Britpop re-assesed?

(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 ..

Scarfo.

Shed 7 (DJ Set)

Shed 7 (DJ Set)
Shed 7 (DJ Set)
Shed 7 (DJ Set)

.. which is weird as there are adverts in mojo re a forthcoming shed 7 tour.
guess the promoters of this couldn't stump up the necessaries for the whole band to do a greatest hits set as i believe that they are quite a big deal on the nostaligic brit-pop scene (tours sell out etc).

yeah i think they can fill medium venues with saddoes

the "Indie saddo DJ set" must be one of the piss-takingest ways of making a living ever invented

wonder how much of that 'britpop' shaun ryder's going to play

i wonder how each of the djs decide what to play given that there is probably a lof of crossover selections when these guys play out individually.

i think shaun will walk if they don't let him play 'daydreamer'

they just play the same fucking bollocks that gets played at every 90s indie night and nobody notices or complains

Urgent and key

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2013/06/friday-poll-special-the-great-britpop-sorting-hat/

fucking pulp.

i mean seriously .. what the fuck ..

a second rate indie band scraping a barrel that gets lucky.

i've never got the love for them ..

ok, you can all ban me now ..

Not sure My Life Story quite deserve to be down there with Seahorses and Northern Uproar.

yes they do!

ag tells the truth.

Ah, they weren't so bad. Didn't like them at the time but I got roped into seeing their comeback show a few years ago and it was much better than I had expected.

them and the divine comedy were awful! Equally as bad as Northern Uproar and Shed Seven and the likes. Only Stereophonics and Ocean Colour Scene were worse!

Britpop is the reason I missed out on so many great bands of the 90s. As a youngster I just assumed all bands with a guitarist were awful.

ILM certainly put a fair amount of guitar bands fans off guitar bands

I bet a fair few were britpop bands at the time mind you; So I dont blame anyone for thinking guitar music was bad if dadrock was the guitar music you heard!

if u dont select any of them it says 'Please choose a valid poll answer'

I thought the same about dance music in v early 90s due to eurodance & happy hardcore etc (yes Im aware tons of ilxors were either into that) But by 94 I was well into other dance music. Honestly the best UK music at the time of Britpop was dance music and at the time a whole bunch of britpoppers loved it too. Funny how it got written out of Britpop history as dadrock traditions tookover.
xp

Oasis had a ton of bands supporting them like Chemical Brothers, Prodigy et al. People forget that when slagging off Oasis.

Did anyone dig 60ft Dolls?.

Oasis had a 5/5 review in Mixmag with Definitely Maybe in 1994. Strange times.

now i know how 1976 punks must've felt by 1996

Oasis got in top 20 AOY by Metal Hammer & Muzik with Definitely Maybe too. So many people (myself included) thought they were a breath of fresh air on radio. Didn't last for long though.

on that list is WELLER Paul Weller?

NV who were The Exploited of Britpop?

I didn't think Muzik was up and running till '95. Did The Wire list them??

maybe it was morning glory they listed.

NV who were The Exploited of Britpop?

the poor saps that bought it

terrorizer used to have swans,diamanda galas,gybe in their eoy lists in the 90s too.
(Mostly) All the lists for magazines are here
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/publications.htm

dont see oasis in the muzik lists but its possible there was top 40s and only 25s listed here. Would need to go up into the loft to find my old mags to check (Not going to)

Would still gladly listen to and consciously put on albums by Pulp, Blur, Suede, Supergrass, Super Furry Animals, Ash, The Boo Radleys, Mansun and Paul Weller (up until Heliocentric). I suppose if someone put an early Oasis track on from their peak years of 1994-1996, it wouldn't offend me, but I haven't felt the need to consciously put an album of theirs on since at least the release of Be Here Now. I don't mind Marion or Lush, and find the first Catatonia album, (Way Beyond Blue, a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Kenickie, Elastica, The Divine Comedy, Sleeper, Black Grape, Gene, Longpigs, Echobelly, Shed Seven, Space, Menswear, My Life Story and Northern Uproar didn't speak to me or mean anything to me to begin with. I didn't own an album by any of those bands, although of course I knew people that did. Elastica, in particular, I always felt were cripplingly overrated. I didn't really give a shit about them.

Cast, The Seahorses, Kula Shaker and Ocean Colour Scene were more my dads thing.

Whenever I put on an album from this particular era now I'm immediately struck by how dated and tied down to its time some of it is - and incredibly, it seems to be the more trad. rock end of the spectrum which has dated the most. Having said that, the last time I listened to Parklife it didn't feel like I was listening to a contemporary record at all... as great as some of the songs on that record are, it feels more than ever like a time capsule of that particular era to my ears, in a way that Blur's self-titled record doesn't. The deeper cuts on Parklife seem to have fared a lot better with the passage of time than, say, 'Girls & Boys' and the title track.

And what about the '90s bands that didn't make it into this poll, of which there are hundreds more? Some that I thought were extremely terrible (Travis), and others that I thought were quite underrated (Geneva)...

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.