Britpop re-assesed?

A lot of the music - particularly the second- and third-tier Britpop bands - sounds very weak now. And also the discovery that guitar pop/rock by white Brits could sell again in Britain condemned us to the post-Britpop Catatonia years. You could argue also that Britpop has severed, or at least had an effect on, the link between the 'indie scene' and the charts. I'm not quite sure what I mean by that though so I need to think about it more.

But! The rush to condemn the parochial "Brit" bit of Britpop misses out the "pop" bit. I think it's good for pop and good for the charts when strong, hooky, exciting guitar or 'indie' records get into the top 10, and this happened more during 1994-5 than it has since. The notion that such records were 'saving' the chart rather than 'enriching' it is one I'm totally unsympathetic to. But "Girls And Boys", "Alright", and "Common People", to name a handful, were excellent pop by almost any definition.

That said, some music did come out of it all. The tracks Tom mentions, also Blur's "Parklife" album (for all that Blur are intrinsically shite), Wasis' first album, Elastica singles and live performances, etc.

I've never minded the 'Brit' end of it. I'm not British but I don't have a problem with British people liking their country. There is a lot to like.

Perhaps it reflected the desperation of the media to find a musical consensus, a yardstick everybody could see as "good". The fact that that yardstick was Oasis highlighted the plain bad taste, and ennervating, lazy nostalgia in the UK media, partic. the broadsheets, clueless as they always had been when covering music.

I remember the summer both Weller's Stanley Road and Scott Walker's Tilt were released. Weller got leaden reverence, Walker barely disguised ridicule. It was disgusting, offensively anti- intellectual.

So no new insights from me then. I'm stiucking the Reynold's party line, with the caveat that the end of that era didn't kill indie, it drove it underground again.

It seemed a letdown. The previous couple of years there had seemed to be a quite exciting trend of indie bands responding to techno and the takeover of pop by dance, whether in an overground poppy way (St Etienne and Pulp) or in an underground post-dance way (Seefeel/Pram/Stereolab/Disco Inferno). Everything looked really rosy, and even when stuff like "Girls And Boys" came on the radio I felt, yes! Something really good is happening! And *then* Oasis came along and all these other bands, and that experimental pop energy just dissipated, and it took in my view 3 or 4 years for indie to start getting interesting in that way again.

It's also worth remembering that dance music seemed incredibly exciting then, really developing fast, and suddenly the entire media attention shifted, and this really oppositional culture appeared. So it was hard not to resent that.

It's worth differentiating between the Britpop bands (pre-Morning Glory, pretty much) and the Britrock bands (post-Morning Glory and Stanley Road). That was the point at which whatever positive effects the movement had pretty much curdled.

It was all the coverage on grunge that ignited Britpop as a media creation, starting with a jingoistic, anti-american and silly editorial in Select on the subject.

I don't believe grunge stars ever decried Sonic Youth as "intellectual bollocks" or turned "music shouldn't have to be intelligent" to "music shouldn't be intelligent" as a central credo.

Also, maybe as an american you didn't have to endure Menswear, the ahem, "feminist" "ideas" of Sleeper, Echobelly et al. It quickly became clear the whole thing was a dumbing down, an insult to readers' intelligence which I found profoundly depressing. It becomes clear to me I'm talking about the phenom, not the bands per se. But the fact that the music was forgettable makes it even worse.

Anyone not stupid/anti-ponce had to smother whatever they did in treacly layers of irony: Blur, Pulp

But it's not just the anti intellectualism, it's when it was combined with the air of triumphalism and chauvinism that accompanied it from almost all concerned. It was pure tabloid, full of ignorance, bad faith, self-importance, bad priorities. There was no fun in it!

I don't think there's any question about Blur, but I cannot think of a single Pulp song that was smothered in irony. That's an accusation that gets tossed at them a lot, but like with the Pet Shop Boys it's just not so.

I'll take your word on that, but it is, however wrongheadely, a reason why a lot of people adored them. I remember a lot of people at University sighing "oh, the irony, the exquisite irony!" when Jarvis nominated Scott Walker doing his full chanson stage bit as his hero on Jools Holland.

It strikes me I have posted too much on this thread, and my answers have been a. not really been about the music as much as the media storm and b. mentioned Scott Walker all too often. I will now retire, hoping the usual poliphony of voices will resume. But it was good to get it off my chest!

My god, what an awful picture you paint. Do students really still lounge around making inane comments as inane as this?

I would have thought Jarvis Cocker nominating Scott Walker was somewhat... obvious and not remotely ironic. Maybe they didn't understand who Scott Walker was.

So yes, there were some good things. And then there was, for instance, Kula Shaker. ARRRRRRRGH! And I also have to say that Supergrass never meant much to me, I'd rather listen to the Sweet.

I loved Menswear (most likely band to be cool in 20 years time), Supergrass (the prettiest), Pulp (wittiest), the Blur/Oasis battle was funny and exciting. Pop needs more rivalry. These were excellent pop bands, creating lots of stories for the papers and releasing some good records (and plenty of duff ones – but then loads of pop acts I really like have made duff records). I am surprised that Elastica are being marked as a stupid band – I marked them down as the intelligensia (for ‘vaseline’ if nothing else).

I like Tom’s Britrock definition – the bad times came when it got less pop and more Mojo rock - Ocean Colour Scene spring to mind of course, but Cast, Ash etc have a similar effect on me.

If you distil Britpop into a series of singles it seems great. For that reason alone it therefore has to get my vote. The dance argument I think is lame – dance acts have charted consistently since rave, and I didn’t notice any decline in clubbing during the Britpop years. In fact the whole Bristol scene was peaking at that time – on my mix tapes from the period Tricky and Massive Attack go with Pulp 12" dance mixes nicely. Strangely the northern bands were more rock (I don’t remember Oasis 12" remixes) though they LOOKED more rave. Perhaps Madchester was rockier than its supporters believe.

I have no quarrel with any of that or...

It's also worth remembering that dance music seemed incredibly exciting then, really developing fast, and suddenly the entire media attention shifted, and this really oppositional culture appeared. So it was hard not to resent that. (Tom)

...but my perception of it at the time was bizarrely different. For over ten years I had been obsessively immersed in soul/funk/r&b, hip hop, and various forms of dance. Thoughout that period I hated indie with a passion. But by 1994 I was *bored* with the fragmenting dance scene, and 'Britpop' seemed like a refreshing return to my punk roots (not in a strictly musical sense obviously, more in the sense of a quasi-mod 'scene').

The oppositional thing was actually a strong part of its appeal to me - cocking a snook at certain acquaintances who liked things like Stereo MCs or Moby. Of course a lot of the bands were mediocre, but Sleeper and Echobelly were a bit like Chelsea or the Lurkers - 2nd or 3rd division bands that were musically (and more importantly 'ideologically') acceptable for a time. But, to extend my (stupid?) analogy, Kula Shaker and Ocean Colour Scene were like Eddie & the Hot Rods or early Police (ie not acceptable - as countless critical thrashings in the music press would testify).

But I can trace the beginning of my disillusionment - when the term 'Britpop' started to appear in Melody Maker (not sure who coined it). That one word spoiled and cheapened the music in an instant. It didn't seem to fit my notion of what the music was. And of course the point was swiftly reached when the same Moby-loving people I referred to earlier started to say that Oasis were 'actually quite good'.

One last thing. I'm not sure of the chronology but I remember thinking at the time that Britpop's commercial collapse came incredibly suddenly - almost in a matter of a very few months (which seemed a little strange considering the chart dominance it had established for a while).

I pretty much concur entirely with Tom that the good stuff came out earlier when it still had a pop sense and had yet to morph into plodding neo-AOR; I did very much like the "Parklife" album for a while, and "Common People" was a moment of total excitement and wonder (probably *the* moment which convinced me to love pop music and, therefore, the starting point for this posting) which pretty much deserves Tom's single-of-the-decade accolade. The turning point to the dadrock years was autumn '95, and indeed the pathetic critical rehabilitation of "Morning Glory" after it exploded (having initially been greeted with disdain when it looked as though Blur might win not just the battle, but the war), and then the ludicrous praise of "Be Here Now" (itself retracted within a few months) was the defining moment in the reputation-loss of the mainstream Britpress. The Oasis coverage will, in 10 years' time, be presented as a prime example of how the NME and MM dug their own grave.

And on the subject of the credibility-erosion of the inkies during this fatal period, it's also interesting to speculate on what kind of press some of the very "British" records in 93 / early 94 coming at it from a totally different, more enigmatic, less celebratory perspective (the first two Auteurs albums, Ultramarine's "United Kingdoms", Saint Etienne's "Tiger Bay") would have got had they come out at the height of Britpop fervour (a tangent: "Britpop" was used by the MM in '93 to mean people as diverse as all the above and, erm, Apache Indian and Credit To The Nation, rather than its later definition). Judging from the critical ignorance of the Auteurs' brilliant "After Murder Park" in early '96, probably not much.

David's final question: I'm not sure exactly which period you mean but, after the realisation of just how shit and indulgent "Be Here Now" was (even among previous Oasis fans), the era was definitely over. Certainly by the end of '97 it was clear that Cast / OCS / KS had passed their peak, and Sleeper's album bombed; in early '97 Blur had repositioned themselves and in late '97 / early '98 Pulp did the same. So, yeah, autumn '97 is the point at which it whittled away, though it had gone shit two years earlier.

What I think: if the P*pt*nes thread is a guide — obviously ignoring R*bin's manic tr*lling — britpop fans wouldn't get the connection you and the record companies think so obvious to make. If it's cynical, it's a cynicism that (refreshingly) assumes (a) knowledge of history (b) ownership of adequate ears

What my mum thinks: that should be "owing to the derivative nature of these bands", not "due to"

In the case of my cousins, existent knowledge of 60s music, esp. Beatles, made them all the more receptive to Oasism *and* still more obsessed with that past. Certainly people did seem enthusiastic about buying up some of those old rock bands rather than getting into, say, TLC or Blackstreet or Wu-Tang. But I think it was a passing fad which faded with Britpop, and one which probably never took in the majority of those bands' audiences (for whom, to deconstruct That Phrase, the "pop" of "Girls and Boys" or "Live Forever" was always more important than any "Brit" Big Book Of Rock stuff); you'll always get the supernaturally aged teenagers looking for penpals in Mojo, but they'll thankfully be an ignorable minority.

I remember your letters well; it was easy simply to *say* that what was wrong with Britpop was the motives and the sidelines rather than the music, but hard to phrase it and express it so well. The one that attacked Taylor Parkes's view of John Coltrane and condemned the inkies' idea of "black music as the exotic other" (I think that was you, anyway) is probably my favourite MM letter from that period. As I think I've said before, seeing you here was like greeting a long- lost friend I never actually knew.

Theory: "influence" is a critical concept which KILLS history (ditto "appropriation") ...

I like Marcello's New-Gold-Dream analogy (as one who ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY went for Morley's line at the time): but I'm not sure how strongly I was believing that the Future had been suborned; just that the present was (for today) more fun. I didn't believe in the Future in 1982. ("We'd been promised the end of the world, and we didn't get it...")

"Owing to" = grammatically correct;' "due to" = not (it needs a verb). It's that simple, Robin.

(I feel I have deftly caught the Manc twang of Noel's thought-patterns here, or Liam's, or whichever one it is has thought. No?)

The Beatles boom was fuelled mainly by the Anthology, I'd ay: the thing itself, in renewed effect. The simian pseudo-mods (Real Mods — 1965 Mods — hated the Beatles: also the Who) didn't do any harm here — cracked a sub-market likely by standard generation-gap norms to be indifferent if not openly hostile to the past repackaged. So yes, I concede that, somewhat. But (a) history is stripped out of the package, replaced by the tidal wave of anti-history the Anothology represent (b) what-sounds-like-what is also toed to the car graveyard and cubed. Wasis REALLY DON'T sound all that like Beatles/Who/Kinks: moments, maybe, but strained through 20 years of (obliterated) PowerPop. Raspberries/Shoes/Shirts/Yachts, more like: with comedy eyebrows and couch-potato attitude.

(The generation gap — a brilliantly effective 40s/50s marketing strategy which opened up the possibility for genuine kulturkampf, albeit rooted in the stupdiest of social distinctions — ain't what it was: I think this is a good thing, mind. I reserve the right to check Diane Krall and DJ Martian: my Dreem Cupple...)

Am I Paul? Is this Tarsus? Tarsus, Syria? I'm just now replaying 'Oranges and Lemons', first time since I gave it a good review in MM (to prove I sucked no line, nohow: despite thinking it was actually quite dull).

Or has this connection been made a million times? I'm mark s at Tarsus, but it's just a bus depot now....

To hand: well, I fucking tht I had! A famous 1979 NME piece by Penny Reel — a "Real Mod" by any other name — written to coincide with Quadrophenia-the-movie, abt mod life in its heyday c.1964. I was only rewading it a coupla months ago: apparently didn't refile it properly (aisle 7, wing d, floor 3-sub-2, annexe). Let that be a lesson.

None of the Detours were really mods — Moon liked surf-music, for fook's sake — and Real Mods knew this, and despised them and avoided them. All that thrashing around: very uncool. What the Who did rather brilliantly was to package up elements of Mod-ism with other happening Pop Stuff and take it all to the world.

Best I can do for the moment (quoted in Frith's _Sound Effects_): "Not only is [Beardy Pegley] the first guy I ever see wear hair lacquer and lipstick, but he is also the earliest on the scene with a pink tab- collar shirt, a grey crew neck jersey, knitted tie, scarlet suede jacket with matching leather colar, navy blue crombie overcoat, white half-mast flares, and candy-stripe socks, as well as being the first mod to sing the praises of Laurel Aitken, James Brown, the Pretty Things, the Flamingo Club in Wardour Street, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and marijuana, insult Eden Kane at the Chez Don, and is still the only guy I ever meet who owns a pair of bright emerald green fur booties, all this circa 1962."

(Actually the Frith book has "met" for "meet", a obvious typo.)

Oh, and Mark's comments on the overlay of such a narrow reading of the 60s are the most articulate description of the way these nostalgia-movements rewrite and simplify history I think I've ever read. Good call on New Easy, as well, though there was always a little too much grinning irony in that movement for my liking.

ie Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, sees the light, becomes Paul: oh yes, I remember NOW, now that I look like a FOOL...

And also a Saturday morning's experimentation proves that XTC sound nothing like Oasis, dashing my hopes of a critical breakthrough. However, I do find I enjoy the usually too-quirky XTC much more if I fill my head with the aggressively unquirky Oasis before I start. So that's progress of a sort.

Wish I hadn't missed out on this thread first time. But everyone on it had so darned much to say anyway.

A DIVA MADE FOR MIDDLE ENGLAND;
Lisa Stansfield delivers her version of blue-eyed soul to the faithful following at the Albert Hall

BYLINE: Kodwo Eshun

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. T5

LENGTH: 415 words

ALTHOUGH she rode in on the post-Aciiid Britpop boom of 1989/90, the years of Bomb the Bass and S Express, Yazz and Coldcut, late-eighties era sampladelia never really suited Lisa Stansfield.

There was a distinct unease about the way she was singing, a definite mismatch between the house beats which were just a little too fast and a voice that was more comfortable cruising along at medium tempo.

Of all the Brit house generation, Stansfield has been by far the most successful. Her albums, unmemorable in the extreme, sell millions to an audience confused by the ongoing hyperfragmentation of Planet Pop in the nineties.

The audience that's packed into the Albert Hall for Friday's one-off charity show is well into its 30s, 40s and 50s, and the atmosphere - excitable yet restrained, tentatively exuberant - makes it feel as if she's presiding over the World's Largest Office Party in its opening stages.

Stansfield's record sales reflect the sense of reassuring normality she offers. In an Age of Infinite Remixology, she sings definitive versions of "real songs", not so much soul as generic renditions of what people think soul should sound like.

A Stansfield record peaks straight away with a snatch of chorus, slows down into a husky monotone and then arcs its way emphatically skyward in a fanfare of parping horns and sweeping strings which buoy up Lisa's cheerful paeans to positivity.

The London Philharmonic string section bent to their job, sawing away behind her, generating a sound that suffused the adoring audience in waves of pop memory. I'd forgotten just how many hits she'd had: My Oh My, If I Could Change My Life, Some Day I'm Coming Back, All Around The World, We've Got To Live Together: on and on they rolled, a seamless segue of singles for the silent majority who'd faithfully come to London for the occasion. Swept into a fervour, they started, hesitantly at first, to shuffle and shimmy until the entire Albert Hall heaved with bodies.

Stansfield looked suprised, if not stunned by the ringing applause. She skipped backwards, looked helplessly at her backing singers and then ducked back into the roars of "Encore'. But this fierce loyalty doesn't change the fact that she is a mediocre songwriter. Nor is she in any way a diva; she's what Middle England has instead of a Liza Minnelli or a Barbra Streisand. She's a homegrown Reality Check in a pop world long since shot to pieces. The very definition of underwhelming.

this just dropped in the inbox :

TF Presents...
BRITPOP
SPECIAL
Vibe Bar, London
Friday May 27th
10 Hour Zone – 6pm – 4am
*Top Secret Massive Headline Act*
Shaun Ryder (DJ Set)
Northern Uproar
Shed 7 (DJ Set)
The Bluetones
PENGU!NS

Plus many, many more…
Now then, nothing in music truly ever dies – genres and styles take their twists & turns on the musical merry-go-round, evolve into something new and have a massive resurgence. BRITPOP has already been through the evolution part of the mill, with the number of bands born out of the ashes of BRITPOP. Now it’s time for the resurgence, which has been bubbling underneath the floorboards since the turn of the year.
With Liam in full pomp, Pulp reforming for a series of summer shows and Blur penning a new album, This Feeling is delighted to announce A BRITPOP SPECIAL @ Vibe Bar – complete with a couple of our very own reformations.
So, without further ado, we have a *top secret massive headline act* locked in to play a full live set, which will be announced in due course. Northern Uproar – specially reformed for This Feeling’s BRITPOP SPECIAL - will be living it up for one night only to play a live set, which is set to be truly magical. The Bluetones make a slight return before their farewell tour in September with frontman Mark Morriss performing a blissful set on the acoustic and Echobelly now known as Calm Of Zero will kick the night off, set the temperature and get those BRITPOP juices circulating again. Zak Starkey's new band PENGU!NS soon to support Kasabian on tour play "live" and as ex Oasis and Lightning Seeds drummer should know a thing or two about Britpop. Noel Gallagher's first signings to his record label, Proud Mary, complete the "live" zone.
TOP SECRET HEADLINE ACT – LIVE
NORTHERN UPROAR – LIVE & REFORMED
MARK MORRISS ( THE BLUETONES) – ACOUSTIC
CALM OF ZERO (EX ECHOBELLY) – LIVE
PENGU!NS - LIVE
PROUD MARY - LIVE
Following this monumental resurgence of BRITPOP hysteria, Shaun Ryder will drive the party into the small hours and beyond (as only he knows best) with a DJ Set, which will take the Vibe Bar on a journey that has been 15 years in the making.
With 4 rooms at the Vibe Bar celebrating one massive BRITZONE, Shed 7 frontman Rick Witter will take to the decks and wipe the dust off his BRITPOP vinyl collection along with Damian Jonze from the NME and Cool Britannia.
SHAUN RYDER – DJ SET
SHED SEVEN (RICK WITTER) – DJ SET
DAMIAN JONZE (NME) – DJ SET
COOL BRITANNIA – DJ SET

"TOP SECRET HEADLINE ACT – LIVE"

guesses on a postcard please ..

maybe the sort of pompous niche station that would use "for the music fans" as a tagline

The sort of pompous niche station that is under the impression that '90s indie = all British music.

I still give a shit about Salad!

https://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/salad-undressed

15 oasis songs on a best 100 of british music

there's not even 15 good oasis songs tbh (and i like oasis)

An across-all-decades, across-all-genres Top 100 of tracks by bands from the UK would be far more interesting and diverse, but that's not what this list is. It's basically a list for a specific type of music fan that hasn't moved on from the mid to late '90s.

FOOKIN BRITPOP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_KyYs0Ipy0

please watch that

& I still give a shit about Sleeper

Good on yer, me too.

Had one of those Shine compilations and put it on not that long ago. So terrible that I threw it in the bin and I never do that to cds.

There was a 'britpop' theme hour on Vintage last night, so I put it on...

Shed 7, Kula Shaker, Sleeper, Bluetones, Pulp, Boo Rads, oh god who else? I think I sacked it after the second Shed 7 started..

Pulp was good, as were the Boos. Sleeper were OK. The rest were cor blimey pants. Clearly not a best-of, I'd guess it was of a piece with that Shine comp.

Actually, the Kula track (Mystical machine gun) wasn't bad in itself, but then again there were other reasons why they were awful which were not to do with the music as such.

Actually, the Pulp was part of the Sheffield special which was on after, all of which was excellent.

To return to the original thread question, sure:

https://thequietus.com/articles/28775-martin-green-presents-super-sonics-40-junkshop-britpop-greats-review

that looks like a decent comp despite not much of it really being Britpop.

I really wanted to make a 'weird side of Britpop' playlist, but found it was harder than I imagined

a comp of the good stuff around at the time of Britpop that britpop fans ignored would be better playlist

This is why I address the question directly a couple of times in my review, you see. (It's a flag of convenience for this comp in the end, though Green's liner notes make a solid case for each.)

That comp has lots of good ones on there, but really the Britpop tag doesn't belong on it. There needs to be another name for 90s guitar-based indie music from the UK that doesn't sound like the dirge Beatles because that's what Britpop means now. Compiling a "weird side of Britpop" is impossible because if something's a bit weird then it's not Britpop.

#reclaimbritpop

i think we could sort this out by excluding from Britpop any act that didn't appear on the front of a music publication with some kind of Union Jack draped round them

I don't know who half the names mentioned in ned's article are but both bis and Urusei Yatsura are definitely not britpop and weren't considered such at the time

kenickie were so great

feel like anything too influenced by American music can't be britpop

(american 90s indie was much better than uk equivalent and britpop was bad. British indie music in the 90s was better when it was influenced by American music. this is my theory)

I have very mixed feelings about the uk indie landscape in the 90s but no interest in basically any us indie ever, so going to have to disagree with you on this one

Contempt for Britpop is far less widespread in North America as far as I can tell. I always thought it was cool in a mildly exotic kind of way.

there's plenty of good UK indie from the 90s but there's a whole industry built around nostalgically boosting the worst bits of britpop now, so guess it's not worth reassessing until most of the target audience for that are dead or otherwise economically inactive

just revisiting Urusei Yatsura and had forgotten quite how much they were ripping off sonic youth and pavement. almost at teenage fan club-big star levels

absolutely, that was their whole thing. can't remember another group who did that successfully, apart from blur for a bit maybe

as with the fannies/big star, pavement/the fall and gene/the smiths, if you liked them then the similarities seemed insignificant. i still get pachinko and kubrick in town in my head from time to time.

This here stuff was my jam back in the day. I barely had 10p to rub together let alone spend on quirky-looking CD singles so I must have absorbed half of these via mixtape, or retrospectively once Napster etc came out and I wanted to spend a weekend downloading a Velocette b-side.

xp. i am a huge fannies fan and never minded the indebtedness to big star (I heard teenage fanclub years before big star so it was a bit of a surprise when I first heard the latter)

So, that Quietus review I did of Super Sonics inadvertantly led to another piece of mine for them, and frankly I was thrilled to be able to do this -- a full feature interview Johnny, Chris and Matt from Menswear

https://thequietus.com/articles/29097-menswear-nuisance-review-anniversary

Heh, I always figured the Wire influence was secondhand and the concept of Daydreamer was "let's write an Elastica song".

Curious track listing.

There's definitely a good compilation in stuff from the time that wasn't Brit Pop - Seefeel, Bark Psychosis, Butterfly Child, Insides, Spoonfed Hybrid, Disco Inferno ... and I'd have included Pram.

Perhaps my timing is wonky, though.

idly wondering if this is the only substantial* genre** where the only things of interest to be said about it are extra-musical - the sociopolitical context, the business model etc

* not the best word but reaching for "as opposed to micro-genres"
** another wriggly and not-quite-right word but hey

I really enjoyed Marcello Carlin’s then play long entries on the Britpop years but tgf I kind of like this music. Feel like there’s a lot to say about the great escape but I don’t particularly like that album.

I love The Great Escape and MC was fantastic on it.

I tried writing about it - informally but lengthily - before. On the Blur forum. And scared everyone away.

I want to add that the brain worm I posted tonight isn't really predicated on liking or not liking (some of) the music - I don't really but people do and that's fine

But something I'm not quite articulating to myself even about the metaness of the genre, assuming nostalgia and small c conservatism can be meta

Brit, such an ugly word and world

I wonder if someone who's not British might have something fresh to say about the music? Here in Canada it was received without a lot of the contextual trappings, but probably didn't seem as "exotic" as it might have to the rare American who was tuned in past a handful of Oasis hits.

From my 10-12 year old vantage point it was completely invisible in the US at the time apart from Oasis. Blur seemed genuinely very strange to me until “Song 2” came about.

Sometimes I check out also-fans/stragglers like Baby Bird and I’m like “wow this is extremely British”

also-rans

There was actually a small Britpop scene in Toronto, a handful of bands that were inspired both by the contemporary UK acts and the veteran bands that they emulated. A local group named Admiral got notable press here but only seem to have released a couple of EPs in 1996 and 1997.

I heard (the London!) Suede and early Blur far more often on my college radio station than 1995-1996 Blur-Suede-Oasis.

Toronto still seemed to be living in the Britpop era when I lived there in the 2000s. TBF it was the more the Blur/Suede/Pulp/Mod end of things rather than Oasis. I remember hearing a CBC documentary about Britpop where they mentioned how Chris from Menswe@r would corner every customer ever at the Good Mixer and tell them about his "new band Menswear" and I was like, yep, that happened to me too (although I only popped in because it was next to Mega City)

It's quite funny and all

https://neilk.substack.com/p/on-oasis-the-gallaghers-d4abcb889d59?fbclid=IwAR1rZKrpZpBWLLTRRzeJ9u5U6qifVFU94D1qM3sH5PLZXG8JxJtL3ZMYq-Q

As much as I hate lads rock the counter argument would be: did Britpop stop anything from happening? Trip-hop, dance music, etc. All charted. The music weeklies were dying too and they didn't dominate the coverage.

very little if anything to disagree with there, but also I was driving the other day and Rock & Roll Star came on the radio and I found myself enjoying it a great deal.

Saw one of their videos sitting in a cafe a couple of weeks ago and it was fine. I wouldn't buy it. Think I'm more inclined to think in a "right, this ok thing came out of this abhorrent culture, what next?" than aping bog standard middle-class outrage at it.

it is high time for a re-assesment of the Britpop movement

Posted 10th May 2001.

A few months before that fateful day that two planes etc.