Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

so britpop is now carl cox and billy childish and lush and mbv and jungle and shoegaze? isnt the workability of it as a genre completely destroyed by by this? i'm relly not a fan of the idea that world of twist, st etienne etc were britpop or that the 92 era indiepop stuff was britpop. so some of the prime movers in the london axis of britpop were into doc scott, this doesnt make doc scott britpop though. there may well have been a great london scene of early 90s where people were equally into suburban base and nancy sinatra equally, but i dont see that time as britpop.

also, when were these jungle nights and where? i cannot accept any definition of jungle pre94 (or very late 93)

Good Mixer drinking started in 1990; their extra half-hour made it popular with people who'd gone to see/been in gigs in other pubs in Camden. We listened to pirates when we weren't going to see PJ Harvey and Pulp but that was ages before we went to clubs; I went to one called Paradise in the Angel in late '93 *actually with Simon R* and wrote the first article abt. jungle for US mag; friend who later got together with record company boss worked in a shop with Kemi from Kemistry and Storm and both flipped out when Kurtney popped in the night after Syndrome with FAT? on their mind for my pal.

Whoa, I'm beginning to Zelig out EEEEK.

yea, i know about paradise, you are right that that is the very beginnings of jungle as its own genre rather than hardcore or darkness. any earlier and it wasnt jungle (ok ok, i'll go as far back as possibly accepting summer 93 as jungle as separate from hardcore but even then it was not separated from hardcore properly at that point)

i just think your definition of britpop is too broad. broad enough to lose its defining characteristics, i mean if you're going to throw in st etienne and boys own why not terry farley, acid house, right back to danny rampling and shoom?

i see britpop as a rejection of 88-93, or at the very least, a whittling down. you mention creation records, and how they fit through the preceding period and into britpop, but look how the creation roster changed from 93 to 94. that was quite a shift, how can it all be britpop, across the big change? a lot of people by the wayside, a lot of new people, the aesthetic so oppositional to what went before?

i just think you are describing a london scene that had intersection with britpop, partly because of an industry perspective where people would continue to be involved, but in the music and in the social context britpop ripped up what had gone before

"But he's a 28-year-old man with a beard." "Just look at my fixed smile."

Reminds me of Gareth.

Not Britpop. But the rave culture was.

Oh . . . I thought Jerry was talking about something different:(

The other thing that the whole Britcentric attitude threw up was that unbelievably exciting moment in late 1996 and 97 when it looked like the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers and Orbital and Underworld and Leftfield and Goldie and The Orb and the rest of them were all going to go overground on a major scale in the US, which now seems a bit silly and naive but I still treasure that feeling that something was about to happen. It's weird that a lot of the Britpop-bashing ravers tend to overlook that nowadays when they highlighting the failure of Oasis or Blur to make much of an impact on the US.

What do I know anyway... I hated nine-tenths of Britpop and was into the Afghan Whigs and Sebadoh at the time anyway.

Then again, yer basic teen pop never really went away; Take That and Boyzone were massive all the way through Britpop - and don't forget that both "Common People" and "Wonderwall" were kept off number one by the Waterman-produced, Cowell-managed Robson and Jerome.

Gareth is correct: 'London scene 1990s' != Britpop. He is correct as well to see Britpop as a rejection of 1988-1993, as much as a continuation.

Who cares? How snobby and elitist can you get? I know nothing of the bands you mention - but big fucking deal.''

well I think most ppl who were into britpop were 13-17, say.

Everyone when they get into music starts buying pop, which would include britpop at that time but it is not snobbish to go and buy some TG recs and prefer that to say, oasis or sleeper.

and they've managed to make a couple of decent singles so ADF wins!

FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY LETS NOT GO THERE!

They are the worst kind of reactionary politics IMO.

I would take an ADF interview any day!

(a) Skiffle was over by 1958.
(b) No skiffle = no Britpop (from Cliff/Shadows/Beatles onwards). An absurd and ridiculous statement.

well I can't remember that anything they said could be 'racist' but I'll pull out a couple of the old NMEs and check (I prob won't do this actually).

plur!!

PLUR!!!!!!!!1!

do you see!!1

It's important to highlight the connection between the British/London riot grrrl scene and Britpop. When Blow Up (then Londinium) first started the main attendees were members of Comet Gain and Huggy Bear. Paul Tunkin would always play Stereolab's "Ping Pong" and JSBX "Afro" at the club, nowhere else in London would do this. I started going there with a mate of mine who eventually formed Menswear, he also used to attend lots of riot grrrl gigs with me. The original Menswear was a 4 piece, their drummer at the time now drums for The Beatings via Heck and a few other bands whose names escape me. All of them, except for my mate, came from Southend, they went religously to The Pink Toothbrush in Raeliegh and saw tonnes of great bands play there. They weren't clueless fuckwits (well, maybe Chris was).

Suzy seems like she was right up there with the head scenesters, I on the other hand have never been. But I've been at the right places at the right time.

They're overlooked but Smash were a very important bridge between Riot Grrrl and Britpop. You have to realise, for a year or so before 1994/5, there was no indie, just bland pacific northwest inspired metal like Alice in Chains. Seeing Smash play for the first time at The Monarch was one of the most exciting things in my life (at that time).They ignited sparks for everybody that being political, being British, providing your audience, this was so important but nobody did it. TNWOTNW was quite a limp scene, it never took off but I'll stand by it, no Smash = no Britpop. You could say, No riot grrrl = no NWOTNW = no Britpop.

On the dance music side of thing, lots of people were going to Megadog at a pub in Seven Sisters (can't recall it's name) and The North London Polytechnic. I'm not sure how many of these people were also going to Blow Up, Smashing or Fantasy Ashtray but I couldn't have been the only one. London was a million times more exciting a decade ago than it is now, everything going on now, in my opinion, just seems derivative of that moment in time.

I liked The Heavenly Sunday Social, it was like the grand celebration for a clique of people who'd been broad minded and gone out of their way to experience different aspects of London. It was the first place I'd ever been to were you could have a chat at the bar to a guy wearing a Pastels t-shirt whilst a DJ was playing Masters at Work. That seems like nothing out of the ordinary now but back then it was mind-blowing, like there's loads of musically broadminded people out there and they all seem to have decided to come here.

Then the drugs kicked in and people suddenly seemed to care more about how much they earned and what they could spunk their money on rather than the music.

But shit, nothing will beat hearing "Cigarettes and Alcohol" being played at The Albany for the last Sunday Social, it was amazing. As with any scene, the build up was fantastic and I doubt the film will cover that because there was no scene to categorise at that time, just satellites that converged into one horrible monster.