Britpop re-assesed?

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)...

the last couple of weller albums have been his best and least trad rocky! Tho Heliocentric had been his best album since wild wood.

Black Grape's 1st album is still the best album of that era and a damn better album than the mondays ever made (and i loved the mondays). 2nd album I pretend never happened..

And indeed, what about the guitar bands of the '90s that weren't Britpop? Where did Placebo fit in with all of this? The Verve: were they really a Britpop band? Maybe in a way, but ultimately not as far as I'm concerned. What about the Manics, were they Britpop? Even with the success of 'A Design For Life' and Everything Must Go in mind, I'm not so sure.

verve and manics certainly benefited commercially from it but they couldn't be called Britpop really.

they didnt get called Britrock either (Kerrangs answer to Britpop ie terrorvision,feeder, A, Skunk Anansie etc)

I forgot Reef LOL

How about Cable, weren't they around at the time of Britpop, while not being Britpop?

I remember them. You read Kerrang too?

Did anyone dig 60ft Dolls?.

i love the 60 ft doll album. tis ace.

verve and manics certainly benefited commercially from it but they couldn't be called Britpop really.

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Friday, June 28, 2013 11:57 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with this... guitar bands selling and getting lots of airplay undoubtedly helped both bands, but I suspect other factors came into play too. With The Verve, it was the fact that they'd already split up and re-formed once (thus generating hype in the music press), as well as the focus on more accessible Richard Ashcroft-penned (as opposed to group-penned) compositions and Ashcroft himself being hailed as some kind of genius by Noel Gallagher (back in the days when kids were hanging upon his every word) which helped things along. With The Manics, it was their first release after the disappearance of Richey (which generated quite a lot of publicity for them in itself), coupled with the fact that they'd made their most accessible batch of songs yet. I certainly don't think the Manics were aiming to hitch a lift on the 'Britpop bandwagon'. There's a smack of Oasis to some of the Ashcroft-penned tracks on Urban Hymns, but the group compositions on that record like 'Catching The Butterfly' aren't really what I'd personally call Britpop. They certainly weren't Britpop prior to that, and neither were the Manics for that matter.

I remember them. You read Kerrang too?

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Saturday, June 29, 2013 12:00 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah. I never had Cable down as a Kerrang-type of band, to be honest. Especially considering what was going on in metal during the mid '90s, with Korn and Deftones etc.

i love the 60 ft doll album. tis ace.

― mark e, Saturday, June 29, 2013 12:03 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't they put out two albums? I recall 60ft. Dolls being one fucking frantic live band, that's for sure.

voted Blur, Pulp, Suede, SFA, Boo Radleys and of course Mansun, the band that took Britpop in a wonderful new direction only to discover that someone had chopped the rope bridge behind them

all of those bands were capable of stellar experimentation as well as great songwriting. all had restless imaginations.

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.