has the most warm evocative vibe, it actually reminds me of the era and conjured up some of the old late-teens early-90s magic, perhaps purely because it wasn't played as often as some of those other bangers.
Great video too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPGepgWupTw
― piscesx, Sunday, 13 September 2020 19:10 (four years ago) link
I wrote a thing about DYRTFT a few years back, re-reading it, it's not a very good thing, however might be good for a dive into the trackhttps://pulpsongs.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/129-do-you-remember-the-first-time/
― 这是我的显示名称 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 13 September 2020 19:24 (four years ago) link
Dodgy were in most respects pretty shit, but I do miss the days when a band could have a hit with something so unabashedly and uncynically exuberant and positive as Staying Out For The Summer. It's definitely a song that could only have come out when it did, even if it was a straight sixties rip off
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 09:41 (four years ago) link
Dodgy winning Gary Crowley's demo clash on GLR five weeks running with Lovebirds. The shit ya remember, although not the song itself without going to YouTube. I'm curious to hear that demo again now.
― grebo shot first (Noel Emits), Monday, 14 September 2020 09:52 (four years ago) link
Dodgy were embarrassing but actually not *that* bad as a band, not good enough for me to ever consider buying any of their records, but respect due for filling a particular niche well.
― 这是我的显示名称 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 14 September 2020 10:41 (four years ago) link
Before they embraced Britpop, bleached hair and ripping off the Rugrats theme tune, they cast themselves as ganja-worshipping caravan-dweller types. I remember being quite underwhelmed by their very non-psychedelic sound once I eventually got to hear 'So Let Me Go Far', although it has a certain charm that's grown on me, I'll admit. 'In A Room' was not a bad single either
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 12:14 (four years ago) link
also, they have definitely written their own Wikipedia page
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 12:15 (four years ago) link
Dodgy is such a terrible name for a band
― boxedjoy, Monday, 14 September 2020 12:17 (four years ago) link
It really is.In A Room was surprisingly good, considering.
― kinder, Monday, 14 September 2020 12:28 (four years ago) link
'Good Enough' was the worst of the Britpop era big hits
― Oor Neechy, Monday, 14 September 2020 12:37 (four years ago) link
but staying out for the summer was good
Haha, after Kinder's reccommendation, I actually went and checked it out because I don't think I'd ever heard it, and I wish you could see my face right now?
I wanted to turn it off around 40 seconds in, but I stuck it out to 1.13 to see if they ever got to a chorus, but the whole thing is just so... ~not for Branwells~
(It does genuinely make me wonder, how much of the stuff I do have positive feelings towards these days, is based mostly on nostalgia for how I felt when I first heard it. Like, how many of the bands where I felt "this is my favourite thing!!!" in 1992, if I were hearing them for the first time now, would they even be something I even liked, let alone ~my favourite band~?)
((Like, if I first heard e.g. Kenickie or Lush for the first time today, I think I would still respond positively to it. But if I heard Blur or Suede for the first time, I'm genuinely not sure.))
― Greta Grebo (Branwell with an N), Monday, 14 September 2020 12:38 (four years ago) link
It's up against some fairly stiff competition. For me, "Dancing in the Moonlight" just edges it out in the ghastliness stakes.
― Soz (Not Soz) (Vast Halo), Monday, 14 September 2020 13:11 (four years ago) link
xp, you talking about 'In A Room', Branwell? I'm almost certain that's my favourite of Dodgy's singles, which is medium praise indeed but nevertheless
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 13:15 (four years ago) link
I don't count Dancing In The Moonlight as Britpop at all really - not even in the right era
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 13:16 (four years ago) link
with a lot of this kind of stuff, especially mid 90s Britpop, you wouldn't really be able to get away with that style of songwriting past 2009 at a large push. even back then, you had shite like 'She's So Lovely' by Scouting For Girls getting into the charts. I might be wrong here - I don't really listen to Radio X but maybe there are still loads of UK guitar pop bands singing about sunny days and cups of tea and factory work and charity shops?
― Leighton Buzzword (dog latin), Monday, 14 September 2020 13:22 (four years ago) link