SHINE: 20 Brilliant Indie Hits

All Together Now = everyone pitch in and do this at the same time

Altogether Now = endless, eternal, forever now of infinite cosmic space, maaaaaan

I went with Shine On in the end although I don't think I ever warmed to the re-recorded version, which this presumably is, but probably just for churlish corny indie fuxor reasons.

3 votes for 'Zombie' and 2 for 'At The Link It's Easy' pls explain your reasoning here.

Honestly I had not heard All Together Now in decades, and trying to put it on now - you know, fun baggy beat, that's cool - but it's really impossible to listen to the lyrics or watch the codgers in the pub NOW - without some weird intrusive voice in the back of my head going POPPIES POPPPIES POOPPPPPIIIIIIEEESSSSSSS

And I know that's pretty much the opposite message of the song, but WWI imagery in the UK has become so irrevocably tainted these days that I just can't.

OTM. It’s why a song like this sounds so quaint in today’s context.

(I still do wish I'd voted for Jesus Jones)

well, at least i wasn't alone.
i still listen to JJ and still enjoy the albums when the urge kicks in.
they still put on a cracking live show if you ever get the chance.

so for non UK-ers, the competing compilation brand was The Best... Album In The World... Ever! series which ran from 95-98... volume 1 is

Supergrass – "Alright"
Blur – "Girls and Boys"
Elastica – "Waking Up"
Ash – "Girl From Mars"
Oasis – "Whatever"
Edwyn Collins – "A Girl Like You"
The Charlatans – "The Only One I Know"
Pulp – "Do You Remember the First Time?"
McAlmont & Butler – "Yes"
Morrissey – "Everyday Is Like Sunday"
Radiohead – "High and Dry"
The Cranberries – "Zombie"
The Smashing Pumpkins – "Today"
Manic Street Preachers – "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)"
James – "Sit Down"
The Boo Radleys – "Wake Up Boo!"
Suede – "Animal Nitrate"
The Verve – "This is Music"
Inspiral Carpets – "I Want You"
Therapy? – "Screamager"

The Smiths – "This Charming Man"
The Jesus & Mary Chain – "April Skies"
Oasis – "Supersonic"
The Stone Roses – "Fools Gold" (Original version)
Stereo MC's – "Connected"
The Prodigy – "Out of Space"
The Shamen – "Destination Eschaton" (Beatmasters 7" remix)
New Order – "True Faith '94"
The Chemical Brothers – "Leave Home"
Fluke – "Bullet"
Primal Scream – "Loaded"
EMF – "Unbelievable"
Jesus Jones – "Real, Real, Real"
Depeche Mode – "Personal Jesus" (7" version)
Blur – "Chemical World"
The Levellers – "15 Years"
The Auteurs – "Lenny Valentino"
Skunk Anansie – "I Can Dream"
Dreadzone – "Captain Dread"
The Future Sound of London – "Lifeforms"

this was a really big deal for me, this one. Seven years old in 1995, getting my music taste from TOTP and The Chart Show, and this being one that my parents would let me borrow for my own bedroom because they already had most of the parent albums this stuff appeared on. I wonder how much of this stuff I actually like and how much of it is residual fondness and nostalgia.

I'm sure I had one of those. Would've been discounted to no more than £2.99 otherwise I wouldn't have had the means. Shine (1) was the only Shine I ever bought despite being basically the target market for it.

Think it was Volume 6 which is odd because it contains some of my most-detested songs (Smile, Cast, Dodgy) and lots of the good ones I'd have had on albums anyway. Must've been for that sweet FSOL cut idk.

Volume 7 is horrendous, don't even look at it

I'm finding it hard to believe they'd released 7 of these things by 1996. Were they pumping one out every 3 months?

(PS quite like a few of the ones on Vol 7)...

Speaking of which, anyone remember the Volume booklet/CD compilations? I only had Vol.11 but it was responsible for me getting into a ton of bands

http://www.bandplanet.co.uk/Oldsite/Compilations/Volume.htm

Didn't have any of those but did get (and still have) all the Trance Europe Express ones

https://img.discogs.com/9Wdr3qGj0DM0RIyUOCI7PXBgPcM=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-85763-1201824859.jpeg.jpg

vol 7 was 1998, heading dangerously into Robbie Williams/ Texas/Travis territory iirc

Ugh Texas

Is this where I confess I actually had a huge soft spot for Travis, they were totally inoffensive but also comforting in the same way that oatmeal porridge is comforting on a cold morning.

(Also, they were extraordinarily kind blokes and at least 2 of them were fans of a former band of mine so I am probably biased.)

xps discogs has different details on Shine 7 but yeah there was a point c1997 where Britpop split into AOR tedium and more progressive OK Computer/Vanishing Point type stuff

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Shine-7/release/1304398

sorry dl I thought you were talking about the 'Best... Album in the World' series. I was, just then!

ah i c. apols

I think I'm scarred by repeated workplace Radio 2/Virgin Radio in the late 90s/early 2000 so the first few jangly seconds of Why Does It Always Rain On Me provoke an actual eye-twitch. Have A Nice Day by Stereophonics is the same but even worse

heartwarming to see so many supporters of the For Britain Movement who still feel comfortable on ILM

Hey, I was doing my part to make America great again.

Travis were unlucky in that they had some great pop moments, but faded just as the bands who were to be big got a kind of permanence. Yeah, if I never hear "whydoesitalwayzetc" again that's gonna be fine, but it's the only one that get plaid.

xpost oh you just said so..

That "Trance Europe" (LP) set was the only purchase where the record clerk was all "You don't want that you want THIS compilation"

"um, yes I do!" and gave him my paddington bear stare (trust me, you don't want that..) (the stare, that is)..

Anyway, I have no idea what that other comp was, but I don't think it had Aphex on it (and I'd not heard any at that point).

Eeeee, I was just looking up 'what happened to Aphex Twin?' and that was not a fun thing to find out.

Is this where I confess I actually had a huge soft spot for Travis, they were totally inoffensive but also comforting in the same way that oatmeal porridge is comforting on a cold morning.

(Also, they were extraordinarily kind blokes and at least 2 of them were fans of a former band of mine so I am probably biased.)

― Grebo Jones (Branwell with an N)

Maybe time to repeat my apocryphal Travis anecdote - some of my brother's mates knew where Fran Healy lived in North London, so obviously a bunch of them stand outside drunkenly serenading him with "Why Does It Always Rain On Me" late one evening. He bursts out of the front door in his dressing gown and chases them down the road yelling "It's gonna be raining fists when I catch you cunts!"

A ha hahahaha, great - totally on Fran's side here, TBH!

xp would this have been somewhere round Muswell Hill/East Finchley? when I lived in Muswell Hill around '04-07 my landlord (who seemed to own half the street) told me someone from Travis had been a tenant of his

FYI the 'Greatest Album In The World Ever' series was huge here too. I'd sooner have sawn my arm off than even glance at one but that's neither here or there.

Cl Poo - in my admittedly flaky memory it's Crouch End, so not far off...

I always wanted this Volume CD but couldn't ever find it

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Sharks-Patrol-These-Waters-The-Best-Of-Volume-Part-2/release/590105

that is a decent comp. always liked the comedy Mindless Drug Hoover song

feel like I saw that one a lot in 2nd hand shops at the time. I only had one of those, Volume 13

I looked for it in Magpie and HMV and Andy's at least once a week, no joy :(

used to see the various Trance ones and always was tempted as the track listings were always impressive, but never did.

i did pick this one up a couple of years ago in a charity shop, and its bloody brilliant, especially the Orb mix :

https://www.discogs.com/Darren-Emerson-Alex-Paterson-TEXtures/master/22621

Oh, I had that "Sharks" one, a bunch of great tracks - Possibly the best Sleeper one.. And so on, ymmv, and ...

xps discogs has different details on Shine 7 but yeah there was a point c1997 where Britpop split into AOR tedium and more progressive OK Computer/Vanishing Point type stuff

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Thursday, September 17, 2020 8:18 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, by then it had already split into songs that sound like showtunes and madchester-informed dadrock a couple of years prior.

The split that interests me was, at what point did dance music and indie stop being seen as ~stuff consumed by the same people~? Because I can remember in the start of the 90s, when I first started reading Select Magazine, they’d be as likely to cover the KLF or the Shamen as Ride or Slowdive - both Mark Gardener and Richard D James were pin-ups in their pull-out section. And when they first started playing around with the idea of what would become ‘BritPop’ - they named St Etienne alongside Suede.

A ton of these early indie comps do have dance-rock and even dance - FSOL being on one of them noted above!

At what point did that stop, bcz by the end of the 90s, it was all guitars?

Was the dividing line the moment that him out of Kula Shaker did a track with The Prodigy? Was that the moment people decided they had to pick a side?

I'm guessing the wheels fell off that particular utopian idea around 99 with trance and UK garage dominating the dance scene here and a general post Britpop lull. But it was sort of illusory as well throughout the 90s.

The moved closer together and diverged in terms of audiences throughout the next decade, first with electroclash and DFA etc and then again around 07-09.

Take this can of worms to the "what would you rather eat" thread?

idk, after Oasis "britpop" splinters off into enough disparate directions that it's a fairly useless term for talking about music made at the end of the 90's.

From what I recall, Select was always very favourable to dance music, or at least electronica, big beat, IDM etc. They also did a four pager about the Spice Girls when they first came out. But as Matt DC says, that magazine, the scene and its fans, we're opposed to the commercial excesses of Ibiza trance and pop-garage for some reason.

*cough* for some reason *cough*

Was the dividing line the moment that him out of Kula Shaker did a track with The Prodigy? Was that the moment people decided they had to pick a side?

― Grebo Jones (Branwell with an N),

Dividing lines are really blurry. There may be more of a split along provincial/cosmopolitan lines than indie/dance. OTOH by 1996 or so John Barry's influence was a key marker of "Britishness" across multiple styles. The Texas and Robbie Williams territory mentioned above, but also the Manic Street Preachers, Massive Attack and Space etc. Everything on the radio had a fucking orchestra, Even Ash did a song called Goldfinger.

Think for a lot of indie kids those big beat hits prominently featuring guitars/Oasis/Crispian Mills might have been the moment they realized they didn't want to pick a side. The dance ppl who might have said 'we told you so' said "big beat sucks" iirc.

At the end of the 90's the fashion was to mix it up though wasn't it?

dont think so, there was lots of mixing it up in the early 90s but it felt very tribal by late 90s, despite many crossovers

probably due in part to the fact Tim Burgess just was t born to sing on a dance tune

like that whole "let's get this Britpop singer on a big beat track" craze felt forced, a bit "if we must" rather than "this is our artistic calling". late 90s attempts to fuse rock and dance often made a hash job of mashing the weakest elements of both into each other

these last posts are both true, but also Life Is Sweet is a tune.

you'd often get distorted power riffs forced over these lolloping groove break loops and they just didn't work together. also:
Ash recruited a full time turntablist to scratch awkwardly over their songs.
The Prodigy earnestly tried to reinvent themselves as edgy punk rockers, but they came off more clownish and infantile than they ever had.
I agree that Soulwax, LCD, DFA etc going back to new wave and disco for inspiration a few years later was when indie-dance started working again. Having trouble trying to think of very much crossover stuff from 97-01 that did it particularly well... Gorillaz I guess? Never really got them though

I don't hate Life Is Sweet or even that Noel Gallagher one he did with CBros but neither project felt necessary beyond 'we need something to please the indie rockers'

A whole bunch of shitty guitar bands trying to ~go Radiohead~ and then Radiohead going fully IDM, haha?